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You may or may not know that we’re producing a little booklet to accompany the meeting in Sibson next week and for that I’ve written a fair old bit of stuff, as has Kevin. There’s a bit there to read and digest in a more “magazine” type format.
What I’m looking for is some articles that you think are worthy of inclusion. By that I only mean the funny stuff, or stuff that gets on your nerves, an awkward customer or a tale of woe with spares. Anything really that you want to get off your chest.
Not only will it appear in the booklet, it will also appear online towards the end of next week in a PDF format and also on the supporting DVD ROM in that format.
If we don’t get any fine, I just thought I’d ask.
K.
Re: Tales From The Front Lines
I think there are plenty of those that fit the bill already posted here in various threads.
Re: Tales From The Front Lines
kwatt wrote:…I was looking for some fresh meat for the grinder.
Fresh? This happened last night!
Goatboy’s night of pain – By Goatboy
————————————————————-When I met my girlfriend afew months back, one of the first things I noticed about her, was that she had a Servis washer (tis the nature of the beast). Nevermind, I thought, she has a nice bum. ‘That’ll break! They’re cr*p Servis!’ I told her, not knowing how right I was.
A couple of months later, the relationship is doing fine, then the washer breaks. The drum has completely collapsed. Maybe your thinking I should of heard this comming, being an appliance engineer, but the washer has never been running when I’ve been at her place before.
So, she needs a new washer.
Problem 1 – She lives in a flat, on the third floor.
Problem 2 – No elevator
Problem 3 – No strong neighbours or relatives, or anyone to give me a hand carrying a new machine up there; and I’m not going to show any of the wierdos that I work with, where my girlfriend lives.
So, I have an ingenious idea (tis the nature of the beast). Back at HQ, I’ve got a lovely Zannusi washer, 7 years old maybe, with noisey bearings. So, I can strip down that machine, put new bearings and a shaft in the tub, and take it round to her flat in pieces, therefore making it easy to carry up the stairs, and re-assemble it in her kitchen.
So yesterday, I gets this Zannusi ready. I load up the van with the two halves of the tub (sharing the concrete load), the front half of the cabinet, the back half of the cabinet, the top, and a bag of screws, drum springs, etc.
So, I arrive at her flat, at about 6.30pm. First things first, get rid of this Servis. So I carries my trolley upstairs, to remove the old pile of cr*p.
Problem 4 – The biggest problem of all! Her step-father designed + built the kitchen.
In the corner, is the washer, with the oven (built-in) adjacent.
Problem 5 – The oven over-laps the washer space, so the oven must come out first. Easy! Except for…
Problem 6 – She just cooked her tea, and the oven is very hot. Owww!
Problem 7 – The flex is too short for the oven to come out, because…
Problem 8 – The flex is plastered into the wall where it goes behind the work-top.
So, I manages to get the oven out just enough, so I can remove the back panel and dissconnect the flex (power off, of course). Bye bye oven!
Problem 9 – The kitchen-fitter has built the unit…around the washer, not allowing for the wood to expand, so the washer is very stuck. Heave!!!!
Problem 10 – When the machine does finally start moving, it’s not for long. The pipes are to tight for me to pull the washer fully out. No problem, dissconnect the pipes.
Problem 11 – The cupboard under the sink is full of junk! That’s standard right? No problem there really, but…
Problem 12 – The cupboard has a back on it, and guess where the taps are? Sonnova…
So, eventually, I trolley the Servis out her flat, and dump it on the landing outside. I’m hoping someone will steal it, or at worst, she can phone the council and get them to carry it downstairs. Whatever, I’m not doing it!
This is the part I actually planned. I get all the bits of the Zannusi, and easily carry them upstairs, and into her flat.
While I’m assembling the machine, I’m watching some guy on ‘Rogue Traders’ get £150 for reseting a boiler stat! Why do I have to be such a nice guy?
The machine is now ready to go. Did anybody see this problem comming?
Problem 13 – The Zanussi is deeper that the Servis!!!!! Why didn’t I just fix the Servis? I could answer that in detail, so nevermind. No matter how I try to do it, the washer sticks out too far to put the cooker back in. SONNOVA…
So, after much deliberation, I decided to rip the carcass out next to the sink. This way, it won’t need longer fill pipes and the drain hose won’t need extending; and the washer will be well away from the oven.
The carcass comes out easy enough, but when it does it reveals…
Problem 14 – There’s a giant trench in the concrete floor, where the feet of the machine need to go. So that gets filled in with bits of wood and rubble.
Then the machine goes in, it’s connected and the back of the cupboard goes on. The machine works, and everything is great, until I try to put the carcass in the empty space where the washer was.
Problem 15 – The floor isn’t level, and the carass is too tall now, and needs a couple of centimetre shaving off the top.
This is where I called it a night, and said I’ll sort that carcass out some other time.
I was doing all this work at a leisurely pace, but it was over four hours worth of messing around. How will this affecect my realationship with my girlfriend? I cosidered walking out and dumping her a couple of times during the night; but instead, I’ve just told her, I never want to see her kitchen again, and if I ever meet her step-father that designed and installed the kitchen…
Re: Tales From The Front Lines
Such a pity some of the brilliant tales from past postings cannot be added 🙁
Re: Tales From The Front Lines
Martin wrote:Such a pity some of the brilliant tales from past postings cannot be added 🙁
Why not?
We have to have Penguin nearly drowning.
And to Dave, I might be able to laugh about it by next week, not now. 😕 I can still see the blood, smell the sweat, and taste the tears. My friend ‘Miss Stella’ will help me forget about it tonight. 😉
Goatboy that’s a really good story and funny but, whilst I’m a liberal minded type of guy, putting your girlfriend’s bum’s attributes into print may be pushing it a bit far for some. 😉
And really, next time take the “phone a friend” option! 😆
K.
Re: Tales From The Front Lines
Yeah! It needs editing for spelling as well.
Maybe you could change it to ‘I like her.’
kwatt wrote:And really, next time take the “phone a friend” option! 😆
I’m not taking one of those wierdos round to her flat either
Re: Tales From The Front Lines
heres one –
last week I got smeg job for a Caple washer dryer jumping across the kitchen 🙄 here we go again thinks I
Address was house no and plot no , I didnt recognise the address and the computer didn’t recognise the postcode so I told the wife when she booked the call to ask where it was .
Call duly booked for a Pm job ,customers directions were it’s dead easy everyone knows where we are ! I turn up last Friday Pm as arranged ask the post office in the village where the address is dunno says they ,Tried phoning the cust and get a phone answering machine damn I thought they are on the internet , I discover an estate agents in the High st so asked him ,he doesnt know either enough is enough so I leave a message asking cust to ring office to re schedule .
Tues morning we take a call from an irate lady wanting to know why we left a message on her phone answering machine while she was at her daughters new house waiting for the engineer to call !!
After we had calmed her down it transpires the house is on a newly released development ,with no phone connected yet ,and she knew where it was so assumed everyone else would 🙄
I called on Thurs just gone to be greeted by the daughter demanding to know was I going to fix her machine and the cabinets that it had damaged
I then discover all the feet are at maximum length with no lock nuts ,I explained that if I adjusted the feet then it would put her deco door out of alignment ,Not her problem says she apparently thats my job to fix as I am the plumber not her 👿 at that point I left muttering something about a report going to Smeg 😉
I think it was Goatboy that once said “customers ,you can’t beat em shame really ” oh how I was tempted
Lawrence
And just to really make my day we received two more jobs today for the same development with the same faults ,They are her neighbours either side !!Re: Tales From The Front Lines
Lawrence wrote:And just to really make my day we received two more jobs today for the same development with the same faults ,They are her neighbours either side !!
That really winds me up that does this weather.
For the second time in as many months we’ve had a customer complaining of a poor quality product as being sub-standard, asking the engineer for his opinion and then proceeding to use it against him!
It is unfair to place an engineer in a position where he is required to lie on behalf of any company, I find that abhorant and personally offensive, I will not lie. But not offering an opinion at all is just as bad as happened on a call today, the guy just proceeded to assume that the engineer agreed with him when he was told to draw his own conclusions, you can’t win. The retailer, of course, goes ape. The manufacturer thinks that we’re slagging their products (cr4p or not) and the service company has to have it proved that we’re telling the truth.
And then everyone wonders why staff get huffy when they are basically accused of allsorts, including being liars. Hardly endears us any further to the product range I can tell you. 🙄
Here’s the real laugh in all this though, he was using 3-in-1 tabs in a dishwasher reknowned for flooding (guessed yet? ;)) and they are recommended by the manufacturer and that’s the problem. Go figure. 😕
K.
Re: Tales From The Front Lines
kwatt wrote:
It is unfair to place an engineer in a position where he is required to lie on behalf of any company, I find that abhorant and personally offensive, I will not lie.K.
I have told Servast that if a customer asks me why I am doing a report on there self destructing washer dryer I will tell them the truth .kwatt wrote:And then everyone wonders why staff get huffy when they are basically accused of allsorts, including being liars. Hardly endears us any further to the product range I can tell you. 🙄
K.How many Smeg customers ask you if Smeg are reliable and what do you answer when you are representing that brand ?If you are honest and say what you experience you get hammered ” I didnt pay that much money …..” sound familiar to anybody .
I did an exchange two weeks ago where the Smeg delivery driver told the customer in front of me that I quote “I am changing loads of these as there was a batch of faulty ones out of the factory” She looked at me and said I thought they weren’t too bad ?So much for being discreet
so if you are economical with the truth you run the risk of being ..hammered
LawrenceRe: Tales From The Front Lines
Called this morning to a Hotpoint WM32, customer complains that machine is making a noise and will not empty.
Drain and remove pump to find four hairgrips in the pump/sump hose.I show them to the lady of the house, telling her she should be more careful. “they’re not mine” she says indignantly, ” they are my husbands “.
Now for a second I think she is married to a nancy boy, but no, she says that he uses them to poke the wax out of his ears but leaves them in his shirt pockets. 😀Re: Tales From The Front Lines
Lawrence wrote:I think it was Goatboy that once said “customers ,you can’t beat em shame really ” oh how I was tempted
Twasn’t me! Sounds like NWAR to me. 😉
Re: Tales From The Front Lines
Back in the olden days, I went to a Hoover 3224/6, sloping front Keymatic, (now they were what you called a bearing job), the fault was not emptying.
The machine was located in a large laundry room in a country mansion, at the far end of the room there were a very large quantity of wine bottles 😛 unfortunately empty, and some tall stools(for sitting on, for the comedians out there)).
Took the back off to look at the pump, nice pump with a large steel cooling fan. Usual blockage on these was shredded shirt collars and cuffs from the pulsator action. This one was different, wedged between the steel fan and pump frame was a shredded mouse. Turning the fan backwards to remove the mouse I received a sharp pain up my arm, (the machine was unplugged) I quickly snatched my arm out of the machine, on the end of my finger was its mate, a live mouse. I don’t know if it was the force of snatching my arm out, or the mouse was hanging on like grim death, but it flew through the air, with a chunk off the end of my finger. The mouse landed amongst the bottles, meanwhile the family cat which had been sitting in the doorway to the kitchen saw the mouse fly through the air, and decided to have it. Bottles were flying everywhere.
Whilst this was going on I was inspecting the end of my finger, every time my heart beat there was a squirt of blood from the hole left by the mouse. Found a piece of dirty tissue in my tool box, wrapped it around the hole in my finger, a piece of insulation tape round it, jobs a good ‘un.
Carried on with removing the mouse from the pump, tested it and was putting the back on.The cat and mouse were having fun with the bottles. Next, a red setter dog came through the door, saw the cat going daft, and it joined in the chase. Now stools were flying everywhere, as well as the bottles, the customer came in to see what all the noise was. I only got as far as saying ‘mou’ and she ran off screaming, leaving the door to the house open. The mouse (live one) saw its chance and shot off through the door, followed by the cat and the dog.
By now my finger was throbbing, and blood was dripping out of the tissue, thought bu**er this, wrote a bill and left, daren’t drop blood in the house.
I drove to the nearest hospital, a small cottage hospital and went to the casualty. They want to know if it is an industrial injury or an accident. I replied I don’t know, so they wanted to know what had happened. So I recited the story of the mouse, the cat and the dog.
All the nurses were laughing there heads off, (its okay, they were in a hospital). Next minute there were nurses and doctors coming from everywhere, wanted to hear the story . After 2½ hours of waiting and story telling they finally put some stitches in my finger, and it was the start of a course of Tetanus injections. (bend over type)
Was not funny at the time, Ace
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