When I began managing the San Francisco operation, it consisted of roughly 40 vehicles. Over the next two years, I helped scale it to approximately 170 vehicles while overseeing daily operations, fleet readiness, compliance requirements, customer issues, accident documentation, maintenance coordination, and on-site support. During my first two years, I was also the top sales performer for the San Francisco market. As additional responsibilities and projects continued to be added to my role, operational demands increasingly consumed my time, reducing my ability to prioritize sales, although I continued contributing whenever possible.
Customer satisfaction was a major focus. During that period, hundreds of five star reviews referenced my name and noted that I consistently went above and beyond for customers.
Despite this growth, staffing support did not scale with the size of the operation. After the fleet associate responsible for vehicle preparation and cleanliness was let go, those responsibilities were absorbed into my workload in addition to management duties.
I was also asked to renegotiate vendor pricing with mechanics, glass shops, and body shops. After successfully securing lower costs across multiple services including oil changes, brake work, window replacements, and body repairs, the financial benefit to the company was significant. However, these efforts did not translate into increased compensation.
Beyond local operations, I also contributed to company wide revenue initiatives by implementing rent increases across multiple markets, including San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Weekly rental rates were increased by an average of approximately $25 per vehicle across fleets totaling roughly 600 vehicles.
Based on fleet sizes at the time, this represented approximately:
• $15,000 in additional revenue per week
• Approximately $65,000 per month
This initiative was implemented across multiple branches and repeated over several years.
Despite these contributions, support remained limited, expectations continued to rise, and communication from corporate leadership was inconsistent. Alignment between local management and corporate partners did not always exist, making it difficult to operate effectively.
During the predictable slow season (October–December), performance metrics declined in line with industry patterns, something that had occurred every year during my four years with the company and had never previously been considered a performance problem. In my final year, this same seasonal decline suddenly became the basis for a performance improvement plan. I made significant progress quickly, meeting performance targets, reducing the number of sitting vehicles, and getting more vehicles back on the road, yet was still terminated before those improvements could be meaningfully evaluated over time.
Concerns about my “attitude” surfaced late in my tenure despite years of extended hours, operational results, and positive customer feedback.
My role was transitioned the following days to an employee whom I had personally trained. The immediacy of the transition, combined with prior communication patterns and direct interactions outside of the management structure during my tenure, made it difficult to maintain consistent leadership and gave the impression that the decision had already been made.
I am also aware of multiple former employees who experienced similar departures, contributing to a perception of high turnover and limited long term stability.
Overall, managers were expected to deliver aggressive growth, cost savings, revenue increases, and operational stability with minimal structural support and little margin for error.