The worst industry to install/service copiers for.

[copyman]

I hate to disagree with you folks but schools were some of my best customers. Of course my boss knew most of the people in the district offices and did a great job of training teachers. I even had production machines in 1 high school and 3 elementary school districts.

If you have trained Key Operators that is different. Or a large production machine where one person operates it (teachers drop off originals to be copied and pick up later)
Not talking about that, I'm talking about copiers through out the school or in the trachers lounge where the teachers remove jams, add toners & paper, etc, or the machines the PTA is paying for, there is no way in hell that machine will run without you being there weekly for something stupid.

Funny story, I worked for a company once and they landed a big school district contract. it got so bad we had to put big ugly pad locks on all the machines so they had no choice but to call a key operator or one of our techs who most likely would be in the building every day of every week! Company dumped them after a year. Lost money on a 130K service contract. That was a lot of money back then.

[slimslob]

If you have trained Key Operators that is different. Or a large production machine where one person operates it (teachers drop off originals to be copied and pick up later)
Not talking about that, I'm talking about copiers through out the school or in the trachers lounge where the teachers remove jams, add toners & paper, etc, or the machines the PTA is paying for, there is no way in hell that machine will run without you being there weekly for something stupid.

Funny story, I worked for a company once and they landed a big school district contract. it got so bad we had to put big ugly pad locks on all the machines so they had no choice but to call a key operator or one of our techs who most likely would be in the building every day of every week! Company dumped them after a year. Lost money on a 130K service contract. That was a lot of money back then.

Taft City Schools had 6 campuses, the district office, the maintenance shop and the warehouse/print shop. The print shop operator was experience in commercial printing and had previously work for a major print shop. He was also the district's union steward which made dealing with teachers a lot easier. The print shop initially had a Pro1357 and a 1060. Both had booklet printers. The interesting was that the 1060 could print small, 4 to 8 pages, booklets as fast as the 1357. It seems that the the total downstream length was such that there was not sufficient pre stacking so the 1357 would pause and not start the next set until the first one had printed where as the 1060 just kept on chugging.

[dinnerset]

Do you feel like an indentured servant? Below their standards? No matter what you do they are never appreciative, almost like you are inconveniencing them ( you can hear them huff and puff in the background as you are confiquring their devices). They insist on using a wireless connection even though 100 other agents are pulling off the bandwidth and when the print job renders...it's the copiers fault. They can never come to the office on your time, it always has to be when they can make it... and heaven forbid our techs are busy when it is convenient for them. Then when you send them a charge for the service call, they do not want to pay it or do not understand why they are being charged? Oh, one more thing, they can not understand why they just can't scan wirelessly because they can do it at their house printer? ... Shall I go on?
I know many IT companies or persons that will not touch a real estate office because of some of the above mentioned issues.

All of these things. Haha. Nice to hear these problems i'm facing are worldwide. (6 months in the job.)

[dinnerset]

I have to agree with everyone re.. abattoir's. We have a fleet at our local one. The smell just isn't something you get used to. I haven't had to service to ones near the kill floor yet :/

[Kimi]

The slaughterhouse i used to go to had a trailer outside that they fill with all the guts, horrendous smell of course. Never had to work on any of the copiers, just uplift/install a few.

[mikadonovan]

Chicken plant. Copier in main production area, constantly covered in blood, guts, and feathers. Good times.

And they have a disgusting odor. I don't miss my old chicken plant.

[emujo2]

It doesn't beat the slaughterhouse examples, but I have a PRODUCTION PRINT customer that runs a greyhound retirement shelter in her business, and she collects cats..It was nothing to have to push 2 greyhounds out of the way and pickup a cat from the main body to work on the machine..The amount of animal hair and dander was just awful. She didn't understand why we didn't say Aw, how cute...E

[Hansen88]

I was working on a machine at a ladies house once and she had one of those little yipper dogs that would not leave me alone,or my tool case. The lady was like,oh isnt it cute ,he is trying to help you fix the machine. I soaked a rag with lacquer thinner and put it in my case, dog sniffed that for a while and then went and laid down.He didnt bother me after that.

[nonpareil]

I personally dislike doing calls at private homes, jails and prisons.

I've had to work on machines in a flour mill (talk about dust!), in a trailer in a muddy parking lot, 200 feet from an open hearth blast furnace Once in a commercial laundry where they did the purple shop rags for industrial use. When I took the back cover off, there was a solid blanket of purple lint that conformed to all of the moving parts in the drive system and had leached all of the oil out of the bushings. I've had machines perched precariously on a sheet of plywood over an open staircase, on a bed and even on top of a toilet tank. Once I had one in a morgue and once on top of a coffin!

I've had calls for someone putting water in a liquid machine and a secretary who took a whiz in the toner tank after the office Christmas party.

Schools don't bother me and I've gotten used to hospitals, though I did have a doctor put his foot through the front door of a Ricoh once. Lawyers can be a problem and real estate is definitely bad news. For sheer ham-handed dumb though, I have to say cops are hard to beat.

[FrohnB]

I personally dislike doing calls at private homes, jails and prisons.

. For sheer ham-handed dumb though, I have to say cops are hard to beat.

We've got a few in a couple of jails also. Having to go through all the steel doors, and when you get to certain areas there are usually just inmates roaming around. I've been in a lockdown scenario. Have had inmates spit at me (almost got fired for that one for retaliating), Have found things hidden inside the copier that didn't belong, and almost all of the machines have been "beaten to death" by inmates/officers. So, I can agree, not a fan of jails, or heavy-handed corrections officers.