Back in the day, Dad ran a photocopier dealership.
He had a team of highly-paid salesmen (and they were pretty much all men) driving around the countryside convincing school principals and the like that they needed new photocopiers.
The profit margin on the machines was basically zero.
But the salespeople earned their keep, because every large photocopier sold also had a service contract that charged a fee for every copy made.
The game was up by the early 2000s when the stand-alone photocopier was replaced with networked laser printers, but while it lasted it paid for a lot of salespeople’s fancy cars, boats, and overseas holidays.
> But the salespeople earned their keep, because every large photocopier sold also had a service contract that charged a fee for every copy made.
And without the service contracts, schools are fucked when the printer breaks down. Like, here in Germany, a single copier can run through entire crates worth of paper in a day.
It's absolutely ridiculous how fossilized our education system has become. We should be using laptops and tablets loaded with e-books and digital worksheets. No one cares about handwriting anything outside of school any more.
no - laptops and tablets with e-books break the attention span of students from minutes into only seconds.. Humans are able to see things that change constantly, but there is a cost. Secondly, abundance past a certain level creates apathy and overwhelm. Third, there is a realization that giving any screens to children below a certain age is just basically harmful to regular brain development.
He had a team of highly-paid salesmen (and they were pretty much all men) driving around the countryside convincing school principals and the like that they needed new photocopiers.
The profit margin on the machines was basically zero.
But the salespeople earned their keep, because every large photocopier sold also had a service contract that charged a fee for every copy made.
The game was up by the early 2000s when the stand-alone photocopier was replaced with networked laser printers, but while it lasted it paid for a lot of salespeople’s fancy cars, boats, and overseas holidays.