TV & Audio Repair
Hi there--what'll it be? Electronics repair? You mean like TVs, DVD players and stuff like that? Well, if you'd come in here two years ago I'd have sent you off to look for something else, and told you it was a dead 1960s kind of career dream. Things have changed, though, so this career might make a comeback--it won't be a good one, though.
You see with all this environmental craziness that's sweeping the globe people are suddenly thinking that disposable TVs and electronics that wear out in 18 months and get tossed in a landfill aren't really the most green way to go. That's where people like you come in. Most of the old school TV repair guys have been dieing out--there's a big difference between the old 21-inch RCA and the new super flat plasma screens that sell for more than my car set me back. The local guy on the corner hasn't kept up--people go to "authorized service centers" if they need repairs, and once the warranty or the extended warranty is up, it's too expensive to bother.
Now, though, with all these enviro-levies on disposing of this stuff, plus the simple social pressure to conserve, people are wanting to make this crap last longer, so they'll consider shelling out repair fees instead of just running down to the big-box electronics store for a newer model. You will go to a basic technical institute and learn the essentials of the electronics repair business--most of your instructors will be from eastern Europe or Cuba because it's only the lack of available consumer products that has kept their skills alive in the decades when their North American counterparts were becoming extinct.
You'll need to know where to buy replacement chips rather than tubes--a big change from the old days--and you'll work with the same sort of magnifying optical equipment that diamond cutters rely on. Still, once you're out of school you'll find a cheap storefront in the industrial part of town and set up shop. You'll add to your school debt by taking out ads in the local paper, and augment your meagre income the first few months by heading to the dump after work to salvage discarded equipment that you can repair and sell as "refurbished".
Things will pick up when you get some "save your TV--save the planet" t-shirts printed, and give them away at your information booth at a local envirofair. Soon the politically correct are showing up to give your shop a try.
The increased traffic won't all be good, though. It's tough to get parts as manufacturers have been using a business model that relies on disposal rather than repair, and they simply don't make replacement components. Fortunately, you get some help from a variety of environmental groups who begin pressuring the big companies to change their ways.
Still, they've had too many years of building things to break down six months after the warranty expires, and there's no interest in changing things as they long ago farmed out all their manufacturing work to third world sweatshops. Thus, you end up in the incredibly frustrating position of trying to mend things built to break down, and every customer curses you when six weeks after one repair is done they have to return for you to fix something else. You end up doing many jobs for free, even though the new breakdowns have nothing to do with your previous work. It's that or spend most of your days in small claims court.
You don't work the standard 40-hour week--you probably should hire an assistant, but they're hard to find and you can't really afford one--instead you often arrive at work at 9:00 a.m. and don't lock up and leave until close to midnight. It means it's likely you'll enter your 30s still single and lonely.
One day you'll be repairing a particularly crappy combination VCR/DVD recorder and you'll find a tiny note stuck inside. You'll need a magnifying glass to read it, and you're suprised to discover it's a letter from one of the employees at the factory that built the shoddy equipment. She explains that she is a poor young woman stuck in virtual slavery in Bangladesh, and implores whoever finds the note to "say a prayer" for her. Of course she also includes an email address, and you're intrigued enough to send her a short message after work that day.
Long story short, you eventually fly to meet her on your first vacation in years, and you're an instant celebrity in her impoverished town. The two of you develop a romance quickly--your 14 year age difference doesn't seem to bother anyone--and you go home after the two of you promise to marry within six months. After you get home you send your meagre savings to her to help protect her family from the local gangs she told you about while you were visiting.
Eventually you get her out and she moves here where you are quickly married. You put her to work in your shop, but her limited English makes her interactions with customers awkward and some of them are annoyed enough to abandon your shop. Your business takes a further downturn when a number of "authorized" repair centers begin advertising campaigns that suggest people would be foolish to take expensive electronics to those who haven't completed the "special training" by the manufacturers. You considered the week-long course, but it was clearly a scam and you didn't have the 20 grand they charged for the training.
Soon your main customers are old folks and audiophiles who bring you vintage record players and the local ham radio club, who refuse to buy anything manufactured since the advent of transistors since they feel all newer equipment has been bugged by the government as part of some evil conspiracy.
You become desperate--your rent is in arrears and you see no improvements in sight. Meanwhile, your young wife is out clubbing most nights with other girls from the local Bangladeshi community (you didn't even know there was one) and she manages to cajole you into agreeing to sponsor one of her brothers to come over with the promise of employment at your shop--a ridiculous proposition since you can't even support yourself and your wife. The brother quickly connects to some of the less savory members of the community and soon he's bringing cell phones to you and asking you to strip or reprogram cards and codes--he's convinced you're some kind of electronics whiz but you really don't know much about mobile phones; fortunately there are some sketchy websites that explain the process in detail.
He seems to be making decent money from his stolen phone business, but still doesn't manage to give you any rent for the basement suite he occupies in your home. Just as you're about ready to close your doors and declare bankruptcy, a potential solution is dropped in your lap.
Your wife is by herself in the shop near the end of the day, while you're off scrounging through discarded video players at the dump. A man comes in quite agitated, claiming his wife dropped off a broken dvd player for repair earlier in the day, and he must have it back. Your wife barely understands him, and has no idea where the machine might be, so he extracts a promise that he can come pick it up from you first thing in the morning.
When she relays this message to you, you are intrigued, so you go back into work and find the player in question. You quickly open it and find a homemade dvd stuck inside. You take the dvd and pop it into a different machine and are shocked to see a well known "family values" politician taking part in party that would rival anything Caligula might have offered in Roman times. He's featured in some of the more distasteful scenes, where his face is clearly visible, and there's no mistaking his voice, the same one that has so often been heard on television lambasting the depraved morals of the liberal media.
When he shows up the next morning, you return the broken player with the dvd safely stowed back inside. He seems relieved, and you pretend to have no idea what he is trying to hide, even though you've already made several copies of the worst scenes and later that day you lock one in a safety deposit box, and email digitized copies to a variety of accounts to make sure you can access them anywhere.
You tell your wife you're closing the shop for the rest of the day, and she seems unconcerned--she's happy to go off with friends. You suspect she's cheating on you, but you've been so stressed about your financial situation you hardly care what she does any more. You rush across town to a meeting of your ham radio friends--they happily gathered when you called one to say you had something huge to share with them.
They hate and distrust all levels of government, and are thrilled to see the video clip you copied. They help you formulate an blackmail scheme, and the next day a copy of the video is couriered to the politician's office along with a demand that he send a cashier's cheque for 50 thousand dollars to a post office box you rented.
There's no reply for a few days, and then a blustery letter arrives--threatening to use his "connections" to have you all killed, starting with the "video guy". He rightly assumes you're behind the scheme. Then, the next morning immigration officials arrive unexpectedly and accuse you of participating in a sham marriage to help bring criminals into the country. They have surveillance footage that shows your supposed brother in law selling stolen phones, and also pimping for your wife, with whom he also shares a relationship that their surveillance suggests is anything but fraternal. It's probably the politician who is behind this sudden visit.
You explain your side of the story, and they laugh and show you a website for third world workers that has a script for the exact same note you found in the video recorder that led you to Bangladesh. They explain that it's a very old scam which first started with German women working in harsh factory conditions shortly after World War II.
You agree to testify against your wife and the man she claimed was her brother, but he goes into hiding. Your marriage is anulled and your wife is deported, but you keep getting phone calls late at night from her partner, and he always threatens terrible things in broken English.
You assume it is he who throws a molotov cocktail into your shop one night, and the old building's sprinklers don't work and soon the whole enterprise is a smoking melted mess. All records of the repair inventory are gone and suddenly customers appear out of nowhere, claiming you were in possession of all sorts of very expensive electronic toys for which you must now reimburse them. Your insurance company believes you started the fire yourself--their investigators easily find out about your financial situation, and you are forced to settle for a meagre sum that is swallowed by customer claims.
You give up your rental house and begin living in a van in the back yard of a home where your ham radio friends meet to plan the next steps of your extortion scheme. Meanwhile, the politician has begun to have second thoughts about his situation and agrees to pay the 50 grand. His acquiescence makes your friends suspect he could easily pay more, and they insist you up the ante. You arrange a drop for the 50 thousand dollars, but only give him one copy of the video. You later send a message to explain you want 25 thousand more to go away forever.
Evidently he doesn't believe you, and saves 10 grand by paying a hit man 15 thousand to put a bullet through your head. Two or three of your ham radio friends believe you faked your death to escape and are later arrested trying to dig up your coffin to prove their theory. The phony brother in law breaks into the van and finds the 50 grand before the politician can get it back and uses it to set up a very successful drug lab. In recognition of your contribution he puts your intials as his label on every ecstasy tablet.
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