By Alexander Polunin, Uzhgorod, Ukraine

One day I was fixing up a customer’s TV set at his home. Walking by me, he said: ‘Make sure you don’t leave something in my TV set. Soldering iron or something else like that’. I smiled at him: ‘Don’t worry, I am a service engineer, not a surgeon!’ So, I fixed the TV, got my money and went home. Just before I got home I have recalled that conversation and thought about the device I’ve been using to repair that TV. Where was it? I got home, opened up my case and discovered that the device was not there! Suddenly the phone rang and I answered. There he was – the same customer! ‘Sasha, - he said, - you left your device here’. My heart missed a beat… ‘Where?’ – I asked. – ‘Did I really leave it inside the TV set?’ ‘Oh, no, of course, not! On the table!’

By Danil Khashiev, Ivanovo, Russia

I got a phone call to come and repair a TV set. I come to the place –a young lady opens the door. I come in, put my case on the table and start unpacking my stuff: a soldering iron, a tester, a screwdriver, tweezers… and so on. Then I take out a soapbox where I keep solder and a toothbrush that I use to wash boards. The lady silently watches my preparation and then says: ‘Are you going to spend night here???’ I say: ‘You mean, because I have so much stuff with me, prepared for major repair?’ Her answer is: ‘Well, no. I see, you brought your soap and toothbrush with you!!!’

Igor Zaitsev, St.Petersburg, Russia

One day I was brought a tube Rubin TV set for repair. I took off the back cover and saw lots of small yellow and green feathers inside the TV. They definitely belonged to a parakeet. My first thought was that the TV owner’s parakeet got inside, and this is where his death found him. When the owners came to get his TV, I told him about my find. The owners were a little bit shocked and then they told me the following story. The TV set was a gift from their neighbors who sold some of their property and gave the rest away and went abroad for good. Pretty soon all of a sudden a parakeet showed up in their apartment. They kept the bird and everyone loved him. Only now they realized why the bird disappeared without trace once in a while. It turned out that the parakeet used the TV set as a nest. He got inside through a hole in the back cover and warmed himself by the tubes. In a miraculous way the bird didn’t get killed inside the TV set and died a natural death in quite venerable age.

Rostom Uriadmkopeli, Rustavi, Georgia

Once a customer brought his TV set on a taxi and asked me to do rush repair. He said that he would ask the taxi driver to wait to see whether it was possible to have the TV repaired right then so that he could take it home. The problem was in a blown-up electrolytic capacitor of power supply unit, electrolyte covered the board completely. I told the customer that I had to cleanse the board with alcohol, dry it and then install a new capacitor. It took me about 20 minutes to cleanse the board, then I turned a lamp towards it to dry it faster. So, the customer is sitting next to me waiting. It turned out that the taxi driver was in a hurry, too. He comes in and sees that we silently sit and look at the disassembled TV set. He looks at us for a couple of minutes and then quietly asks the customer who the person that works on the TV set is. The customer points at me, and I keep looking at the board silently, waiting for it to get dried. The puzzled taxi driver quietly asks the customer again about what I am doing. The customer answers: ‘The TV will be done soon. It was washed, now we are waiting for it to get dried’. The confused taxi driver looks around to find a sign and asks me: ‘Is this TV repair shop or TV wash?!!’ The silence was broken by a burst of laughter - mine and the customer’s.

Maxim Spivakov, Almaty, Kazakhstan

My neighbor, an older lady, comes to me, gives me a pleading look and says: ’I brought a remote control, will you repair it for me, please?’ ‘Well, no problem, I’ll take a look at it’ – I say. She reaches into her apron pocket, pulls out a handkerchief with something in it, unfolds it and, finally, takes out a handful of metal and plastic pieces. Followed by my puzzled stare this garbage drops onto my desk. ‘What is it?’ – I ask. ‘This this our TV remote control’. ‘What happened to it?’ ‘It fell’ – she says. ‘Where did it fall from? From the thirteenth floor???’ It turned out that the remote control did fall. The old couple had a quarrel, and the lady grabbed the remote control and threw it at the offender, her husband. With orbital velocity it flew through a room into the next one where it was stopped by the opposite wall. As a matter of fact, nothing was left of that remote control.
To be more exact, there was something left, but it didn’t work. J So, I bought her a new remote control and advised her to live in peace.

FERUM, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine

The same reason

Once I came to a village for equipment repair. Repaired something at one place, at another, as they say – I was passed from hand to hand.

A middle-aged guy approached me in the street and asked:

- Can you repair a VCR?

- What’s wrong with it?

- Well, you see, I came home drunk, quarreled with my wife and punched the VCR on the cover with all my strength!..

I had quite hard time with that VCR. In about a month I came back to that village and gave it to him with a contented look (of course, I brought it back to life!). The guy asked me again:

- Can you repair a TV set?

- What’s wrong with it?

- Well, you see, I came home drunk, quarreled with my wife, took that TV set and threw it on the floor with all my strength…

Eugene Hanson, Santa Clara, USA

It happened in 1988 in Leningrad. It was very popular to install PAL, I had a lot of customers, everything was going smooth. The board was installed next to the soviet chromaticity unit… Everything was great, except the socket(slot)(connector) was in the position that in order to take it out you would have to pull it towards the television tube. Being a truly lazy and experienced service engineer, I didn’t turn the TV off most of the time while working. Why would I waist time? One day my friend who was a doctor brought me his TV set, and the socket on it was pretty tight. When I finally pulled it out, I touched the television tube board with my hand. Yes, the focusing part. The greatest shock I got was not from 6KV, but from the fact that these kilovolts passed through me and the socket, and… destroyed a chip in the chromaticity unit. So I had to redo the whole thing. When I told my friend that I nearly got killed, his answer was: ‘Don’t worry, I would save you. I am an expert in resuscitation, you know…’

Valery Krushinin, St.Petersburg, Russia

Couple of months ago I bought a new TV set, a Sony. But I couldn’t enjoy it to its fullest, since Flip, my dear dog, ate the remote control the following day. I went to the market and got a new one. I did my best to hide it from my dog. But one day it suffered the same fate. So I had to go to the market again. The salesman recognized me and asked me with sympathy: ‘A dog?’ ‘Yes’, – I answered. ‘I don’t like dogs, - the salesman said. – I prefer cats’. I did not believe him. He, probably, loves dogs. You can’t make much money on cats.

Mikhail Lidman, Tel Aviv, Israel

Recently I got a request from my old customer. ‘Please, come, take a look – the TV set does not work’. Well, I went. I opened the back cover (some TV made in China, 29”). Oh!!! There was a huge crack on the board that divided it in half! ‘What happened?’ – I asked. It turned out that the TV set was on the book cabinet (about 1,5 meters tall). The 10-year old boy opened both doors and reached for the biggest schoolbook on the top shelf… To cut a long story short, the cabinet fell on the opened doors, covered the boy, didn’t even scratch him, and the TV set ended this acrobatic feat landing on its face. It took me about an hour and a half to restore everything, and the TV was back to normal. The most amazing thing was that after such flight nothing happened to this Chinese television tube: no spots, no stains.

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