A-holes at Autozone

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I don't know how many times I have dealt with the same thing!!!! I think one of the requirements to work in a place that deals in auto parts should be that you should have to know something about cars!.

half of them have no idea what you are talking about and the other half are foreigners that you have no idea what they are talking about LOL .

I went through the same thing when I went to rebuild my 1406 eddy a few months ago.....they asked the car model and blah blah blah and I said.... LOOK, this is AFTERMARKET.....you will not gain anything from me telling you what car its on other then 15 more minutes of my time wasted while you click buttons and scratch your head saying " HRMMMMMM".

I finally went to advance autoparts and they had it on the shelf and with no problems at all......NOW, I still had troubles when I went to order new jets.....they had tons of jets sizes but not the stock sizes that i wanted.
 
Remember, not everyone with gray hair needs a job at a Fast Food auto parts store for minimum wage.

I know exactly what you mean as I go through the same thing where I live, what kind of this or that is it and as a matter of fact very similar to the kind of answers I get here on this site :) but hey, I understand what its like to live in part of the country where the educational factor gears themselves to churches rather then schools and diversity is having a donut shop instead of a bakery or a Canoli which tastes more like whipped cream rather then Ricotta or calling Ethel Premium because saying Hi-Test doesn't fit the bill. Granted we all wish things would change but that's not gonna happen

Oh well :)
 
Jeez the guys make 7 bucks an hour .What do you expect. I just tell them what to look up with authority, they do and I leave with what I want not what someone else thinks I need.
 
oh gGod ,dont get me started on Autozone.There are a couple of people there that are good,the rest are morons.When i ordered my brake shoes for my Duster,I ordered "brake drum shoes".The guy that took my order,couldnt barely speak a lick of english,so I I wait a couple of days and I finally get a call my brake shoes are in.So when i walk up to the counter to get my parts,the kid brings up a small box,im like wtf??I opened the box,they are brake shoes alright,FOR DISk BRAKES!:banghead:I feel my blood boiling and i told him,um I ordered "drum brake shoes",these are for disk brakes.Hes like really?Im like yea,you dont remember?So I had to wait another couple of days for my brake shoes to arrive(Dusters been sitting on jackstands for a week now waiting for the shoes).Now,I just look up the part online,and go in with the part number just to save the hassle of explaining to them what its for and what it is.And youre right,alot of these guys know jackshit about cars.I remember when I applied there awhile back because I was desperate for work,but never got a call.I guess I gotta no habla mucho inglis to work there or know nothing about cars.
Which is why me and my friends call it "Vato-Zone"
Because the vatos go there to buy spinning hubcaps and bling bling for their Escorts :-D

But there are some things I like,their rewards program is cool,I dont know how many $20 rewards Ive gotten
And the Loan A Tool,when I need a tool like a puller that Im not going to use all of the time.
 
OK guys....GET a clue.... AUTOZONE , MURRAYS, O'REilly's ,KELLY's, PeP Boys are all filled with "CLERKS".... across the country there may be 2 or 3 stores that actually have someone working in one of them that knows what a carburetor is or that a pickle fork is used for something other than pickles!!! YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR, and those low budget places pay for clerks, they pay the same wages as the local pizza place and they get the same kids applying for the job!! High school girls that are far better to look at than ask for a mopar light socket, high school guys that have their pants down around their ankles and what looks like a large wood plug in their ear lobs..... None of them can look up anything generic about cars that were long gone before they were born, they MUST have a vehicle and a year to start with or they are dead in the water. Those stores have computer systems that are geared for year make & model and most of them dont go back as far as anyone here might need.
FOR the record...those days are long gone!!! franchise part stores do not have knowledgeable counter people as a rule....there are exceptions but as a rule they are filled with clerks. QUIT wasting your time with that....be patient and call United Auto Parts in Roseville Michigan
United Auto Parts
30500 Gratiot Ave
Roseville, MI 48066-1798
(586) 293-2050
http://unitedautopartspart1.liveonatt.com
CHances are they will have it OR be able to get it in pretty short order.....they are an old fashioned parts store and they have counter people that know cars!!!! I believe they will ship and they can be contacted using the website or the phone.....I have built several cars all makes & models and they have never missed. They even have some dealer type parts...but if you need that stuff try
Roseville Chrysler Jeep
25800 Gratiot Avenue
Roseville, Michigan 48066
Phone: 586-859-2500
Fax: 586-859-2616
commonly known as MOPARTS.com....
Lower your frustration levels and go to "professionals" for your projects
 
66cuda - Thanks for the info and links .

Certainly , it's unreasonable to expect 95% of youngsters to have a plift of knowledge about pre-1990 cars , let alone performance cars ( and , no , I don't consider fart cannons , 50" wheels / tyres , stereos , "cold" air "intakes" , etc. , to be "performance" items !! ) , and especially carbs .

 
Over an hour drive to the Napa I deal with, but all of the counter help are great and know there way around the old paper books. Plus they give me a hell of a discount.....
 
daredevil said:
Jeez the guys make 7 bucks an hour .What do you expect. I just tell them what to look up with authority, they do and I leave with what I want not what someone else thinks I need.
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I expect someone to do their frikkin job, regardless of what it is or what they get paid.
 
I don't go into Parts stores now without pulling the part number off their website and printing out the page. But even then I still run into the idiot with the "What Car/Year is it?".

Except when I go to my local Carquest. It is a little further drive but those guys/gals are actual parts people who know their stuff. Carquest parts are a little bit pricier than the competition, but an extra few bucks here and there is worth keeping the experienced employees paid decently in my opinion.
 
I went to Advance Auto Parts a couple years ago to rent a gear puller. After a few runs through the usual "what year, model, blah, blah, blah" routine, the dude finally picked up that my repeating "it's a tool, not a part" may have some bearing on his task. I let him flounder for a bit, as it amused me in some sick way to watch his fruitless searches for crap like "gear polar" add depth to his blank expression. If I recall correctly, I left with beef jerky and a tub of lithium grease. The futility was too much to bear.

I think there should be some general automotive knowledge test to work in a place that sells friggin' parts.
 
Corporate mentality dictates that knowledge = insubordination .

Corporate mentality dictates that numbers = a successful business .

Corporate mentality dictates that a clean store = too many people on staff .

Corporate mentality dictates that a happy employee = an employee that is suseptible to insubordination .

There's just something about a billion-dollar corporation with $200 delivery vehicles that seems so wrong ... BUT , as long as the white collar crackers don't have to deal with it on a daily basis , that it's okay for the underlings to deal with it .
 
Time for my '95 Ram 2500 truck's bi-annual California smog check so I stopped in at a new AutoZone on a Saturday morning to pick up some new plugs. Of course, I went through the "what vehicle/what engine/etc" quiz (I love when they ask if it's got air conditioning or not, as if that makes a difference in the spark plugs).
When I told them it's a V10, I get the answer that plugs are boxed in sets of four. So, do the math and sell me two full boxes and break the 3rd box.
After the panicked look left his face, it turned out he only had two boxes in stock and had to order the other 2 plugs from his warehouse.
I was told they'd be in later that day and they'd call me when they arrived. Of course, I never heard from them at all. Went in the following weekend and got all sorts of apologies from the manager and frightened looks from the guy who originally helped me the weekend before.
 
me and my dad got mad one day when we needed a rad hose for our 63 galaxie with a 460 done right out, and he kept askig what year/ what make whatever, so my dad takes the kid out and asks "do you honestly think this engine is stock to this car, and do you think this engine is stock? can you please give me a rad hose that looks like this? " and sure enough the kid gave us the right one after he stopped drooling over the galaxie :p
 
haha i dont blame Autozone itself for this, it just happened to occur at mine.

stopped by to pick up...something. wasnt a big something. anyhow i get to the register and as he(the maybe 25 year old?) is ringing me up he says "we are having a special on this fuel optimizer. cleans out your injectors and gets your car running better,blah blah blah". i tell him thanks, but my car is 40 years old with a carb. he thinks for a second and says "oh it works on carbs too!"

excuse me if im wrong, but that sounds like a load of BS to me

oh by the way, im 18. i do not fit in at ALL with the majority of my generation, car wise. its pathetic when i see some kid my age drivin around in a fart-cannon honda with his seat leand back, a crappy base in the trunk rattling away, tryin to get6 me to race his primer black pos. hed prolly beat me, since my darthas a /6. but cmon, seriously?
 
You really can't expect all youngsters to know what most of us know about older cars or performance parts.. Most can only referance what the computor says... My advance sux, every rebuilt part I've seen from there was JUNK...
 
73charger said:
haha i dont blame Autozone itself for this, it just happened to occur at mine.

stopped by to pick up...something. wasnt a big something. anyhow i get to the register and as he(the maybe 25 year old?) is ringing me up he says "we are having a special on this fuel optimizer. cleans out your injectors and gets your car running better,blah blah blah". i tell him thanks, but my car is 40 years old with a carb. he thinks for a second and says "oh it works on carbs too!"

excuse me if im wrong, but that sounds like a load of BS to me

oh by the way, im 18. i do not fit in at ALL with the majority of my generation, car wise. its pathetic when i see some kid my age drivin around in a fart-cannon honda with his seat leand back, a crappy base in the trunk rattling away, tryin to get6 me to race his primer black pos. hed prolly beat me, since my darthas a /6. but cmon, seriously?
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yeah,or we are having a special on hand cleaner,its like dude,if I wanted hand cleaner it would be in my basket.
And about the honda beating your car,some moron in a civic tried racing me when i had the smoking tired /6 in my Duster and I easily whipped his ***,so im sure yours would keep up,lol
 
I see these threads come up every once in awhile. I see both sides having come from working at a few parts houses over the years. On one side you gotta look at how the company sets things up. Big corporate companies think they can just throw someone in there and the computer system is so great that they don't need any training or other resources. Plus they never pay anything above minimum wage so you have no employee retention. Then lets add to the mix the guy who walks in the door who has "X" car and has modified it with some aftermarket brake setup and now 10 years later the brake hose is bad. He walked in with nothing to match it up to and no idea what it came from but somehow your supposed to read his F'n mind and know what it came from. If you modify your car know what parts you have or what they came from! I have a binder from when I did my V8 swap that has every single part I used to do it.

Now from the other end YES if you are going to get into the parts game you need to learn! People I worked with always asked either me or one of the other guys we worked with questions. If they didn't know what a TPS or MAF sensor was or what it did they asked. Hell I got a girlfriend a job at one of my old shops a couple years ago and before she started she knew to ask questions and started learning the basics. I myself am not that bothered by the dipstick at my local autozone who doesn't know his *** from a hole in the ground. I look at it like hey at least he didn't get a job at a shop putting brakes on someones car or a construction company building a roof over my head.
 
Ok guys I have to step in and defend one Advance Auto that I go too. If you notice I said "one". When I was really working on my car (had the motor out, painting engine bay, rear end out from under the car, etc....) These guys would let me behind the counter to find the parts I needed such as radiator hoses, vacuum hoses, fittings, instead of keeping me on one side of the counter. That made things easier on me and them because I found what I needed. They trusted that I wouldn't pocket stuff while helping other customers. One guy had a Dart and we'd bump our gums for a little while about Mopars.

I like NAPA when it comes to front end parts, brake related parts however. NAPA is the best part store then there's Summit! LOL
 
Go to the part store armed with part numbers. Makes life easier.
 
Also, I always check part numbers and local availability online before I ever go into the store, that way i know what I want and if they have it.

ALSO, i recently discovered you can go to advance autoparts website and purchase what you want online and with the option to pick it up in the store if it is in stock.....which eliminates all face time with those at the counter, you just walk in and say you bought a part online, they give you a piece of paper you sign and your part and off you go.

the reason I do this is because for one.....the online prices are normally a bit cheaper.....PLUS if you go to google and type in Advance auto parts promo codes , it will bring up a place called " retailmenot.com ".....and they list promo codes and printable coupons for all sorts of different websites and stores.

I just did this a couple days ago when I was buying a set of shocks and I saved 40% !!!!!

so keep that in mind if anyone is looking to catch a good chunk of savings!
 
StrokerScamp said:
If you went to Autozone, you got what you asked for. I went in to one down here YEARS ago and asked for a set of points. The guy said....and I quote....."Wut dat is?" autozone hires the stupidest people they can possibly find. Bar none.
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if you ever paid any attention to their commercials, you can tell that they are an equal opportunity employer
 
I'm lucky I guess, the parts stores in my town, advance, auto zone, and the new o'reillys, know old cars, I always go to advance, unless they are out of stock, but the other stores are great for stocking parts for my scamp as well, before the Nat's, I needed engine paint, advance and auto zone, was out, went to o'reillys and they had it in stock, and asked if I wanted them to order more, I asked the guy working there, what they stocked for old mopars, he told me, if we get a customer with a certain year/ model of a car, we do our best to keep parts in stock, so if I need anything and it's out of stock, I can always get it the same day, or the next day.
 
I worked for Chrysler dealers for twenty years and the last ten at PartSource (Canada's Autozone). The previous posts are all correct. Corporate stores do not pay much above min wage. We started PartSource with a financial model that required each franchisee to hire a (one at least) licensed technician on staff to ensure we had a "car guy". The sales numbers weren't there for most of the franchisee's and that fell away after a while. Then we started buying up the stores and converting them to corporate locations and we had to hire what was available. Tough to find people in this industry at all, let alone someone with any "car smarts". In my experience, any parts store person (guy or gal) who really tries to help the customer is worthy of some help themselves. Problem is, the "company" thinks they are wasting time with customers who are "needy". I spoke to the management at another "performance specialty" parts chain in central Canada and they told me that their number one problem in expansion is finding qualified staff. Imagine, not being able to open new stores when the market research tells you it is a "slam dunk" in a certain market. We have no way to train new people in our hobby other than the "buddy system". You know, a guy (or girl) you meet wants to hang out and help you work on your project and he (or she) learns a bunch and gets more interested. If you have a track where folks can get together it helps but there are very few (1/4 mile) tracks in Canada that I know of. 2 (?) in all of Ontario (big province, like Texas size) maybe.
 
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