In March of 1981 I began a career in the service industry as a service representative for a copier company. For the next 13 years, I slogged through the Kansas City area shredding my hands and soiling my shirts repairing nasty, sloppy, filthy, liquid-toner photocopiers. I finally decided a change was in order, and made the leap from copiers to computers after a famous (and now nearly non-existant) "moo-cow" computer company opened up a call center in KC. Well, it was a leap all right - out of the frying pan into the fire! Instead of getting yelled at in person 4 or 5 times a day because someone's copier was broken, I got yelled at over the phone 30 or 40 times a day because someone's computer was broken.

After about 4 months of this insanity, I applied for a position as a technician in a retail store this company was planning on opening. I got the job - boy did I ever get the job! Then, after 8 years of working my butt off for this rotten company, they decided they'd rather not waste any retirement benefits on me, and dumped me like an old, used rug. I came to realize later what a favor they did me.

Thus it was that after a 4½ month unpaid vacation, I once again found myself back in the field service realm, deeply involved in the removal of paper clips, used staples, and other interesting forms of FOD* from the insides of modern office equipment.

Anyway, after all these years in the service industry, I've seen some amazing things, and have committed to paper and Word files a number of my observations. Enjoy!

* FOD is an acronym for "Foreign Object Damage." Anyone who has spent any time around a flight line (especially in the military) will be familiar with this term. It referrs to any object from pebbles, to an aircraft mechanic's hat, that can be sucked into the intake of a jet engine - generally causing all hell to break loose.