Chatchawan describes his job | Bangkok Post: learning

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This week you can read Chatchawan's story and hear his voice as he describes his job in America.

Chatchawan Chawengkul standing in his company office.

As you might recall, Chatchawan Chawengkul  is a Thai who moved to the United States to live in 1979 at the age of 20. He has been telling his story and you can read the first three parts here in which he describes coming to the States, serving in the US army in Germany, visiting Thailand, getting readjusted to the US and his life to the present:  http://bit.ly/c7PTTD  , http://bit.ly/9iONm5 , http://bit.ly/casAfG and http://bit.ly/birpem .

In this chapter, he tells us what he does in his job. This time his has sent in his own audio file so you can hear what he sounds like after many years in America. Since he learned English as a young man, he still has a bit of a Thai accent, but his pronunciation is quite clear. Notice that he has definitely mastered his pronunciation of English plurals.

Click button to listen to Copier and rightclick to download

What I do at my work every day as a Copier systems engineer

Copier Systems engineers work in the field Xerography, a dry photocopying technique.  My everyday job is to service customer’s copier machines at their locations. This includes preventive maintenance according to a schedule, or going out on calls for problems, such as poor copy quality, paper jams, or excessive noise.  I also assist customers with issues involving LAN printers, faxes, scanning to folders, scanning to e-mail, and document servers.

Our clients include a variety of businesses, such as law firms, banks, accounting firms, schools, police stations, court houses, manufacturers, hospitals, churches and other businesses that need to make copies of their documents. 

Most of our clients are located in the Little Rock, Arkansas area where we have our home office, but some are out of town.  We service customers in a radius of approximately 50 miles from our home office. 

The job is sometimes easy, but sometimes it is very stressful depending on what the task is.  Some days we have many calls, other days we have none. I like the no-call days.  (Who doesn’t?)  That means I have plenty of time of my own.

You may wonder how we make money when there are no calls.  Actually, we have two types of customers.  One is the charge customer, which means that we charge them for the service we perform on site.  Our fee is 98 dollars per hour.  This rate is our company rate; other companies may charge a higher or lower fee. (Usually higher). That’s not including parts or components needing to be replaced.

The others are customers who have a maintenance agreement with us.  They have agreed to pay a certain amount of money to us every month. This varies depending on the volume and distance travelled.  Most agreements include parts and services, and some include toner.

service – to examine and repair a vehicle or machine as part of a regular check that it is working correctly ให้บริการ
location – where someone or something is ที่ตั้ง,ทำเล
preventative maintenance – carrying out regular checks and repairs to prevent problems from occurring
excessive – much greater than is usual; too much of something   มากเกินปริมาณที่พอดี
assistance – to help someone ช่วย
issue – a problem that needs to be considered  ปัญหา
client – a customer or someone who receives services of a lawyer ลูกความ
firm – a business or company บริษัม
accounting – the preparation of financial records for a company, organisation or person การบัญชี
radius – a particular distance in all directions from a central point รัศมี
stressful – involving or causing a lot of pressure or worry ตึงเครียด
task – something that you have to do หน้าที่; ภารกิจ
fee – an amount of money that you pay to be allowed to do something or to receive a service ค่าธรรมเนียม
rate – an amount of money that is paid or charged  ราคา, อัตรา   
component – a part which combines with other parts to form something bigger ส่วนประกอบ,ส่วนเสริม
replace – to put something new in place of something old  นำสิ่งใหม่มาใช้แทน
vary – to be different in different situations  ปรวนแปร, เปลี่ยนแปลง, แตกต่าง
volume – an amount of something ปริมาณ
toner – ink in the form of a powder that you put into a printer or a photocopier

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