C.
San Diego,#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Mon, October 26, 2009
I worked for a Carquest in Southern California, and my HR people were in Riverside County, too. I believe your "Rudy" is Rudy Cervantes, who I had the displeasure of meeting with one of his cohorts, Monica Sanchez.
I was hired as a delivery driver at Carquest. I have experience in auto parts delivery before they started making everyone here private contractors who have to use their own vehicles for the job. I already knew where the majority of Carquest's customer's mechanic shops were, knew how to drive their trucks and read their parts numbers, so the job transition wasn't any major thing; I adapted well.
There was a Teamster strike here in October, 2007, and a semi was blocking a delivery address I was at. The truck was parked in the middle of the two-lane street, actually being over the double yellow line. There were no emergency triangles behind the trailer, no emergency flashers were on, and no doors were open in either the trailer or cab. It looked like an abandoned vehicle. I supposed it wasn't, but I knew I had to park around there somewhere. I pulled to the right side of the road and tried to park along the sidewalk when the truck started up. It was taking off and, due to the way it was parked in the street, started to get closer to the right side of the road and the parked cars there; the trailer was at an angle. I was immobile in the Carquest truck, it wasn't moving at the time, and I saw the trailer getting closer to the driver's side window. I started honking the horn and yelling, hoping to get the driver's attention. I could see the occupants in the cab by then, as I could see the passenger moving around in the truck's mirror. They never stopped, and scraped along the driver's side of the Carquest truck. There was damage done.
Finally the driver stopped. Both driver and passenger got out of the truck and started yelling in Arabic (I guess, it was some kind of language I didn't know) about something and called the police on a cell phone. The mechanic later said that he could hear me honking the horn from inside his shop, he knew I was making an attempt to let the truck's passengers know there was something wrong.
The police came out and took a disturbing the peace report, not an accident report. I called my boss on the Carquest phone, and he'd sent out an accident report and camera (I paid to develop the film and kept the negatives). Everyone left, both trucks were still drivable, and I went back to the shop and filled out more accident reports. The photos showed the semi to be in the middle of the street even after colliding with the Carquest truck, and even then there weren't any emergency lights or devices displayed.
I told my boss I didn't feel right about the wreck and wanted to use my workers comp "band-aid" UC visit. I didn't get permission until close to two weeks later; by then any noticeable bruises or cuts I had were healed. Eventually I got about a $5.70 per diem check from workers comp for the travel expense to Urgent Care. Immediately my personal vehicle was retaliated on while parked in the Carquest parking lot. My gas was sugared, two tires were popped, it was egged, transmission fluid poured on the windshield and interior, and (my boss admitted to this last part) a Star of David was taped on its hood with lime green tape that I matched up to tape inside the store. That was just my car; I started finding voodoo dolls in the work area where I would get the parts to deliver, near the shelves themselves. One voodoo doll had a yellow post-'em sticker on it that said "Help Me! They are [f-word] Hurting my Volvos!" The other voodoo doll had scatalogical and defamatory statements written on it. They were both unusual looking dolls. I showed the smaller one to my boss and he admitted to making it and said "Isn't that funny?"
The sugar plugged up my fuel injectors making it undrivable. Due to its age, I couldn't find parts to repair it (Carquest doesn't even sell fuel distributer and regulaters for Volvos that old). I had to get everything from the junk yard. But during the mean time I met the DM, a person who I won't name right now, and one who was entirely unreceptive to what my boss and others had done to my car. It was right after the Carquest convention in Nashville, and all the management thought they were doing something important. The DM couldn't seem to understand what had happened, and kept saying "we're far past that." My car wasn't far past anything, as it wasn't running. Finally, he seemed to understand that "Carquest bad, it do something not good," and called the Riverside HR team to come out there.
That's when I met Cervantes. This person gave me a write-up (remember I hadn't done anything wrong, the wreck wasn't my fault and my boss made me fill out the Carquest accident report) saying that if I told anyone what happened to me at that Carquest store, if I told anyone what happened to my car, I'd be fired. I couldn't talk about the sugar, the voodoo dolls, or any of the other abuse I'd endured after the wreck. If I thought that was unfair, I'd be fired.
In the meantime, my boss and a salesman were fired. I knew that HR had made some remedies, but I still had a healthy repair bill to pay.
I was transferred to another Carquest store, where I was asked what had happened at the other store. I couldn't answer these questions (I'd be fired), so those Carquest employees immediately became suspicious of me. My time there was not fun, and I was finally let go a couple months later. No matter what HR says, I was not let go for bad job performance, I was let go for talking about my car. What had happened was that I'd finally gotten my car running again and had passed the smog test (I needed to get the yearly registration), and Carquest found out about it. If I began driving it to the new Carquest store, I'd be "talking about" what happened at the other store. HR just didn't want any other Carquest employees seeing that car, so my job there ended.
This is what Carquest really is. Misboxed parts and misplaced and misquided HR and management. Nothing there is right. Every mechanic I'd deliver to griped about always getting the wrong parts in the wrong boxes and always high prices, prices that were for wrong parts. Management can't blame the drivers for that, they're not the ones who boxed the parts, and many times they're not the ones who pulled them. Carquest management are the ones who're inoperable, they're totally out of contact with reality.
You go to stores like Carquest to get parts to get your car running good. You don't expect Carquest management to sabotage cars, as they're supposed to help fix them. Carquest is not only a waste of time, it's criminal. It's not a good place to work or shop, and, what's worse, this is really a true story.
C.
San Diego,#3UPDATE EX-employee responds
Mon, October 26, 2009
I worked for a Carquest in Southern California, and my HR people were in Riverside County, too. I believe your "Rudy" is Rudy Cervantes, who I had the displeasure of meeting with one of his cohorts, Monica Sanchez.
I was hired as a delivery driver at Carquest. I have experience in auto parts delivery before they started making everyone here private contractors who have to use their own vehicles for the job. I already knew where the majority of Carquest's customer's mechanic shops were, knew how to drive their trucks and read their parts numbers, so the job transition wasn't any major thing; I adapted well.
There was a Teamster strike here in October, 2007, and a semi was blocking a delivery address I was at. The truck was parked in the middle of the two-lane street, actually being over the double yellow line. There were no emergency triangles behind the trailer, no emergency flashers were on, and no doors were open in either the trailer or cab. It looked like an abandoned vehicle. I supposed it wasn't, but I knew I had to park around there somewhere. I pulled to the right side of the road and tried to park along the sidewalk when the truck started up. It was taking off and, due to the way it was parked in the street, started to get closer to the right side of the road and the parked cars there; the trailer was at an angle. I was immobile in the Carquest truck, it wasn't moving at the time, and I saw the trailer getting closer to the driver's side window. I started honking the horn and yelling, hoping to get the driver's attention. I could see the occupants in the cab by then, as I could see the passenger moving around in the truck's mirror. They never stopped, and scraped along the driver's side of the Carquest truck. There was damage done.
Finally the driver stopped. Both driver and passenger got out of the truck and started yelling in Arabic (I guess, it was some kind of language I didn't know) about something and called the police on a cell phone. The mechanic later said that he could hear me honking the horn from inside his shop, he knew I was making an attempt to let the truck's passengers know there was something wrong.
The police came out and took a disturbing the peace report, not an accident report. I called my boss on the Carquest phone, and he'd sent out an accident report and camera (I paid to develop the film and kept the negatives). Everyone left, both trucks were still drivable, and I went back to the shop and filled out more accident reports. The photos showed the semi to be in the middle of the street even after colliding with the Carquest truck, and even then there weren't any emergency lights or devices displayed.
I told my boss I didn't feel right about the wreck and wanted to use my workers comp "band-aid" UC visit. I didn't get permission until close to two weeks later; by then any noticeable bruises or cuts I had were healed. Eventually I got about a $5.70 per diem check from workers comp for the travel expense to Urgent Care. Immediately my personal vehicle was retaliated on while parked in the Carquest parking lot. My gas was sugared, two tires were popped, it was egged, transmission fluid poured on the windshield and interior, and (my boss admitted to this last part) a Star of David was taped on its hood with lime green tape that I matched up to tape inside the store. That was just my car; I started finding voodoo dolls in the work area where I would get the parts to deliver, near the shelves themselves. One voodoo doll had a yellow post-'em sticker on it that said "Help Me! They are [f-word] Hurting my Volvos!" The other voodoo doll had scatalogical and defamatory statements written on it. They were both unusual looking dolls. I showed the smaller one to my boss and he admitted to making it and said "Isn't that funny?"
The sugar plugged up my fuel injectors making it undrivable. Due to its age, I couldn't find parts to repair it (Carquest doesn't even sell fuel distributer and regulaters for Volvos that old). I had to get everything from the junk yard. But during the mean time I met the DM, a person who I won't name right now, and one who was entirely unreceptive to what my boss and others had done to my car. It was right after the Carquest convention in Nashville, and all the management thought they were doing something important. The DM couldn't seem to understand what had happened, and kept saying "we're far past that." My car wasn't far past anything, as it wasn't running. Finally, he seemed to understand that "Carquest bad, it do something not good," and called the Riverside HR team to come out there.
That's when I met Cervantes. This person gave me a write-up (remember I hadn't done anything wrong, the wreck wasn't my fault and my boss made me fill out the Carquest accident report) saying that if I told anyone what happened to me at that Carquest store, if I told anyone what happened to my car, I'd be fired. I couldn't talk about the sugar, the voodoo dolls, or any of the other abuse I'd endured after the wreck. If I thought that was unfair, I'd be fired.
In the meantime, my boss and a salesman were fired. I knew that HR had made some remedies, but I still had a healthy repair bill to pay.
I was transferred to another Carquest store, where I was asked what had happened at the other store. I couldn't answer these questions (I'd be fired), so those Carquest employees immediately became suspicious of me. My time there was not fun, and I was finally let go a couple months later. No matter what HR says, I was not let go for bad job performance, I was let go for talking about my car. What had happened was that I'd finally gotten my car running again and had passed the smog test (I needed to get the yearly registration), and Carquest found out about it. If I began driving it to the new Carquest store, I'd be "talking about" what happened at the other store. HR just didn't want any other Carquest employees seeing that car, so my job there ended.
This is what Carquest really is. Misboxed parts and misplaced and misquided HR and management. Nothing there is right. Every mechanic I'd deliver to griped about always getting the wrong parts in the wrong boxes and always high prices, prices that were for wrong parts. Management can't blame the drivers for that, they're not the ones who boxed the parts, and many times they're not the ones who pulled them. Carquest management are the ones who're inoperable, they're totally out of contact with reality.
You go to stores like Carquest to get parts to get your car running good. You don't expect Carquest management to sabotage cars, as they're supposed to help fix them. Carquest is not only a waste of time, it's criminal. It's not a good place to work or shop, and, what's worse, this is really a true story.