Since his liberation from Dedicated Micros, Jeff Berg lightheartedly describes himself as having a rainy day in the UK. As most days in the UK are rainy and windy, he has found time in this article to take the lid off the mystique of the repair workshop.
This is his sideways glance at the interrelationship between a repair workshop, its customers and the boss.
Once in a while things break down. You name it; cars, televisions, marriages, nothing is zero defect. Fortunately hardware devices can be taken to the repair workshop, the only place a dodgy marriage takes you is straight to the cleaners but that is another story.
The earliest record of a repair workshop was in ancient Egypt and my money is on the premise that things have not changed that much since then.
So given that the repair workshop has been around for at least 5000 years, what strategies have we adopted for dealing with it?
Advice for the boss
OK, you know you have a good profitable business that will keep the wolf from the door and maybe pay for the Ferrari.
It may even allow the odd round of golf every other day.
Some businesses roll along quite smoothly, there are areas for improvement but sometimes you have to live with nonprofit making centres, for example, the repair workshop. Yes its that black hole where the 'tekkies' (techies) live. The one part of the business that everyone tells you never makes a profit.
But do you actually know why it never can make a profit?
Reasons why it should make a profit:
* Tekkies on very low wages.
* You make them pay for their own tea and coffee.
Reasons why it cannot make a profit:
* Tekkies have all day and the weekend to think of scams.
* They have to make up for having such a low wage.
Now you may think those cheery faced guys in the workshop would not think of tinkering around, after all they are your friends, you bought them a turkey for Christmas.
But did you ever wonder why one of the repair benches always has a television set on it? Given that you do not sell televisions this is quite worrying.
Any enquiry you make to the tekkie at the workbench will be backed up with a tale about a sick mother (not necessarily his sick mother) with nothing in her life but the television and the fact that it is only being repaired in his lunch hour. Which now seems to run from 15h00 to 16h00 in the afternoon.
Part of the driving force behind the tekkie is to do anything apart from actually work and boredom drives the workshop worker to do some strange things.
Its easy to see why toiling in the workshop is so boring, after all its hardly at the cut and thrust/pivot-point of the company. So to liven things up what better than to do some dastardly experiments with electricity.
The Guff Machine
I can speak from personal experience on these matters. It is hard to confess but I once did manage a repair workshop. It was some 20 years back but the things they did then still get done today.
I had discovered that the engineers had seen an advert for a methane gas detector in one of the component magazines. Now this was just the component, it required a lot more circuitry for the actual design to be implemented.
They had spent extensive time on research and development, at least as much if not more effort than an employee puts in to writing the CV for his next job. They had designed their own circuit board and beautifully engineered the casing, it was a work of art.
The result? The slightest trouser cloud could trigger this device. One whiff of a guff and the detector activated and switched on an extractor fan, immediately removing said obnoxious smell.
Soon after that the company won the Queen's Award for Industry (not for the Guff machine, I might add) and we had a visit from Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, who inspected the workshop with some interest. I insisted that the guff machine was kept under wraps and having signed the official secrets act I cannot tell you if she actually witnessed it operating.
After uncovering the project and realising little else had been done for two weeks it became apparent that you have as much chance of controlling a repair workshop as getting an Englishman to braai.
The zone of power
Now this is a dark secret. Some workshop tekkies claim to have discovered a 'zone of power' within their workshop. This is a magical area where you can put a repair job that cannot easily be fixed and wait for a few days. Taking the repair job out of the zone and checking it - all seems fine. It literally is a miracle, something to do with pyramids and New Age thinking. Job's a good un', return it to the customer.
The 'zone of power' actually accounts for all those repairs where the unit is returned to the customer with exactly the same fault as when it was sent in originally.
The customer's point of view
I am sure we have all put some treasured item into a workshop for repair. Usually a repair falls into one of three categories:
* Quick fix.
* Longer job but repairable.
* Cannot fix, will not fix.
Quick fix
Literally you can have this turned around in a day, even while you wait. You will sing the praises of the workshop and effuse about the efficiency of the company.
Longer job but repairable
This generates the same kind of response as when you take your car into a garage for some minor fault. The engineer shakes his head as if the item were in terminal recession, hardly worth fixing, shaking his head and tut-tut-tutting as the estimated repair cost bursts through the ceiling of reality in a wallet emptying flurry of rands.
Cannot fix, will not fix
This is the type of job that an fills an engineer with dread. The same kind of priority level that most of us give to filling out an income tax return form. You know you have to do it, but any excuse to put it off for some time.
Sample excuses for the cannot fix, will not fix item:
* We are waiting for circuit diagrams from the manufacturer.
* Sid repairs them and he is on holiday for two weeks.
* It has been hit by lightening and you willl have to claim on your insurance.
* We are waiting for parts from the manufacturer.
* It has been sent overseas to be looked at (actually it is under the bench).
Customer tips
Just how do you hurry up a repair? How do you know if you are being asked to pay too much? Should you get a guarantee?
Most repairers will offer a three month guarantee on the repair they have made. This can be a little bit of useless tackle as when the thing breaks down after 11 weeks you will be told: "This bit here that has failed is not the bit we fixed, so you need to pay up again, for a different bit".
Another thing: Never, ever, put a repair into a workshop where one of your mates works. It generally guarantees it will stay there forever.
Never expect a mate to undertake a repair at home in his spare time for nothing. It will sit gathering the dust of two Christmases before you see it again.
Always take your repair to the manufacturer, or an approved agent.
Remember, you can always save yourself a lot of time and trouble by adopting 'The Japanese Protocol' It goes like this: if it breaks down, bin it and buy a new model.
Advice for the workers
So if you work in a workshop and have got this far into the article you may have the impression I am not batting on your team. It is not true but I will let you call me a biased umpire. Nevertheless, you need all the help you can get so the following rules will set you up to tackle the worst:
* Pretend to know everything about nothing and nothing about everything.
* Startle troublesome customers with a 'we know where you live' smile.
* A turkey is just for Christmas.
* Keep a photo of your mother in your wallet.
* Do the genuine jobs in your real lunch hour, that way it will appear you are too busy to do odds and ends in company time.
* Find the zone of power.
Conclusion
Wherever you are coming from things that need repairing cause a fair degree of anguish: can you repair it yourself? Do you trust anyone else to repair it? Will it break down again? Are you affluent enough to use the Japanese Protocol? Personally I prefer the Japanese option but do not often have the cash.
Oh and about the 5000 year old Egyptian workshop. You can bet that if the Mummy rises again from his tomb the first thing he will ask is: "Has my TV been fixed yet?"
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