I think the grit and spirit of a copier technician is shown by this scene in Ghostbusters . As I remember, the ghostbusters have their weapons pointed at the evil creatures. Dan Aykroyd says something like "If we do this wrong, it is total annihilation of our universe. The end of life as we know it." To which Bill Murray replies "Go for it."

Mixing entertainment and our way of making a living seems to make sense to me. I don’t know why. I guess because we just have to make sure we don’t take this stuff too seriously. Do you think there will ever be a TV show featuring a copier technician? Oh sure, we’ve had a few little tidbits here and there. Once, on Taxi, I saw them carrying something in a box that formerly held Kodak toner. On some other show, I saw a Panasonic 1300 jam. A Sharp 760 was in the background of a cereal (Nut N Honey) commercial once: I have no idea why. The movie Seven had an ancient SCM 152 in it. Murphy Brown always has copier in the background. And of course there is our hero, the "Richmeister" from Saturday Night Live. The ultimate key operator; dedicated to his copier, always having conversations about copies. What a guy!

But never a copier technician. I once had an idea that I wanted to send in to Northern Exposure , which was, quite simply, to have the copier in Sicily, Alaska break down, and have the whole town anxiously awaiting the arrival of the copier technician. But, I never got around to sending in the idea, and it probably wouldn’t have been accepted anyway. I didn’t waste a fair amount of time trying to figure out what size copier would be needed in a town of 967 people. Would Maurice have his own? Would Fleischman? Ruth Ann? Would it be Xerox? Would the technician arrive by plane or by car? For whatever it’s worth, the Valdez Alaska ferry terminal still had a Minolta 300 in 1992. I’m sure that is important to someone. In 1975, I used to service copiers in the RCA (NBC) building in NYC. Studios for TV shows were in that building, including the one where they rehearsed and performed Saturday Night Live. I wanted to write and submit a script wherein Mr. Bill got caught in the Van Dyk 4000 copier. He could have been sliced by the cutter, electrocuted by the coronas, crushed and fused. The machine was right there. Chance of a lifetime, but I never took the time. If that was today...

Believe it or not, I actually have a point that I intend to make. This does have to do with Bill Murray, though it had nothing to do with copiers, originally. Probably many of you have seen a very funny Bill Murray movie, What About Bob? Murray plays a really messed up guy who literally drives his psychiatrist (psychologist?) crazy. The psychiatrist, played by a really nasty Richard Dreyfuss, gets everyone to buy his book, Baby Steps. Bob (Bill) worships the psychiatrist and takes all the advice in Baby Steps. The advice is to solve all problems in small steps, rather than trying to solve them all at once. Funny movie, but legitimate advice. I remember taking a psychology course many years ago, and a treatment method sometimes used for modifying behavior in animals and people is called something like "stepping behavior." It involves making changes gradually, rather than immediately.

This stuff really works. I do this kind of thing all the time. You can too, and you might find that it allows you to make progress on work that sometimes appears totally impossible. I combine this with time management (which I consider to be time budgeting) to get lots of things done.

We sometimes procrastinate forever.

Many times there is a project that needs to be done. It is so difficult, boring, time consuming, tedious, that you keep finding excuses not to start it. Obviously, it still needs doing. And it is not just procrastination that keeps you away from it. It is the fact that it will take so much time, that you decide other things need to be done first. It will have to be done eventually. The longer you wait, the more you will suffer whatever consequences of not doing it on time. Typical examples for me are this newsletter, the next edition, my monthly RS&R article, homework assignments, copiers with major problems that are driving me nuts. A fairly common example for the typical copier person is a machine in the shop. Certain things just don’t seem to get done. They often seem impossible to start. The reason is that the individual looks at it as a big job, which it is. If you change that into many small jobs, it is less scary.

Example. Customer has an old machine. You know that if you don’t open your mouth, they will call some 800 number advertised on TV, start talking to one of the people who drops off a copier brochure once a month, and somehow buy a new machine from someone other than you. Maybe you decide to go in and talk to them about a new machine. But maybe you decide that a $1500.00 overhaul will put money in your pocket and get them back in good shape for the next 2-3 years.

The only problem is this: You know it is a good idea. You know there is a very good chance that they will be happy to spend $1500, rather than $3000. But, you have to go there, talk to them, prepare a loaner, pickup the machine, and then start this monstrous overhaul. The sales pitch is way less work than the overhaul. The problem is that it puts you on the same playing field as anyone else who is selling machines. (I know. Some of you will tell me how you take good care of your customers, and they always come back, and so on. That is true of all of us. But they don’t always care, and you can’t count on that. Customer loyalty is not enough to plan your business around.) If you do the overhaul, you have no direct competition. But it is so much work to do all of these things. So, you keep putting it off. Than one day they call and ask if you want to buy their old machine. You waited too long. Let’s try a less painful scenario. You gave them the speech, convinced them of the overhaul, brought them the loaner and switched machines. Now that you have the machine in your shop, here is what happens to many of you (us). You look at the machine and say to yourself. "Look at all the work I have to do on this. I’ll leave it for a slow day." And, of course, 3 weeks later the customer calls, wondering when it’s coming back, because the loaner doesn’t please them. You don’t dare tell them you didn’t start it yet, and maybe haven’t even looked at it. But I’ll bet that’s what happens. The way to avoid this is to treat the machine like any other machine. Your typical service call takes less than an hour. The day after you bring the machine in, devote an hour to it. Treat it like a service call. Do your "triage." Take it apart and see what you have to order, immediately. Then, a day or two later, devote another hour. Tear it down, blow it out, look more carefully at things. When the parts come in, put it back together. You will probably find some other things you should do. Isn’t that better than waiting a month to start the whole process? You run into a problem. No problem. Take care of everything else, in 1-2 hour sessions, every other day or so. When you are left with that one problem, treat it like a routine service call.

This method works in many ways. Many years ago, I was deeply in debt to a manufacturer. I kept trying to save up $4,000 at a time to pay off part of what I owed. I was never getting anywhere with them. Then I disciplined myself. Every other day, I would send them a check for whatever I could; $300.00, $50.00, whatever. Over the course of a year or so, I paid off the debt. Had I waited until I had those $4000 payments, I never would have been able to do it, even though the amount of money was the same. I had to budget my finances, not just money. That is part of the same thing. The day to day crises are no more important than other responsibilities.

How many of you have never gotten around to programming the speed dials in your own fax machine? You probably have 8-10 suppliers that you fax to all the time, and have probably wasted 10 minutes a day looking up and dialing their numbers. If you pretend you have a service call at your own place of business, you will find you can do all of these in about 20 minutes.

You must also budget your time. Some jobs are less important to you than others. All the customers think their machine should come first. If you have a shop machine with a miserable problem that is beating you, you cannot just stay on the machine. We do a lot of shopwork. I estimate that 1/15 machines are not straightforward. If we let ourselves get bogged down on that machine, many other machines will be delayed. This means that we won’t be getting paid for any of them, until the one is fixed. When this happens, that machine gets skipped. A few other machines get done, and then we come back to it. I consider this budgeting my time.

You don’t have to finish everything immediately.

This works for everything. You have personal things to do; like getting a haircut. Do you really have to wait until all your service calls are done and it’s Saturday and there are 8 people on line? You pass by the barber at 4PM on Thursday and see the barber reading the paper. Get the haircut and do the paperwork in your shop after supper! Nothing lost and you wasted less time. Of course, if you are someone else’s employee, it’s a bit different.

You want to rearrange your inventory. Such a big job; clearing shelves, throwing stuff away, adding new shelves. Don’t tackle it all at once. You decide to spend ½ hour on it today. You go to the shelves and just find the stuff that is garbage. You throw it in the dumpster, and then go out on service calls. Tomorrow, you take a second look and see where you can add a shelf or two. A few days later, you do some rearranging. You don’t have to do every job all at once.

This doesn’t work for everybody. Some people are not "finishers." They start something and don’t finish it. If those people try this, they might be worse than ever. This requires some discipline. For example. It is now 6PM Sunday. I came to work at about 4PM and decided I would work on the newsletter until 6, at which point I would go home and relax. Bye.

7AM Monday morning. I’ve given myself another hour to work on this. Then an hour to write on a completely different subject. At the end of each of those hours, I won’t be finished. But I will know I’ve made substantial progress. I can then go on to something else, without feeling like my priorities are wrong. I will have devoted a certain amount of time to each item and will be closer to finishing each. In addition, I’ve budgeted my time in a way that is most efficient. At 7AM, I am alone in the office. The phone is not ringing. If it rings, it is ignored until 9:00. This is my own time, whether I use it for personal or for business. I can do certain work more efficiently at this time. So can you. 7AM might be a good time to take inventory, write up a parts order.

At 9:00 AM, your customers expect some attention. If you are behind schedule (which is always the case) you probably want to use 9-5 to service your customers. For the most part, that is the only time that you can do that. If, at 3:30, your kids need to get taken to soccer practice, or dancing lessons, or picked up from school, that comes first. Someone recently said this "I never heard of someone on their deathbed saying they wished they spent less time with their kids." My 4 kids are all between 17 and 23, and I am pretty much done with all the taxiing, recitals, ballgames, school plays, speeches, etc. I can proudly and cheerfully brag that I just about never missed one of those things. Part of that was by keeping my family as a higher priority than my work. But part of it was by budgeting my time. By budgeting, I mean several things. One is not devoting too much time to something that doesn’t deserve it (which usually amounts to customers that don’t deserve it). The other is breaking your time up into certain blocks. If you buy a new car, you probably don’t pay for it with cash. Even if you could, you probably wouldn’t. You know that the money needs to be available for other things. You also have enough self-confidence that you will be able to make the monthly payments for the next four years or so. So, you decide to borrow the money and not commit everything to this car immediately. You can do the same thing with your time. You have enough self-confidence to know that the 4-5 hours a certain project needs can be supplied in the next week or so. Rather than using up ½ day immediately or putting it off until you have 4-5 hours available at one time, you budget 1 hour per day, and after a week, it is done. As my 2nd favorite politician (Ross Perot) would say. "It’s just that simple." My favorite is Jesse Ventura.

Jim Intravia

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