Mark Curtis was a young commercial loan officer at a local bank in Greenwich, where he grew up, when he saw an ad for a single-location car wash for sale. It was 1981 and he called his buddy, Chris Fisher, and said, “We’ve got to buy this place!” They had washed boats together as teenagers and they renamed it the Tahiti Auto Spa, so named because their goal was to earn enough to biy a boat and sail to Tahiti. They renamed it The Car Wash of Greenwich in 1985 and, later, Splash Car Wash when they expanded to full-service, hand-washing services.
They started with four employees but cut back to just Curtis after the Mianus River Bridge collapse choked off Route 1. Today the company has 15 locations in Connecticut and Westchester County, plus a joint venture in China.
In November, the partners sold a majority stake to a private equity firm. Curtis, 64, remains as CEO and the management team is the same.
It’s common to find Curtis out talking with the crews, having fun. That spirit earned him the Top Leader award for midsize employers in the 2019 Hearst Connecticut Medis Top Workplaces competition.
Have you had a major crisis with an employee?
My first manager we found stealing from us. And the dilemma we found firing him was he was the only guy who knew how to fix everything on the site, and there was a lot of stuff to be fixed on a daily basis. We inherited him and one of the employees who didn’t speak English called me one night with an interpreter to tell me they had washed some number of cars that day. When I went in the next day I found the cars that he had reported were less. So I came on an off hour and found that he had disconnected the counter. I fired him, and then I just tried to find somebody to help me, I actually...
from News https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Having-fun-workin-at-the-car-wash-14464648.php
No comments:
Post a Comment