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dificult jobs
Being the perfectionist I am, I can’t see a blank portal. So I have a question for everyone. What is or was the oddest repair you had to do in food service. Mine was a carnival van ice machine. More on that later if there is a interest..
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3 Replies
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I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d love to hear that story!
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Not necessarily an odd repair…or even one qualifying AS a repair, but this was my most INTERESTING service call.
First, let me paint a word-picture to set the stage:
My former company installed/repaired/uninstalled Starbucks machines for venues OUTSIDE of their licensed stores. Places like hotels, kiosks in malls, Target dept stores, large factories, etc. Any large business wanting to have Starbucks available to THEIR customers…or employees. They just had to meet and maintain Starbucks’ standards of product quality (and all that THAT entails).
About ten years ago, Nashville began what is now an ongoing growing spurt in the downtown area. New buildings were popping up EVERYWHERE, while some older districts and buildings of historical significance were getting repurposed from their former industrial, warehouse, medical origins to become condos, retail spaces, entertainment venues or top notch restaurants.
You get the idea. Nashville’s economy was booming and a (very successful) revitalization of the downtown area was in full swing.
In amongst all of that was one of Nashville’s LARGEST projects. Almost as big as the NFL football stadium (home of the TN Titans) built twelve years prior. The “Music City Center” would be a new convention center on steroids. To build it required the acquisition of and razing of buildings occupying many – MANY city blocks.
One building in the way of that construction project was Nashville’s Greyhound bus station. It so happens that THEY – served Starbucks coffee from coffee brewers that WE had installed.
SO…I wrote all of that to set the stage for when “I” enter the picture:
On this given day, I was doing repairs on a dishwasher up on the fifth floor of our downtown Sheraton. My company-provided Blackberry rings. I look to see that my dispatcher was calling. I answered and, to the best of my recollection, the following conversation ensues:
Dispatch: “Hey Earl!”
Me: “Hey! What’s up?”
Dispatch: “Do you know where Nashville’s bus station is downtown?”
Me: “Y-e-s. Why?”
Dispatch: “I need you to stop what you’re doing RIGHT NOW to go there for a Starbucks UNinstall.”
Me: “WHAT! Just DROP what I’m DOING to go remove coffee machines? You KNOW we just don’t do that! What about my current customer? Their dish machine is top priority. AND…why ME?”
Dispatch: “Work something out with them. You can return there when you’re done. You’re the closest tech I have to that location and…I don’t have anyone else available right now.”
Me: “O-k-a-y…I guess.”
Dispatch: “GREAT! Hurry! They’re waiting on you!”
Me: “What! Wait. WHAT? REALLY! WHAT exactly is the EMERGENCY over a couple of measly COFFEE brewers being removed that would require someone to be WAITING on me?”
Dispatch: “After you’re done, they’re going to blow the building up! A demolition crew is waiting for YOU to get done so they can BLOW UP THE BUILDING!”
Me: “Oh…”
I’ll answer before you ASK:
NO. I didn’t get stick around to see them blow it up.
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I would probably say, the most difficult job I’ve had to do was repairing the oven wall on a convotherm 4 unit, which I posted about here and you guys saw it.
That was, probably the most difficult, having to weld cracks and get the metal as flat as possible so a gasket would stick to it, then replacing the heat exchanger and all the burner controls, etc.
All in 48 hours,
Which included $3000 worth of parts that got overnighted by Convotherm, all on warranty.
Found it.
https://techtownforum.com/forums/discussion/6db71e5901a31aab1d9c295b12be15ba/
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