StickyMicky

Well, as some of you know i for the past 6 years have been running one of these ARC car wash sites.

Today i handed my notice

I will be honest, in the first few years i was earning decent money, taking home around 25/30k and things were improving month on month, plus i had the thrill of being my own boss, having employees and generally just being a big wig

That was until mid 2008 happened when the business crashed in almost spectacular fashion, i dont think it was due to anything on my part as everybody in the uk crashed at the same time, it was a nightmare, i went from being up every single month for the first six months, to 10k out of pocket by the end of the year, i borrowed some cash to keep my decent staff expecting to be able to pay it back with ease during the expected 2009 winter season, which never happened as winter was crap.

I was hopeful that things would sort themselves out during 2009, but they stayed pretty much the same, i had competitors vastly undercutting us on the same street for car washing, yet the management above me did nothing in fact what they did do was raise my basic wash price up further ?>

This had the effect you would expect, it made it worse

At the start of 2010 we were 40% down on washing trade, and so was pretty much everybody else in the uk, i trimmed as much fat as i could but things were desperate, i should have bailed, but i held on as things improved, by the start of November we were only 4.2% down for wash volumes, but the valeting side has never recovered in line with this, the illegals around the corner from us are half our valeting price list, paying the lads £20 a day cash in hand, i have been simply unable to compete.

2 weeks back the power that be above me decided to raise my prices yet again, while a competitor on the same street as us is now half the cost of our basic wash price

Enough is enough, i sent my CV of last Saturday to my old employers from 6 years back, cheekily asking if i could have my old job back, had an interview this morning and was offered my old position 45mins later by telephone call

I am over the moon nice sensible job again, regular wage (not fantastic but decent enough, its around £9/hour) and hopefully a faster route back into team leader/management due to my previous 6 years experience.

My older superviser started to laugh when he asked if i had any holidays booked and i explained that i have not had more than 4 days off in a row for the past 6 years "ohh so you wont be bothered if over time is on then?" "nope, i doubt you can give me a 70 hour working week anyway"

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Great news and best of luck in the new (old) job.

Sorry the wash didn't work out, but you gave it your best shot and kept us all amused with some of your tales over the years

LG John

Congrats, knowing when to fold is a vital component of success. Seems like you were a little late to the decision (nobody's perfect) but you'd not believe how many people will let themselves sink with the ship.

You've got lots of new experience in the last 6 years and tasted management and other responsibility. Win all round I say

StickyMicky

To be honest i am not going to be the first to walk from our region, every single other operator has told me they are walking after the winter season, i was planning on doing this anyway, but my prices going up just pushed me that little to far.

I fully believe that if i had full control of the site, it would be doing more volumes, but as a franchise type operator, you have shackles on what you can do, and you still have to battle with the people above to get things done.

Ohh i just remembered i get my 4k "security bond" money back as well, merry bloody xmas

speye91

And no more muppets next door to deal with.Good luck Micky.

lordharding

iTrader: (1)

Good luck with the new job and not having to worry about the next car wash to pay your living wage
Often these self employed sales /service jobs are great to start with then they put uP the targets / francise fees to reduce your earnings but when sales fall nationally they don't reduce targets etc
It will be nice to have paid holidays too as that is the hidden cost in self-employment

fivetide

iTrader: (1)

Good luck dude. Don't forget to report the illegals

5t.

Snazy

Congrats and all the best dude

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

Good luck with the new job Unfortunately with the influx of our East European friends and the current economic climate, cleaning of any kind is a tough business at the minute. Many of them around here work cash in hand and flush those nasty chemicals straight down the drain

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Best of luck mate.

And let's not have any more about how the foreign immigrants have "helped the economy" shall we?

Ant

Congrats sticky I'm in the same position as yourself started a job earning well and now it's not as good and management getting worse. Just need the ***** to do it!

Gutted no more YouTube videos

dpb

Unlucky with the timing im afraid , and the 'competition' .

Id love to work for someone else quite a lot of the time , prolly wouldnt have mind lol


Im sure its all good experience and one day youll be boss again , if you want to

StickyMicky

I wraggled one of their advertising boards last week as the cheeky gits moved one of mine to replace with their own

**** it, let some other poor soul deal with it from next month

The management company are trying to muscle in on the valeting side of things, they currently have no control over it and receive no funding from it, but they have a new master plan to turn every site into "autoglym approved"

Meaning you end up having to buy all Autoglym chemicals through them and you end up paying 6k for a bloody valeting canopy to be erected outside

SiPie

Congratulations .... but were you not hating your job and posting up here all the time about that (Nissan car plant or similar IIRC) ?

Apologies if I'm mistaken and at least you have a guaranteed wage etc so at least the pressure is off in that respect

Blue by You

iTrader: (23)

Good for you mate
Enough is enough - go get your life back.
Best of luck.

Lee247

Good for you Micky. All the best in your new job

JTaylor

Nice, honest post; good luck and merry Christmas.

DCI Gene Hunt

Good luck

PaulC72

Good luck, I hope it all works out for you m8.

TBH you should have reported the illegals....or whatever they are to the authorities, but thats a seperate matter.

Account deleted by request

Great honest post.

As said above knowing when enough is enough and tis time to bail out is the hardest decision. Fair play to you for doing that.

You will have gained invaluable experience running a business and as long as you don't have a chip on your shoulder (you don't seem the type that would) about it then you will be an asset to another business. There are a lit of people who think they know what it is like to run your own but have never done it and you can have no idea what it is like until you actually do.

Best of luck

Chop

MMT WRX

I agree, good honest post. Good luck in your new job Sticky.

We have an ARC wash nearby, but there are so many old closed down petrol stations that have re-opened as hand car washes that I cant see it lasting long. Most of the new hand car washes are owned by one guy and to be fair they are very well equipped, do a good job and are reasonably priced.

Bubba po

Good luck to you, Micky. It goes to show that most of us have normal jobs on here, and generally struggle the same as everybody else to afford our cars and make our way in the world. It does my **** in when threads crop up about earnings and bragging rights about what you can and can't afford. I'm lucky at the moment in that both of us are working, but we aren't buying a 2011 car any time soon.

Turbohot

Nice one, StickyMicky. Great news for yourself and your family, just before Christmas. Very pleased for you

StickyMicky

Cheers people, the missus is happy as she thinks she is getting the "old owensy who was not a grumpy git" back

She has got no chance

I think the whole conveyor system for washing is going down hill to be honest, a massive problem i had is that low profile alloys catch on the chain system, i then had a chap try and claim for wheel damage, the management company declined the claim saying that we should not have put him into the wash hall and i was responsible for the damage

So i erected 2 sign saying no low profiles during the summer.

The Chief Executive arrived on site one say for a spot check, saw the signs and kicked off, because "if i saw that sign and i had low profiles i would take it to mean i could not go in" WTF?

I tried to explain but he was having none of it, i was apparently affecting the wash volumes even though i had a letter from head office declaring that no low profiles should be put in.

I have CCTV footage of him saved, trying to snap one of the signs down by hand later on after reviewing the footage he removed one of the signs and stood the thing up on the side of my car i never saw this at the time as i was busy, i would have thrown his bloody site keys down his fat ginger throat, even though i dont care about the MG much, the man is an utter bellend, and he will probably be going on the web once i am officially gone and have received my 4k back

The same bloke apparently wanted me fired when i first joined, all because of a large thread on here!

I had started up a large excited thread, detailing how trashed the site was, and how i was turning it around, fixing all the ****ty bits etc etc.

Some ********* from this website forwarded it on and attempted to have me fired


A few months back i had an interview for a rival company, it is the same kind of setup but it is ran by people who used to work for ARC and got pissed off with all the political bull****, they setup on their own and now have around 5 sites, the newcastle one is amazing, 1.2million spent on refurbishing it a couple of years back, it takes in double the volumes of my current one, that job has been promised to me once the current operator has left, so i may not be out of the "game" for too long.

But short term, yeah i am glad to be escaping it, my mate who runs a local site applied for a "normal" job yesterday, it looks like i have started a stampede

chocolate_o_brian

iTrader: (22)

Congrats Micky on getting out with your sanity (or most of it ). I'm gonna miss the CCTV threads, the one about the bloke right in your face and your restraint was a classic.

Kinda agree with Bubba too about the threads on here boasting about what appliances, cars, extensions etc. Gets tiresome after a while and a nice honest thread like this reminds us normal working classes exist in here

Good luck in your new job. How's the Market looking for car manufacturing now Micky??

davyboy

The boasting threads usually contain the same people.

Some might be BS, some might be genuine.

But this forum does have a users from all walks off life that have been on here a long time. In 10 years some users might have progressed, some stagnated and some gone backwards a bit.

zip106

Boasting threads?
I just see people being pleased with what they've acheived in life.
If you want it enough then you can have it.

Anyway, here's to a prosperous 2011 Mickey.
Well done.

StickyMicky

While the quashqai (sp?) was a resounding success, the seat company next door did not get the contract so they had massive job losses, at the moment they are only doing the juke (sp?), but apparently they are shipping the same amount of jukes per hour as the quashqai did this soon after release, and Nissan have told them they are expecting the build numbers to sky rocket in the new year.

They are confident that they are getting the contract for the quashqais facelift replacement, so it would initially appear quite rosey.

I am not sure that it will be a long term thing for me anyway, it might be a total ball ache to go from being a gaffer, to a minion.

But if i can go in, get myself onto the 3 shift setup when it picks up (i fooooking hate night shifts, but they pay) and do a load of over time for a year, i should be able to clear my backlog of debts i have run up running this bloody wash.

I did pull in around 25k in my previous time with them due the extra overtime, so it can be done, pay me double time + shift allowance to paint a floor on a sunday? neee bother guvvnahh

Then i can cherry pick what i want to do again.

As it stands i am only doing earlys/lates on a 39 hour week, bliss after doing 60/70 hour weeks for the past year and a half

tony de wonderful

Good luck. Sounds fun while it lasted and at least you didn't lose everything.

TBH I'd also love to run my own business, but so far I have lacked my calling...that is to say an idea that appeals to me.

I know some friends who own a business and they kind of fell into it. I'm sure they never set out to do exactly what they do but it just made sense to them as the opportunity arose.