A truck dealership that I worked at gave everyone a job review once a month during the probationary period. A probationary period is the first three months of your job. During this period, they can fire you at any time without cause. I personally don't mind job reviews, done properly its supposed to offer you constructive criticism on how you can be a better mechanic. Its rarely done properly, in fact depending on your supervisor ( lead hand), some people can be very uncomfortable offering criticism to others; for whatever reason. My lead hand, Mike was extremely uncomfortable offering up criticism; with good reason he didn't like hurting peoples feelings. Prior to the job review he pulled me aside and told me that "whatever we say about you. don't take it personally." "Its just how the service manager is; hes pretty tough on people in the beginning."
While were in his office waiting for the service manager, whom ill refer to as Belly, Mike told me an interesting story. A truck had kept coming in the shop for ecu problems, an ecu was replaced, wiring was repaired, even a harness was replaced and the truck still kept coming back. It had been inspected by about 4 or 5 different mechanics, all with the same result.
Finally someone decided to replace the batteries and all the problems went away. Mike told me that its very easy to overlook batteries but we shouldn't because they are a critical component of the electrical system and that if the voltages start to drop under 10 volts everything starts to go haywire. I always thought that its a great story because sometime the best way to repair a problem is start with the simple or easiest things to fix first. As a technician we often to try and tackle the complicated things first.
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