Incommunicado
I apologize for my absence from the blogosphere. The storm which ended the heat wave last week, knocked out my phone line. And since I have DSL, my internet access went with it. I didn't discover this until Friday morning and was thus informed that I would have to wait until Tuesday for repairs. As I live at the end of the line, I was the only one in my neighborhood who was affected.
The repairs were quick. I don't think that it took the technician more than 20 minutes to find the problem and fix it. And that includes the time spent going up and down in the bucket to the pole. Fortunately for me, the problem was at the pole and not in my house (see below).
Nice guy. Normally, he works on networks, but because the storm was so bad, AT&T was forced to bring guys in from other departments. I asked him what they'd do in a hurricane. Bring 'em in from out of state if necessary. Apparently, a few teams of techs were loaned out to BellSouth to fix New Orleans after Katrina.
And there's trouble afoot if you work for the resurging phone company. A new techie job position was created that pays $10/hr. He expects that when the current contract expires, alot of guys will be forced into this new position or else lose their jobs (similar to what happened 2 years ago).
So let me get this straight, AT&T/SBC wants to pay technically savvy people $10/hr? That's bad enough for customer service reps but for a position that requires a fair amount of knowledge? Since the phone company charges $85 for the first half hour (if you don't have the inline maintenance contract), where's all that extra money going to go? To the guys with letters for job titles, perhaps? Pardon me for sounding like a socialist, but capitalism is hard to defend when it treats the workers like mules while the fat cats get fatter.
I thanked the guy for his work. Being appreciated for one's job never gets old.
Anyway, I'm back online and will now attempt to sort through the email from the past 5 days.
\_/
DED
The repairs were quick. I don't think that it took the technician more than 20 minutes to find the problem and fix it. And that includes the time spent going up and down in the bucket to the pole. Fortunately for me, the problem was at the pole and not in my house (see below).
Nice guy. Normally, he works on networks, but because the storm was so bad, AT&T was forced to bring guys in from other departments. I asked him what they'd do in a hurricane. Bring 'em in from out of state if necessary. Apparently, a few teams of techs were loaned out to BellSouth to fix New Orleans after Katrina.
And there's trouble afoot if you work for the resurging phone company. A new techie job position was created that pays $10/hr. He expects that when the current contract expires, alot of guys will be forced into this new position or else lose their jobs (similar to what happened 2 years ago).
So let me get this straight, AT&T/SBC wants to pay technically savvy people $10/hr? That's bad enough for customer service reps but for a position that requires a fair amount of knowledge? Since the phone company charges $85 for the first half hour (if you don't have the inline maintenance contract), where's all that extra money going to go? To the guys with letters for job titles, perhaps? Pardon me for sounding like a socialist, but capitalism is hard to defend when it treats the workers like mules while the fat cats get fatter.
I thanked the guy for his work. Being appreciated for one's job never gets old.
Anyway, I'm back online and will now attempt to sort through the email from the past 5 days.
\_/
DED
posted by DED at 11:58 AM
1 Comments:
That sucks.
And I can relate.
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