CABL Forum - Re: bonehead-a day in the life of

I'm an installer recently contracted by prince, I have about 2 years of cable/sat. experience from many years ago. I'm pretty good at cable modems as that's where most of my former experience is, I get any job(reg. cable/digital/dvr/hdtv/cable modem/wireless router) except voip which I'll been trained for soon. The techs that seem to be the most productive carry out 5 or 6 telephone or cable modems each day, learn those skills......The digital and hd boxes add zero $ to your install while cable/phone modems add quiet a bit.

Prince is a reputable operation from what I've seen in 6 weeks or so, paychecks are on time, support is there. Have a boatload of fellow techs waiting in line for equipment/paperwork so they must be doing something right. This is the first night I read through the forums, I'm glad I followed a VOIP service call contractor's(from another company) advice about where to apply.

Pay has increased weekly as I think my supervisor understands I can handle more and not bitch about it(thats what this forums for). IMHO your direct supevisor controls your routes, if he wants to test you he'll give you feces. If you still get feces after several weeks you may want to consider another career.

Some really nasty side effects around here......
Be prepared to spend up to 30 minutes on hold every time you try to check in a job(averages 10 minutes I'm guessing). Today was a really bad day though, over 100 burned up cell phone minutes.

Gas-plan on visiting Exxon often, especially with larger vehicles.

Cancelled jobs-The more wealthy your installees the less this will happen(just gotta deal with starter castles)

Castles-When you walk up to a 5000 sq. ft house for a $30 install you know your getting the shaft(unless everything is prewired). You still have to figure out the hsd line(you'll get extra $ around here). Be prepared with tools that can isolate several lines. I've been using the power method which unfortunately only deals with one line at a time. Next paycheck I'll buy the tool needed for multiple lines. Usually these castles have 8 to 12 lines coming to the grey box with an old amp in there, to use the amp, you gotta isolate another freaking line(hope there arn't spliiters in the attic). Most of those lines will not be used.
The cable company here only supports 4 plus modem. I was asked today to go back and tell the customer to pay $50 extra for what I hooked up(9 outlets) even though that was the easiest install. I decided to go back and de-activate the idle lines for the customers benefit.

I got home tonight at 9 PM after starting at 7AM($256 earnings-one bad modem caused me to drive to pick up a working modem at 7PM-added 1 hour to my day, the waiting on the phone another hour). The latest I got home before was 7pm, 10 to 12 hour days 6 days a week is the norm.

To sum it up......you can make money in this business, but you have to deal with brain numbing frustrations. If you have a presciption for Xanax your ahead of the field.

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Re: bonehead-a day in the life of