On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 06:02:13 -0600, "Mark Zacharias"
wrote:

How about another slant on "War Stories" ?

The least competent, most alcoholic, etc tech person you ever had to work
with or follow after they got fired?

When I was first starting in consumer electronics repair, (my first job in
the business, actually) I was hired to replace "Karl". He had a resume - in
the '70s a well respected shop paid for him to come over from Germany.

By my time however - apparently a broken down alcoholic.

He would "repair" tons of stuff, bill out huge amounts (paid on commision)
then abscond when the re-do's became too much.

I was charged with fixing his re-do's and generally cleaning up the chaos he
had left behind.

Next job - another shop. They had just fired the SAME GUY. Same situation.
Re-do's coming in one after another. Angry customers. Piles of screws and
small hardware in a pile on one corner of the bench. Dis-assembled units all
over the place, and I mean ALL OVER. A Teac A-4010 in about four different
parts of the shop. No pressure... I'd never even seen one before.

Next job - SAME DEAL. By now I was getting pretty good at
reverse-engineering other peoples screw-ups, but - really?

A couple examples:

Auto-reverse car cassette deck. He didn't have the correct drive belt, so he
had SUPER-GLUED the ends of the old belt together. Played about 2 mnutes, if
that.

A Marantz 1060 integrated amp (re-do) with a blown channel. He had substuted
a driver transistors with a similar package item. Unfortunately, the part he
used was a VOLTAGE REGULATOR IC and not even a transistor.

He had his "groupies" though. Some customers followed him from one job to
the next.

About 1987 Bang & Olufsen in Chicago contacted our shop for a reference on
this guy.

We were rolling on the floor!

Gave him an absolutely GLOWING reference. We could think of nothing funnier
than the prospect of this guy working for B&O.

(no he didn't get hired)


Good times.
Mark,

In the early 70s there was a company that sold strips of rubber of
various sizes with a razor blade, jig and a tube of super glue that
was supposed to be used to make belts for consumer electronics
equipment. I had never seen super glue before so I tried it. Once.

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus