what i do at work...

some of you might be interested to know what a rental tech actually does, so here’s a breakdown:

• if teching, get waiver (the form customers have to fill in first), determine whether snowboarding or skiing. determine whether they are getting the “development” or “high-performance” gear.
• ask customer their shoe size, get them some boots (converting from US, UK, European, women’s sizing, and if skiing additional conversion to ski boot size (mondo point) which is different)
• talk customer through the sizing until they are happy
• get skis/ snowboard that suits (i.e. generally between chin and nose in height, longer if more advanced, development or hi-pro range of skis/board etc)

• if skiing:
• do the calculation for the DIN setting (how much force before the ski will release from the boot, most important thing for safety). the DIN calculation is based on weight, height, age, skier type (beginner to advanced, basically how aggressive they are in turns) and length of boot. you just follow a procedure, its pretty simple once you’ve done it a few times
• set the DINs (same front and back on both skis)
• set the binding for the boot size, then fit the boot to the ski, checking that it binds in correctly
• get them some poles (forearms parallel to ground)

• if boarding:
• screw the baseplates on (development and high-pro different)
• get correct size bindings for their boot
• set up bindings, depending on whether regular (left foot forward) or goofy (right foot forward). angles might be a bit different if beginner or advanced etc.

• at some point get the customer pants/ jacket/ wristguards/ helmet etc if they want that stuff.
• make sure the customer has signed the waiver (in four places!)
• sign off and file the waiver

if not currently teching, might be doing various others things:

• returns: this is another big part of the job. step one, finding their waiver based on last name and return date. this is probably the most frustrating part of the job, stuff gets mis-filed, customers don’t remember when they were meant to return etc, so you spend a lot of time looking for waivers, if you can’t find it, it’s a pain - write it up as a missing waiver. step two, check off their gear, make sure the skis/ board are correct based on bar code, and not damaged. give them receipt, put all the gear away. chuck waiver in returns.
• greeting and helping customers fill in the waiver (“do you want the damage waiver, its $4 a day and covers damage but not theft…?”)
• finding customer’s pre-booked waiver form if they booked online
• working the till (I can do normal credit card payments, but still not entirely sure what to do if they have a voucher or want a refund or whatever)
• tidying up
• filling the shelves with skis, boots, poles etc from one shop to the other (we have two stores - a much bigger one downstairs that does walk-up and also does most of the returns, smaller one upstairs that does all the pre-booked plus walk-up). i work in both stores, depending on the roster and also which one happens to be busy etc.
• trying to look busy if things are dead
• surfing the web (not allowed, and they are currently blocking off lots of sites damnit) – generally only at night when it’s often quiet, and the bosses aren’t around.
• ...

That’s probably a bit boring and more detailed than I had planned, but my nerdy side came out when I started doing a breakdown. It’s not a bad job overall, you get to chat to people, it’s reasonably varied, and involves hands-on work which is a nice change. Most of the people I work with are cool.