She’s Still an Original in Copier Service
Shortly after Safiyyah Johnson started at Xerox Corp. as copier repair specialist 18 years ago, she received a lesson about what it can be like to be a woman in a male-dominated field.
Johnson was responding to a service call at an import-export business, not one of her regular clients. The proprietor was irate. “My machine is down, and they send a woman!” she recalled him saying. Johnson kept her cool.
“I said, ‘Let me try to fix it, and if you’re not satisfied, you can call for another technician.’ ” Johnson quickly diagnosed the problem, and the machine was soon up and running. The client apologized.
It’s unusual to encounter blatant hostility because of her gender, Johnson said, but as one of the few women in her field, she’s used to getting double takes when she arrives, laptop computer and toolbox in hand. Some assume she’s a sales representative. Some refer to her as “the woman.” Chivalrous men try to carry her equipment.
Even in 1998, when women are represented in many walks of business life, only 5% to 8% of Xerox’s roughly 700 to 800 repair service personnel in Southern California are female.
Catharine Domondon, manager of customer service operations here, attributes it to lack of preparation. Women don’t study physics and electricity in high school as frequently as their male classmates, and these subjects figure prominently in a test that aspiring Xerox technicians must pass.
In 1979, Johnson also lacked the background, but she wasn’t intimidated. “I thought I could do it,” she said. “Everyone in my family is an artist of some kind. . . . I was no stranger to tools.”
A couple of years out of high school, when Johnson was a part-time teller at a Riverside bank, a regular customer suddenly asked, “Have you ever considered repair?” Johnson was suspicious. “I remember thinking, what’s his angle?” she recalled.
It turned out he was a Xerox employee. At the time, the Stamford, Conn.-based corporation was on a campaign to recruit women. Johnson made inquiries, then enrolled in an electronics course at a local community college to prepare for the Xerox test, which only 25% to 40% pass. (It took her two tries.)
Johnson became a Xerox service representative in 1980, specializing in a then-state-of-the-art copier that is primitive by today’s standards. She trained for three weeks at Xerox Document University, a training facility in Leesburg, Va., where Xerox immerses sales and service personnel in hardware nuts and bolts and its service-oriented corporate culture.
Since then, she’s worked on machines of increasing complexity. For the last year, Johnson has been assigned to Xerox’s 5800 copier, a high-speed (120 copies per minute) machine that can also staple, collate and store routine copying jobs. It’s an analog copier, but with built-in memory chips.
With her laptop, Johnson can download information about the machine, such as a log of past service, paper jams and future service needs. She can also diagnose copier problems from afar by linking her laptop to the 5800 by way of an activated phone line.
Johnson is in charge of 30 machines at several large law firms, copy shops and a few small businesses in downtown L.A.’s Bunker Hill area. Johnson walks her beat with the wired world’s latest communication tools: A hand-held radio, cellular phone and pager help her adhere to company policy that technicians respond within 15 minutes of a client call.
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Starting pay for customer service engineers at Xerox is about $30,000, but skilled, experienced technicians earn up to $50,000 plus perks, such as a company car and profit sharing. Johnson is able to maintain a family-friendly 40-hour-a-week schedule, a big plus for the single mother of three. (Her 8-year-old daughter, Erin Viesca, is an occasional player on the NBC daytime soap “Sunset Beach.”)
Xerox isn’t immune to competitive pressures. In April, the company announced it was reducing its 90,000-person worldwide work force by 10% to cut costs. Middle management will take most of the hits, but some cuts in service are possible, according to a Xerox spokesman. Johnson probably doesn’t have to be concerned because of her technical expertise. Other companies have tried to recruit her. “There’s a demand for these skills,” she said.
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Freelance writer Jennifer Pendleton can be reached via e-mail at JPendle327@aol.com.
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AT A GLANCE
* Name: Safiyyah Johnson
* Job: Senior customer service engineer
* Education: Riverside Polytechnic High School
* Home: Lakewood
