Stokdgs
dansautodetailing.com
Sorry RaskyR1 to , incorrectly, imply that ALL body shop personnel do bad workmanship. Obviously your father does not, nor do you.
That said, we Autopians have viewed the postings and pictures of more than one "bad" body shop job that Autopian-quality detailers have fixed. I am in awe at what these detailers do, but perhaps more disappointed in what some body shops consider "acceptable".
Lonnie -
I and a lot of other people here know - Exactly - what you mean..
Lucky for me, I started learning as a young lad how to finish correctly, and never knew in my life that swirls were supposed to be acceptable at some places, because they were Never Acceptable in any of the places I worked..
I think it all comes down to that word - Production -
All Shops that are any good and perhaps not so good but have a lot of business anyway, have to run a bunch of cars in and out of the shop - Every Week - there are no exceptions...
The more people that work at the Shop, the more cars have to get in and out to realistically even make payroll sometimes...
There are a lot of bad habits that have perpetuated themselves through this Industry for as long as I can remember and I'm in my 60's so that is a long time that I have personally seen a lot of good and a lot of bad techniques going on there with the Rotary, the materials used, the lack of any cleaning program for pads, and some of the worst towels in the world used to wipe off..
For some reason, a lot of places use a "Rep" who comes by and sells stuff to the Shop and for decades nothing ever changes...
As with everything else that never changes for decades, the same bad buffing techniques are passed down for decades it seems like, and no one really questions or decides that perhaps we can look at changing a few things..
The old adage - "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" also helps keep the good and the not-so-good processes going on and on..
Everyone is at the mercy of the Boss/Owner who may not give a hoot about how it really looks but as long as its straight and shiny, that is all that matters...
Thank Goodness that there are still a few - perhaps a lot of really great Shops out there that try really hard to do great work at the Body end as well as the Painting/Finishing end !
I still remember far back enough when Real BodyMen used Lead to finish the repair after they used a bunch of different hammers and dollies to work that heavy duty metal used back then to almost perfection..
And after all this, we can all be so Thankful for the Shops that do the best work from the beginning to the end and give their Clients as good a result as can be had, because if there were None, we as Detailers would Never be done, right ?

Dan F