Last Sunday, while driving back from my weekly visit with my mother, I was listening to a comedian on XM and it hit me. My customers have been smoking weed! I can't remember who was on or what the joke was, but that thought popped into my head and stayed there. It all makes sense now. Think about it. In a perfect world for techs, the customer is sharp, reads the user manual and remembers all he or she was taught in the demo. Service calls are routine maintenance or the rare failure of a system, never the fault of your wise end user.
Now think of all the service calls you do that do not fall into those categories. The ones where you show up and are amazed by what has generated the call or disabled the machine. The ones where you want to yell, are you that fucking stupid. Now think of Fast Times At Ridgemont High Remember Sean Penn as Spicoli? Now picture him as the POC at all your dumb service calls. It makes more sense. Lets look at some of my classics.
Me..."There's fucking charcoal in the toner bottle!" "You cut open a water filter and poured charcoal in my toner bottle!"
Spicoli..."Whoa dude, we were trying to make a bong out of that plastic bottle and thought we found a toner stash"
Me..."There's a goddamn coat hanger stuck in the gears of the copier."
Spicoli..."We just cleaned it and were going to hang it up to dry"
Me..."The reason the change toner message won't go away, is that you put black in, and the screen is clearly asking for yellow"
Spicoli..."There's more than one color in that machine??" [in this one, that is actually what the Sargent said to me]
Me..."Did you just say that you melted a plastic page protector in my machine trying to make a transparency?"
Spicoli..."Chill out dude, I picked most of it out with my roach clips"
It doesn't make the calls any less dumb, but there is now a logical reason, kind of. And if they would save me a hit, I would chill out!
Now think of all the service calls you do that do not fall into those categories. The ones where you show up and are amazed by what has generated the call or disabled the machine. The ones where you want to yell, are you that fucking stupid. Now think of Fast Times At Ridgemont High Remember Sean Penn as Spicoli? Now picture him as the POC at all your dumb service calls. It makes more sense. Lets look at some of my classics.
Me..."There's fucking charcoal in the toner bottle!" "You cut open a water filter and poured charcoal in my toner bottle!"
Spicoli..."Whoa dude, we were trying to make a bong out of that plastic bottle and thought we found a toner stash"
Me..."There's a goddamn coat hanger stuck in the gears of the copier."
Spicoli..."We just cleaned it and were going to hang it up to dry"
Me..."The reason the change toner message won't go away, is that you put black in, and the screen is clearly asking for yellow"
Spicoli..."There's more than one color in that machine??" [in this one, that is actually what the Sargent said to me]
Me..."Did you just say that you melted a plastic page protector in my machine trying to make a transparency?"
Spicoli..."Chill out dude, I picked most of it out with my roach clips"
It doesn't make the calls any less dumb, but there is now a logical reason, kind of. And if they would save me a hit, I would chill out!
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