Meat Plow wrote:
On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:10:23 -0500, Art wrote:

Servicing customers can and has been a very rewarding experience.
However, in the past probably 3 to 5 years it seems that customers
are becoming more and more demanding and less and less informed.

Back in 2000 when I left the consumer electronics repair industry for
a job in IT I found out that the bean counters and CEO's of of the
world were much more demanding and even less informed than the
average Joe Consumer. Back in 2000 most of the clients I serviced
still didn't have a budget for IT. When I walked through the doors I
tried to avoid the CEO or CFO as much as possible. I could just see
the dollar signs in their eyes when they looked at me as around here
the going hourly rate for a level 1 tech like me was $100/hr.
However, the job was very rewarding and most everyone else was very
appreciative.

I must admit to a dirty laugh on first reading the first line above:
Customer service and servicing electronics equipment are quite normal
expressions in (British) English,
but, to me at least, "servicing customers" conjures up an image of
"Confessions of a Field Service Engineer" along the lines of the series of
soft-porn films "Confessions of a Window-Cleaner" etc. (with Robin Asquith
and our previous Prime Minister's father-in-law)!
Martin.