Butcher shop equipment technician - the repair-call intake script: five questions to clear false alarms, pack the right parts, and teach exactly two safety actions

You are the equipment technician for a small chain of butcher
shops, responsible for coolers, grinders, slicers, and scales
across several stores. I need a one-page Repair-Call Intake
Script I can read verbatim when a store reports a fault.
Write it in the structure below, with speakable lines for
every question.

The five questions (in order; do not skip ahead):
1. "One sentence - what's happening: completely dead, powered
   but not cooling, or cooling but not enough?" Three
   different fault families; separate them first
2. "What do the display and the indicator lights show right
   now? Any alarm beeping? Send me a photo."
3. "Put your ear to the unit: does the compressor hum as it
   kicks in? How often does it cycle on and off? Any sound
   that wasn't there before?"
4. "What changed since yesterday? Unit moved, power strip
   swapped, cleaning done, a large delivery loaded in?"
5. "What does the thermometer inside read? Not the back of
   your hand - the number."

Then run the answers against the false-alarm table; anything
that resolves on the phone closes without a visit:
- Completely dead + register scale dead too → supply or
  breaker; check the panel first - the machine is fine
- Powered, not cooling + cleaned yesterday → condenser
  filter blocked or wet; dry it, clear the dust, watch for
  two hours
- Cooling, but weak + just loaded a large delivery →
  overload and slow pull-down; watch half a day before
  calling it a fault
- Display reading LL / HH / Err → most likely the
  temperature probe; pack a probe for that model
- "Really loud" + hot at the back → first separate normal
  condenser-fan noise from something striking the blades;
  ask whether it is a hum, a click, or a scrape
- Suspected door-gasket leak → the paper test: shut the door
  on a strip of paper; if it slides out with no drag, the
  gasket is due

The parts call (every intake ends here):
- Five clean answers → name the parts for this visit
  (thermostat / start component / fan motor / probe / door
  gasket, matched to the symptoms)
- Answers vague or contradictory → pack the full test kit;
  today is diagnosis only, no parts swapped on a guess

Exactly two safety actions may be taught over the phone,
nothing else:
- How to reset a tripped breaker once - and that a second
  trip means stop
- Any burning smell or smoke: cut power immediately and do
  not re-energize

Constraints:
- Never say "probably minor" - that sentence is what lets a
  store sit on a fault until product is lost; pack for the
  serious case
- No phone-walkthroughs into opening the machine, refrigeration
  components, or electrics for non-repair staff
- Every call lands on a work order: time / store / symptoms /
  working theory / parts packed - a call handled verbally and
  not recorded is a recurrence nobody can explain

Why it is written this way

The script's whole value is turning five minutes of phone time into a remote diagnosis. The dominant cost of a repair visit is the drive, not the part, and false alarms - tripped breakers, blocked filters, overload from a big delivery - make up a real share of calls; the five questions clear that share without a van leaving the lot. The ordering matters too: direction first (dead / not cooling / not enough), then display, then sound, then what changed, then the number. The first four are things anyone can answer on the spot; the reading - the one thing callers fumble - comes last, so a missed answer costs nothing.

"The parts call" is where this page lands, and what separates it from communication-skills advice. The intake's output is not "context understood" but a packed parts bag: clean answers mean the fix happens in one visit; muddy answers mean diagnosis-only, no speculative part-swapping. "I'll swing by and take a look" is banned for arithmetic reasons: an empty first visit plus a parts run leaves hours in between, and the case temperature does not wait.

Exactly two teachable safety actions (reset once, cut power on burning smell) and nothing else - that is the safety boundary. Remotely coaching a non-repairer into a machine saves one visit and stakes a person: pressurized refrigerant parts and electrics are not phone-instruction territory. The two exceptions earn their place because one is panel-level operation and the other only ever makes things safer.

"Never say probably minor" reads like tone advice and is actually product-loss prevention: told "minor," the store loads the meat back in and waits for morning - and real faults never shrink because someone named them small. Better the store moves meat once too often than sleeps on a fault because it was called small.

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