Bad Day for Cable Guys

I am sure I have mentioned on these 'pages' before that my co-workers and I often have to do jobs known in our cable-lingo as 'DNP's.' A DNP is a disconnect for non-pay; we are to knock on the door to collect the outstanding balance before terminating the service. Most often we then go back some time later and turn it back on. Of course, the customer pays a fee for this service.

My second job this morning was one such service call. I had a work order to reconnect the service to a home in a neighborhood served by underground lines. In this case such a job was going to take five minutes longer than the usual three minutes as the pedestals aka 'peds' were behind the homes not out near the street. In most new neighborhoods the peds are in someone's front yard out near the sidewalk.

It was cold but the line to be reconnected was the only one that was disconnected in the ped. I attempted to remove the terminator from the tap where the line had been connected but †he terminator was defective. It was no big deal as there were other ports available on the tap so I simply moved it to one of those. I connected the line, closed and locked the ped, and walked away. Job done. I returned to my warm van, got inside and drove to the next job.

I went about my day and mid-afternoon noticed a trouble call had appeared on my phone. It was at the address I had reconnected earlier and read, 'No Service/All TV's.' In most cases this is the result of the customer tampering with the lines after the service has been terminated and it can be resolved quickly. In this situation I am sorry to say, that was not the case.

This past weekend the company did some kind of firm-ware upgrade to the system that drives our digital and high-definition services. We currently have 10/12 different 'set-top' boxes out in the field. Some models took the automatic upgrade better than others. Some models would not take the upgrade without being unplugged electrically and then allowed to reboot. At this home they had three different models of boxes. Their boxes had been disconnected during the termination and weren't taking the download.

I had to call my boss three times during the hour-plus that I was there for more specific information and to advise him of my progress. I value my independence highly; any need to call him makes for a 'bad day' for me. Ugh.

He has been trying very hard to maintain a good relationship with me after my comments to his evaluation of me back on '08; that is a whole other story best kept never shared here. I saw him briefly at the end of the day today and he said, 'and you think you had a bad day.' I asked what he meant. He went on to tell me the following story.

One of our contractors had pulled up to a house to do a DNP. He had parked his truck in front of the house and went to the door to collect the money. As he explained to the customer that he needed to collect the outstanding balance or disconnect the service; his truck...which he left running due to the cold weather...had slipped out of park, into reverse and had banged the customer's car! Can you imagine...you are there as a 'collection agent' and then you slam into their car? Oh my.

Very funny to picture the scene.

Here I thought I had a bad day.

Hope all's well with everyone.

Have fun and take care.