Seafood stall equipment technician - the repair-call script: stabilize first, call second, three sentences that get the right parts on the van

Write me a repair-call script for a seafood stall, laminated
next to the phone, read verbatim. Scenario: down-equipment
faults - air pump stopped, ice machine not producing, display
cooler not holding temperature - and the call goes to the
service company. Downtime here is priced by the minute, and the
quality of this call decides how much stock dies.

The skeleton:

Step zero (before dialing, in this order, never reversed):
- Stabilize first: get the backup pump on; for tanks it can't
  cover, split the load and hand-aerate. Stop the bleeding
  before the call - with the order reversed, losses keep
  accruing through the two minutes you spend on the phone
- Then spend 60 seconds on six items, written down before you
  dial: ① equipment name and asset number ② the symptom right
  now ③ when it started ④ what I already tried and what
  happened ⑤ any power cut, tripped breaker, or wiring change
  in between ⑥ conditions lately (heat wave / thunderstorms)

Sentence one, state the fault (use this shape):
"[equipment + number], [symptom], since [time]."
Example: "Pump three - running with a higher-pitched sound and
weaker output since eleven last night; two of its three tanks
have gone still." One sentence, no editorializing.

Sentence two, hand over the eliminations:
"I swapped the air stone - no change; I can't hear a leak in
the line; the pump body is running hotter than usual." Report
what you did and what happened - this is what lets the
technician narrow it down over the phone.

Sentence three, ask for a read, all three questions:
"From your experience, roughly which class of fault is this?
What parts should you bring this time? And can you walk me
through one stabilization step on the phone right now?" - that
third question is the lifesaver when he can't get there soon.

Close by pinning down exactly two things:
- An arrival time as "before [hour]," never "as soon as you
  can" - two people's idea of "soon" can differ by three times
- The rule, said out loud: "Look and quote first on site; I
  approve before anything comes apart" - easier to say this on
  the phone than face to face

After hanging up: five lines in the log - time / caller /
symptom / the technician's phone read / agreed arrival time.
When the same machine is called in a second time, that log
page is your "repeat failure" evidence.

Anti-script table (never say these on the call):
- "You'll see when you get here" → he either brings everything
  or nothing, both cost you. Replace with: read him the
  60-second six items
- "The ice machine isn't making ice" → too coarse. Replace
  with: "Output is down to maybe half, and the ice coming out
  is wet and crushed, since last night" - a small difference
  in symptom points at a different class of fault
- "Come quick, as fast as you can" → replace with: "Fish are
  dying - before what time can you be here?" Turn urgency into
  a time commitment
- Diagnosing for him ("I think the compressor is shot") → your
  guess either leads him astray or makes him dismiss the real
  symptom out of spite. Report symptoms and attempts; the
  diagnosis is his job

Constraints:
- This script teaches no haggling, chasing, or invoice-dodging
  moves - the goal is the right parts on the first visit, not
  winning the exchange. The moment the repair relationship
  becomes a contest, nobody answers your next midnight call
- Do not report troubleshooting you didn't actually do - "I
  swapped the stone" must mean the stone was swapped; a false
  elimination misleads worse than no information
- The technician's phone read is a first read only; the script
  never relays it upward as a conclusion

Why it is written this way

"Stabilize first, call second" is step zero and the order is locked, because even a perfect repair call only shortens the fault - stabilization is what actually stops the loss. Panic instinct says grab the phone first; the economics say the opposite. The backup pump can be on in ten minutes; no technician arrives in less than an hour. Do the cheap action before the expensive one - the same discipline as an outage plan, applied to the phone.

The three sentences follow the service company's decision chain: locate first (which unit, what symptom, since when), then eliminate (what you tried that didn't help), then - and only then - ask for the read. Most repair calls fail by skipping the first two and jumping straight to "what's wrong and how fast can you get here"; with nothing to locate or eliminate against, the only honest answer a technician can give is "I'll have to come see." The third question - "walk me through one stabilization step now" - is the highest-value sentence in the entire script: his drive time and your loss-stopping run in parallel.

The anti-script table matters more than the positive template, because on a bad night people reach for habitual words. "Just come look" and "come quick" aren't attitude problems - they're sentences carrying zero information. Printing them beside the phone with their replacements beats any training session. And "report symptoms, not diagnoses" is the least intuitive rule of the set: the caller thinks they're helping, but an amateur diagnosis either steers the technician (he chases your theory) or triggers spite (he discounts your true observations along with your theory). Both endings cost you.

Banning negotiation tricks is long-game repair economics: service companies handle "difficult accounts" by quietly queueing them last. A seafood stall's next breakdown cannot wait in a queue, and the only capital that gets a fast midnight response is a call that arrives with clean information and a site that doesn't fight.

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