Chronique du Plumier, L’atelier de réparation — L’Officiel du cycle, 16 June 1951, How the Dealer’s Wife Can Keep Repair Tickets and Workshop Records for Bicycles

From L’Officiel du cycle, du motocycle et du camping, 16 June 1951, N° 17, page 27: chronique du Plumier: L’atelier de réparation; the dealer’s wife keeps repair tickets and workshop records for bicycles taken in for repair. The title, headings, captions and lists are transcribed as printed; the text is summarized in Ebykr’s words, and the page images carry it in full.

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CHRONIQUE DU PLUMIER
L’ATELIER DE RÉPARATION

[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. The dealer’s wife, the writer says, finds it harder to look after the accounts of the repair workshop: the shop may leave her some free time, but it is almost impossible for her to leave it and help the proprietor keep his account book. In some firms a customer who asks for one or more repairs first goes through the shop, where the dealer’s wife receives him and gives him a repair ticket before he enters the workshop. The writer advises against this system: the customer likes to discuss matters with the proprietor, and however well the wife knows the workings of a machine, mechanics is in everyone’s mind a man’s business. The best help she can give is a duplicate-copy manifold book. Each repair is noted under a running number (Réparation N° 6, 7, 8 and so on), together with the customer’s name and address, the number of the bicycle and its make, and then, very distinctly, the repairs to be done.]

[Ebykr summary, right column. It is often hard for the proprietor to quote the price of spare parts on the spot, as he lacks time for the necessary searching; but he can send the customer to the shop, where his wife can give the information wanted, since the customer always likes to know roughly what he will have to pay. The writer says to enter on the repair ticket the time within which the work will be done and to keep that promise, so that the customer will remember the firm’s punctuality. The wife can also help by preparing small movable boxes painted in bright colors, in which the parts taken off the bicycles under repair can be put. Nothing is easier than to pin to each a slip of paper bearing the repair number, or even to chalk it on. The customer who sees the order of the workshop will leave without worry, and the duplicate of the manifold in his pocket leaves him no doubt about the repairs in hand, since he knows the proprietor will keep to the work shown on the ticket.]

[A boxed text article in two columns, ruled with a heavy black line along the top and the left side. The title CHRONIQUE DU PLUMIER stands across the head in large heavy decorated capitals, and the subtitle L’ATELIER DE RÉPARATION centered beneath it in smaller spaced capitals. The text below runs in roman type with indented paragraphs. No drawing, photograph, signature or agency mark appears.]