What got you into the copier game?

[Samanator]

Long ago I went to Kyocera color machine class. It was taught by Keith McManus (I think that’s how it’s spelled). At the beginning of the class, instead of going around the room and have us say our name and a little bit about ourselves, he had a different proposal. He said that when we were growing up, we all wanted to something like a policeman or fireman or cowboy or astronaut or some such thing. Nobody, even me he said, wanted to be a copier tech. So when we come to you, tell us what got you into this occupation?

So tell us, how did you come to be a copier tech?

[BillyCarpenter]

I'll try to make this short. I had just closed down a night club that me and a friend opened up together that was a nightmare and I was living with my girlfriend at the time and was sitting around feeling sorry for myself and not looking for a job. She was on my ass to go look for a job. So, eventually, I decided to go out and pretend to look for a job and I just happened to pass by a Sharp Dealer so I went in. They gave me a written electronics test. A few days later they called me in for an interview and the rest is history. It was all a big mistake. LOL

[blackcat4866]

Around 1984 I dropped out of college. My four years were up, and I still didn't have an engineering degree. That ... and some famous person had recently admitted that they had not paid back their state of Illinois student loans. So naturally Illinois sent my loans right to collections.

I spent the next four years trying to earn some kind of a living in a place with very high unemployment. Due mostly to perseverence I managed to pay off the student loans.

In 1988 I moved to Flint, MI, and got a series of crappy jobs, not unlike the crappy jobs I left behind. In April of 1989, having never actually stopped looking for jobs, I got offers to interview at three copier dealerships in the same week. There was a Mita dealership in Flint, a Savin dealership in Lansing, and I don't remember the third...? The Mita dealership gave 30 of us the Bennett Mechanical test on a Friday. The majority of us got less than 25% correct. Dan & I were the exception ... got 99% on the test. So I started working on Mitas on a Monday in April of 1989. The rest is history.
=^..^=

[KenB]

My original intent out of high school was to be a computer tech.

I figured I’d work a year or two before going to school full time...but we all know how that (doesn’t) work.

While working a job at a “Radio Shack-like” store, I took some electronics classes.

Not too many computer job openings for noobs at the time, so I settled for a copier tech job that I found in the newspaper. Probably the most attractive part of the job was that it offered a company car, and I desperately needed a decent set of wheels...let alone a brand new one.

Who knew back then that the two fields would come together?

That was 42 years ago, and the rest is history.

[slimslob]

Out of high school I was accepted at Northrop Institute of Technology, now Northrop University, with an Electronics Engineering major. My objective was to get into computer guidance and tracking system in the new aerospace industry. Fall of 1969 the shipping company I had worked at the previous years that did Christmas shipping for Sunset House to post offices on the east coast was no longer in business so I had to drop out in order to find a job and raise enough money to go back. I almost had enough saved up when I got drafted in February 1970. At a time when Vietnam veterans were having difficulty finding jobs, I got hired on my first interview and started on March 3rd. The company was a full line office equipment dealer Olivetti plus a dealer for Lanier Dictation, SCM typewriter and calculators and the following copier lines in addition to Olivetti, Apeco, SCM, Saxon, Old Town, Sharp and 3M Thermofax. My primary focus was on dictation and copiers. The first plain paper machine was the Royal Bond Copier I with the Apeco name on it. Then came Olympia who distributed Toshiba with the Olympia name and later Minolta with the Olympia name. When Olympia got out of the copier business we became a Gestetner dealer. At that time Gestetner was a majority own subsidiary of Ricoh and later along with Lanier and Savin became a fully owned subsidiary. We alter became a Lanier dealer when Ricoh merged the Lanier and Gestetner divisions under Lanier in North America and Gestetner in Europe.

[BillyCarpenter]

How many have worked on other high tech equipment beyond copiers & PC's?


I once worked for a company that built automated packing machines for Pepsi, Gerber baby food and other companies. Basically the machine was about 60ft. long and the cans/bottles would be transported down the line where a phonematic system would grab the box and open it. The cans would then be placed in the box and glued on both ends for proper sealing. It also applied the labels if they were supposed to have 'em.


These huge machines were controlled by a PLC (programmable logic controller) and the programs were written on site for the different products.

There were tons of wires that had to be run. All were run thru conduit that we had to bend...which was a pain in the ass. Every wire was tagged on both ends.

I eventually left that job because I couldn't deal with the rotating shift work. But it was interesting.

[tech28]

Fell on my lap, needed job. from unemployment to welfare to tech school to job on copiers, that was 1985. Company went out of business in 88, wrote letters to customers, they gave me a shot, have been self-employed since. Wouldn't trade it for anything. Its been a blessing and an adventure, never the same any giving day. Never same schedule any giving day. Love my job!! Think it takes someone special to deal with what we have to deal with day in day out. Challenging yet very rewarding. God Bless America!! The land of opportunity.

[kingarthur]

left school at 16, no qualifications, no idea what i wanted to do, had a choice of a butcher or fixing adding machines....didn't fancy being a butcher so thought i'd give the adding machines a go, this also involved cash tills, most things were mechanical, a couple of things had motors, my first day, i was given a load of plugs to put on mains leads, took me 30 minutes to do the first, progressed to electric adding machines & tills, then along came calculators, and pocket calculators which cost a fortune to buy...so i had to repair those too, my maths was brilliant those days, i was the scorer or the darts team lol, i ended up going on a 2 week course to Olympia in Birmingham, learning how to repair circuit boards and solder neatly, then along came dictating machines, i remember a Philips course at the old Croydon Aerodrome, it was 3 days, 2 of those days was correcting the mistakes in the service manuals, then i progressed to shredders, decollators and bursters, but there were few of these, and less calculators, so i was given a choice, start doing copiers..or walk. So i started on Sharp copiers, used to love going to Newton Heath for training courses, the canteen was awesome ,as was the Bower Hotel we used to get put up in.....in the 90s we "merged" with a KM dealer, and Sharp got dropped, so I had to learn those, i was the first colour engineer in our company....whilst doing copiers, we took on franking machines, anytime anything new came along...for some reason, i was "asked" if i'd like to learn about them

so currently i fix KM copiers, and Acco/GBC product, clocking in machines, in fact anything i get asked to, i'll give it ago, as far as i'm concerned, if its f*cked, it doesn't matter if it gets f*cked a bit more, but there's a good chance i can fix it , given enough time

So after 42 years i'm still working for the same company and still quite happy...most days.. it's the customers that make it worthwhile

[larweedad]

Was working 3 jobs at the time. Sitting at the County Sheriffs office after doing my cleaning, got bored, so I took out my tools and cleaned and fixed the only copier in the office. Next day my wife found an ad for a copier tech in the paper. Got the job and love the costumers ever since.

[rspicer]

At one of my first copier tech jobs, there was a running joke about how guys got into repairing copiers. They said, during high school they give you a test to see what your skills are, and that determines what job you should get. People who don't really qualify for any job become copier techs.
After spending 6 years at a 2 year college (changed my major a bunch of times + drugs + alcohol), I finished the computer repair program. I tended more toward mechanical things, and somebody suggested that copiers and printers would combine the 2. Now, here I am almost 30 years later.