Most interesting copier location

[blackcat4866]

The Thumb Correctional Maximum Security Prison: Two hours to clear security in. Doing your service calls with the 12 tools you carried in. Then 1 hour to leave, and hopefully you don't need a part and have to do the whole thing all over again.

Restaurants (most restaurants) where everything has a heavy coat of cooking oil and/or extra crispy breading. And doing the baby step walk, because the floor is so slippery you can barely stay on your feet. And the copier is crammed into a 4 foot by 4 foot office with two other people (and you) moving in and out of the office constantly.

Grocery Store entry with the automatic doors, in which the temperature varies from 32F to 75F minute by minute, and you can stand in 6 inches of snowy slush while servicing the copier. Could humidity be a problem? I don't know, the paper looks like a wet rag.

The Gay Church where the signs all extol that: "God doesn't care about your sexual orientation." and the pastor encourages you to take off that suit coat because it's so hot in here.

The Print Shop where the racket is so loud that you can't tell if the copier is running or not, and they call for a noise. How could you tell? The only way I can tell the copier is running to to put my ear to the front cover, and feel the vibration.

The truck service facility where the vent over the copier blows diesel fumes and black particulate over the top of the copier. Why does it need cleaning so often?

How about a photo?:
Closet.jpg
Enduser asks: "How am I supposed to get jams out?" Maybe you could remove the copier from the coat closet? I had already removed 6 UPS packages piled on top of the machine. Door was closed, light off. Copiers are not like mushrooms. They don't thrive in dark moist places.

[brewster67]

We have a gold mine that takes 2 1/2 to 3 hours drive time each way, then when you get there they have 4 color machines and 4 b/w machines. Makes for a long day.

Then there are the remote schools. Fly in only. There is only one flight a day. So you are there over night even if it is a 15 minute fix. But there are no hotels or restaurants, so you back food and a sleeping bag. You end up either sleeping in the gym or the library.

And there is nothing like working in a prison when an alarm goes off. They handcuffed the guy that was prepossessing to the wall then run out and never said a word to me about what was going on. After 30 minutes of guards running around they got the alarm of and told me it was a fire alarm malfunction in one of the cells. The funny thing was watching the guy try to fill out the form with one hand handcuffed to the wall.

[Iowatech]

Huh, well, prisons have been covered already, so I guess that won't work. I'll only add that if you have a machine at a prison that's out in the open in the prisoner intake area, make sure to do basic troubleshooting. Some of those guys that pass through that area are pretty clever.
River locks have been covered as well, so that won't work either. I guess I'll only add if you have to work on a machine on a barge when Corps of Engineers are doing lock maintenance, make sure to look for ropes and baskets that can be used to lower your stuff onto the barge. The ladders in the side of the locks are really tiny.
I suppose that just leaves the liquor warehouse that was in a building that was originally set up as an old timey theater. The machine was in one of the balconies, and the stage was completely clear, but the floor where probably a couple of hundred audience members would have sat was filled by stacks of cases of liquor.
Maybe I could mention the time that I got to see one of NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon's actual race cars at the end of a service call, but I'm not going to do that because his crew was a bunch of jerks then. A perfectly good camera got tossed out the window of my car on the way home from that.

[jonhiker]

I was in a cath lab at a hospital while they were threading a catheter from a the patient's leg to his heart. One time at a paper mill, they gave us emergency breather kits in case of a chlorine spill.

Been in several prisons. One so many times, several of the guards used to greet me like an old friend!

[theengel]

Not a copier but a fax machine. This was in a meat processing plant. I refused to go back there, i just could not take the stench, but the guys who worked there was comfortable. Big bank vault, very interesting indeed to see.

I went to one at a slaughter house where they actually kill the cows. I told them what they needed (it would be about a 1 1/2 hour job) and then returned when they had the parts. Only the day I returned I happened to be coming down with the flu. It was so terrible. Between the smell of blood and the sounds of the cattle, I don't know how I made it without puking my guts up.

[Iowatech]

Well, if we're going to post about awful places, I guess I could do this -
Back in the analog days I got to do an insurance call on a machine in an upper floor office that the next building over had burned down to smoldering embers. In the middle of winter. There was very little fire damage to the building the office was in (at least from what I saw there), but there was copious amounts of water damage, that had all frozen solid thanks to the utilities having been shut off. I found it wasn't terribly pleasant to work on a machine when the ambient temperature is such that water remains frozen. Still, once I got the covers off it was clear that the expansion that occurs when water freezes had completely wrecked that machine.
While the machine could have been a 3M M536 or M537, I'm pretty sure it was a M516, which was a shame. I liked that little machine a lot back in the day.

[NeoMatrix]

... Reading the threads in this post brought back a few old memories...
Without getting into the dritty details. I've had the opportunity to work in a few different places.

Large scale Coal and Mineral mining operations.(Oh... so much dust.)
Secured communications facilities.(No such thing as communication privacy, it's all b/s.)
Electrical and power grid generation facilities.(Ring 3 days ahead or security will take ages.)
General military operation facilities.(Yes it's a printer, we can f.i.x. it.)
Financial security vaults.(Millions & millions of dollar notes makes your eyes pop.)
Veterinary facilities. (Who farted, or is that smell normal?)
Hospital Morgue facilities.(Every bodies favourite job...not.)
Medical an Age Care facilities.(Yes I'm grey because of your machine worries.)
Meat processing facilities.(Luv that rotting flesh smell...not.)
Biological research labs(Interesting place.)
Child care facilities.(A billion questions from a group of 3year olds makes for a long day.)

About the only thread where I haven't serviced a machine is down in a nuclear bunker.

...

[Stormhammer]

Nuclear material remediation area where they are moving contaminated soil. I have to get myself and my vehicle tested leaving the site. I also do maintenance on a machine at a resort where famous people are known to visit in the summer. I have to sign a non-disclosure form before leaving. Various government facilities local and federal that use CAC, which is a pain. We had a Magpul factory out here too, but they moved out of state. My territory is very large. It covers many hundreds of square miles.

[sturmtrooper]

... Reading the threads in this post brought back a few old memories...
Without getting into the dritty details. I've had the opportunity to work in a few different places.

Large scale Coal and Mineral mining operations.(Oh... so much dust.)
Secured communications facilities.(No such thing as communication privacy, it's all b/s.)
Electrical and power grid generation facilities.(Ring 3 days ahead or security will take ages.)
General military operation facilities.(Yes it's a printer, we can f.i.x. it.)
Financial security vaults.(Millions & millions of dollar notes makes your eyes pop.)
Veterinary facilities. (Who farted, or is that smell normal?)
Hospital Morgue facilities.(Every bodies favourite job...not.)
Medical an Age Care facilities.(Yes I'm grey because of your machine worries.)
Meat processing facilities.(Luv that rotting flesh smell...not.)
Biological research labs(Interesting place.)
Child care facilities.(A billion questions from a group of 3year olds makes for a long day.)

About the only thread where I haven't serviced a machine is down in a nuclear bunker.

...

We have a couple copiers in various assisted living facilities and every time I'm in them I feel so bad for the residents. Luckily for me the ones in child care places are away from the children.

[fixthecopier]

If there were an interesting place on Ft. Bragg, they would probably make someone like me sign papers saying something like, Don't look around, don't ask questions, don't notice things, you were never here, we were never here, don't talk about things you never saw, ect.

However, My town was founded in the early 1700's. The market house in the center of town was the original town hall, and was where my state ratified the constitution, the first in America. There are still a lot of houses built before the civil war. I have copiers in many of them being used as businesses. There is a tower that marks one of the 4 corners of an armory that was built in 1835. It was burned along with a good part of town by General Sherman on his march. In one of the old houses there are iron bar cages in the basement. The house owners thought at first that they may have been used to keep slaves, but later found out that the house was built by one of the armory commandants and the cages were used to keep weapons.