A-holes at Autozone

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.