chcinc
Forum Replies Created
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Not only is it theft, but depending upon the state your in, and if its over $500, its a serious crime. You can easily peel back the onion on these types of schemes and prosecute. You have to go about finding enough evidence. Talk to your parts suppliers owners or district managers to get info on deliveries to your address, look at the vehicle info, dates, times, chart it out. Note the vehicle types. You can easily build a case and you may not need an attorney. You bring the facts to a detective or DA office. They will then investigate. Most likely the parties will start by lying to the DA, also a crime. Soon they will dig a hole. We prosecuted a guy and in the end he was very sneaky, but he lied about something and he destroyed copies of work orders and did you know in many states that is a crime? Destroying company documents for personal gain was a class D felony with a 2 year conviction.
Send a message or else they will steal again.
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Due to all the “devices” people use to distract themselves from their profession and safe work habits in an industrial environment where risks are relatively high, we have a P.E.D. policy.
PED = Personal Electronic Devices, anything that is not for work is a P.E.D.This includes cell phones, tablets, ipods, and yes – e-cigs.I hired a crew of union carpenters once to build a building – none ever had a cell phone on their hip on the property. I had lunch with them one day – great bunch, and they said “If we are seen by the union on a site with a cell phone you are out of the union, no questions, your done.” Its simply not safe. Its a drag on focus, and that drags on what the customer wants – productivity as measured in its many facets.Uniforms – we buy t-shirts and give them away, we rent some, I cant stand the big uniform rental companies, never sign their contracts, it will bite you every time. Overpriced, games, drivers on commission, its just plain bad, but somewhat necessary evil. You can buy uniforms and own them and lease them to your employees for free, we are trying a two year lease for $0 to the employee – they own them after two years and we buy more, its slightly less over two years than renting. Of course we have to chase the quitters for them if they dont make it two years, but when you rent you pay for losses too, sometimes more than the cost of buying, in this lease case you have a solid legal basis to collect or file a petty theft charge. -
I think shop licensing is very different from state to state.
The idea of getting rid of bad apples seems like a good one. If you were an ASE master tech, nice guy, who did alot of charity and hard work to help your customers in need, and one day a state office gets a bug about a complaint due to a employee tech who promised up and down he road tested it and torqued this and that to spec – well it does not matter – the license is you and they could shut you down even though you did nothing nefarious. So be careful, there should be rules for reparations, insurances, basic training, but some licensing regs in some states can end up putting the innocent out of business.I think techs need licensing and ethical standards – along with a Hypocratic oath. I would rather be a licensed tech and own a shop. As a licensed tech I would have high standards, its my name on the line not my shops. That would weed out the bad apples and elevate our image. It would be an honorable profession,Similar to an engineers license, architect, or land surveyor. Those professionals will only do their work by the book. Quality is an absolute. Thats where we need to go. We could make it easy by using ASE as the basis for certification on systems and perhaps add an ethics and legal regulatory exam. It does not have to be overly complex.
