It's a lovely event and people happy. If you're into repairing stuff, you might know about some nasty tricks by the manufacturer like plastic gears where past models had metal gears and so on. Modern stuff is really hard to repair. Electronic components are just too small to repair, stuff is controlled by a microchip and debugging and understanding it, is not a project you do within an hour. There are also people who bring stuff from Temu to fix which is almost impossible. Time and necessary effort for repair are one of your biggest enemies in a repair cafe. Sure you can repair a fully automated coffee machine. But that usually takes some hours. So technically you could repair it, but the time just won't let your. It's voluntary work after all. And most people appreciate it and are generous with their donations.

The biggest downside of voluntary working at a repair cafe are a certain type of people. I've heard things like "You should do this more often" (in a way of once a month isn't a good service), people act like it's a free service, where they can bring stuff and come back later to pick it up again.

But really: Most people are really sweet and it's fun to figure out what's wrong and in best case fix it. Some people are already happy to know that they at least tried or what they have to do to fix it later on their own. Sometimes you also get the chance to explain that people have to be more careful about their devices. Once I had a 3 year old vacuum cleaner with so must moisture that the carbon brushes were stuck because the frame oxidized. Or another vacuum cleaner that was probably used outside with very rough dirt. The hose was clogged because of a stick and a mixture of leaves and dirt that pilled up.

It's a fun job and making people smile makes me happy too