Lack of candour.....

[kingarthur]

Re: Lack of candour.....

If any of your bosses are like mine, they think you can get anybody who can walk upright and make them a tech, no matter how many times they fail at it.

Speaking for myself, haven't had a raise in more than 5 years. I have considered looking eleswhere but these things keep popping up.

Security... I have 16 years where I am at, I am over 50 and do not want to be the last one hired at a big company, then they lose a contract.

Bosses...Right now I have 2 and only one is a pain in my ass. Pretty good odds. I have had worse.

Pay...right now it sucks. but it could be worse. I know people in town doing this job are making more money than I working for other companies. I have to remind myself that the worst job I ever had, paid the most money. I am sure I could get hired elsewhere, but then I am last guy hired in a company I may not like. Would probably lose a lot of freedom.

Freedom...Company recently tried to move to a new office management system. had us logging in and out of calls , keeping up with us at all times. That lasted about a month. I am back to filling out my tickets at the end of the day or the next day. Makes work a lot less stressful. No GPS trackers. They give me tickets in the morning and turn me loose. I will leave with more open calls than I can do, they will call and add more. Goal is to juggle everybody so that they are not calling the shop looking for me. I seem to thrive when I am really busy. i have copies of old schedules when we had 2 major contracts on base, where I had as many as 25 to 35 open calls in a day. Now I may have slow days where I complete 2 calls and a few others need parts, nothing is said. my competitors have to clock out to go through the bank drive through.

Working for a small company, my boss seems to be the kind of person that will hold on to his employees a lot longer than most when business is down. I would be willing to leave for more money, but it would have to be a lot more, and no one is paying techs that kind of money in my area.

I also enjoy being able to work on anything. I have know people who worked for a brand, like Xerox, for 25 to 30 years, who only worked on what they had been trained on. How boring. They were totally lost looking at another band of copier worked, and didn't care. I am currently training on Lexmark. I am not going to school or taking online courses, I lost my last contract when they bought these cheap ass machines, and now I am training on them one problem at a time as my old customers call in.

Not sure what to say about filling your positions. As for myself, there is nothing you could offer me to live and work in a city that big. Last Friday i had to do a call at end of day. On my way there was an accident that slowed traffic to a crawl. I was stuck in it for about 20 minutes. How annoying! I hope traffic problems don't last longer than that in your city. Having to sit through something like that once every 3 or 4 weeks would get really annoying really fast.

I agree with you on all of this...been working for the same company for 36 years. since i left school, i've been approached by other companies....who only do copiers, whereas here I can "have a go" at just about anything, i'm virtually my own boss, i have the freedom to take my own calls, i fix franking m/c's, shredders, binders, pressure sealers,card printers, in fact anything they ask me to fix...i'll attempt..only last week it was quiet, as we also have a print works in our company, i asked if they had anything that needed looking at, ended up stripping down and fixing their booklet stitcher....it's all experience....as for traffic..what's that...as i've said before 99% of my customers are within a 10 minute stroll from my office, i often get calls from our helpdesk asking if i can pop in to somewhere on the way back...my response time is very rarely more than 30 minutes, an hour on a busy day....some customers. who i trust have my mobile number, so they can call me direct....quite often i'm walking past their office, so my response time is less than a minute!!

[kingarthur]

Re: Lack of candour.....

I was "given" an apprentice at the start of the year...I had 3 weeks to teach him the basics, how to first fix, digital basics & how to deal with customers, as they had plans for him for the next 3 months, he was a fast learner, and very keen, i only had to show him how to do something once ....first thing i did was give him a scrap m/c to strip down so he could identify the different areas of the copier, after the first day in the field with me, i realised he was very capable, so i just gave him my toolcase & let him get on with it , while i watched...after 4 days i sent him out on his own to do a basic job...he then went out on calls with one of colleagues, he was actually showing my colleague how to do things properly!!....i remember my nephew helping me out with stuff at home a few years back...he kept asking me loads of questions about how this or that worked, i teased him about asking all these questions, he apologised....i told him don't ever be sorry for asking questions...if you ask questions about how things work, it shows you are keen & people are willing to help and teach you....if you don't ask questions, people may think that you aren't interested and wont bother

[leo34staffs]

Re: Lack of candour.....

If you want a good tech instead of a trained monkey, you gotta have something to offer. I think some techs are tired of the factory atmosphere in the office machine repair industry. I know I was. The last big dealer I worked for started publishing weekly statistics for all the techs... along with goals and how we compared to the goals. I left. A lot of good techs have either gone indy or got into an obscure industry that pays more.

When i first go a job in this industry (over 20 yrs back) i saw the engineers in suits and shiney new cars, i thought this seems like a great job to get into. Many years later i learned all the big kit, networking and the myriad of software that acccompanies the hardware. It seems like the reward is a lot less than the efforts you put in.

Anyways, a lot of candidates applying for a job can take a look on google and see what a fully trained tech will end up achieving (benefits, pension etc). They probably have already found out that its not enough (especially in London).

I wished there was google when i started!!

Best of luck in finding a suitable candidate.

[ZOOTECH]

Re: Lack of candour.....

I was "given" an apprentice at the start of the year...I had 3 weeks to teach him the basics, how to first fix, digital basics & how to deal with customers, as they had plans for him for the next 3 months, he was a fast learner, and very keen, i only had to show him how to do something once ....first thing i did was give him a scrap m/c to strip down so he could identify the different areas of the copier, after the first day in the field with me, i realised he was very capable, so i just gave him my toolcase & let him get on with it , while i watched...after 4 days i sent him out on his own to do a basic job...he then went out on calls with one of colleagues, he was actually showing my colleague how to do things properly!!....i remember my nephew helping me out with stuff at home a few years back...he kept asking me loads of questions about how this or that worked, i teased him about asking all these questions, he apologised....i told him don't ever be sorry for asking questions...if you ask questions about how things work, it shows you are keen & people are willing to help and teach you....if you don't ask questions, people may think that you aren't interested and wont bother

Sounds like you got a "keeper" there, kingarthur.

[fixthecopier]

Re: Lack of candour.....

When i first go a job in this industry (over 20 yrs back) i saw the engineers in suits and shiney new cars, i thought this seems like a great job to get into. Many years later i learned all the big kit, networking and the myriad of software that acccompanies the hardware. It seems like the reward is a lot less than the efforts you put in.

Anyways, a lot of candidates applying for a job can take a look on google and see what a fully trained tech will end up achieving (benefits, pension etc). They probably have already found out that its not enough (especially in London).

I wished there was google when i started!!

Best of luck in finding a suitable candidate.

As the young copy tech is admiring the bosses brand new sports car the boss says to him "Young man, if you really apply yourself, work hard and put in long hours, next year I can get another one of those."