There is a definite challenge to the way that auto parts stores are run--when a customer walks in, there is no way of knowing whether they are going to pick up a quart of oil off the shelf, or if they were looking for a transmission seal from a 1931 Pontiac or something like that...even if they're holding a quart of oil, there is no way of knowing whether or not they need something else. The way we had it set up was on the weekends we'd have some girl come in and work a front register for "quick checkout" and the rest of us would do our usual parts thing behind the counter. Also, in terms of the phone, many parts stores do wholesale parts contracts with local garages and businesses. This was most of my profit for the store, when not directly taking care of a customer in front of me (i.e. waiting for parts to come out of the back) we would have to answer the phone to do wholesale business. We had two dedicated parts guys JUST on the phone who usually had 3-4 people on the line at any given time. Some people would complain about us taking too long if we did one customer at a time, others would complain about lack of individual service or something when we would do multiple customers. Either way, everyone feels like they are entitled to their own opinion and business model when they walk into a parts store, and not to absolve the stores of management responsibility--they need to accommodate for their volume of customers. For us, we had extremely high volume both walk-in and wholesale so our system worked pretty well, and all of the guys were ASE certified as well (with the exception of me, who decided not to take the test due to time constraints). Either way Pep Boys is the worst, they would actually call us and ask us questions, no lie.

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TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth