You arrive at the house at 9:30am, customer not home. (10 mi trip to house = $2.00 at a .20 /mi vehicle operation cost). Company policy is you have to call in and code the job so dispatchers can place a phone call to verify customer is not home before you leave. Once verified you can doortag and roll on to next job. You grab your cell phone and start calling the office. Now the office doesn't have rollover because they want to save a few pennies so you have to dial all four numbers to find a line that is not busy from 60 other techs trying to dispatch (you won't even waste your time trying to nextel because you know you won't get through). Eight minutes later you get through and are immediately placed on hold while dispatcher finishes flirting with her new boyfriend on her company nextel. After a ten minute cell phone call ($1.00) you get your job coded (naturally they put you on hold again to place call to verify customer not home). Since the trip charge does not apply to incomplete jobs so far were -$3.00 on this job (not including what our drive & driveway time is worth).
2:30pm you get a 2 minute call from dispatch (.20) saying customer is now home and you need to go back. Company policy is if anyone calls in by 3:00pm you have to go back. I guess you could elect not to go back if you need some unscheduled vaction time or would like your paycheck to get lost this week and get it sometime next week. Fortunately were not that far away (6mi trip back to house = $1.20). You arrive at 3:40 and customer is all pissed off they had to wait for you to come back. Customer gets more jacked out of shape when you explain that you can not get a cable inside their block exterior wall and there will be a partially exposed cable on the front of the house because of where they want their tv. Customer says only acceptable solution is to move tv and oak entertainment center to opposite wall so outlet can be concealed inside wall. The customer doesn't understand why you won't move their tv and entertainment center for them and mumbles something under their breath. After getting customer signatures and ID your ready to knock this job out. (20 minutes total)
You walk out back and it's ugly. Your survey concludes that in order to pass a qc (last man out rule) you will need to anchor and clip the last ten feet of four existing outlets to the wall, relocate ground block and splitter inside an enclosure, and bond to power all of which is freebie work included under the scope of work for the new outlets. Sure we could replace the drop. Since this underground drop is about 200 feet through nothing but roots and the fact we got three jobs still open well forget about the drop and rework the previous tech's install for free so we don't get a charge back on a potential qc. The attic is a real winner, more ducts, trusses, and insulation, and stored crap than 160 degree air (you know the kind I am talking about). You finish up the install in the living room laying a temp cable across the room to test out the converter and tv reception. It took 3 minutes to call the mso and activate the equipment ($.30) and roughly 50 minutes to complete. Another 4 minute call to in house dispatch to real time status the job ($.40).
Job over right? $16.90 @ 1:35 = $12.67/hr (not including any corporate expenses, but hey it was a crappy job and we didn't lose money)
Next morning when you pick up your route and turn in paperwork you are told the customer called in and complained their cable wasn't working on one of your new outlets. You are told that you are responsible for the job for the first 24 hours and will need to schedule a time today with the customer to stop back and fix it at your own expense. 10 minute call to try to resolve problem over phone ends up in scheduled appointment, 8 mi drive, and 15 minute repair ($2.60 not including your time). Turned out converter is smarter than customer and they couldn't figure out how to hook it back up after husband came home and moved entertainment center and tv to opposite wall.
Job over right? $14.30 @ 2:05 = $7.27/hr (well, at least the customer was polite and appreciative of the free service call)
Two and a half weeks later you find your check is short $22.00. After having office research shortage it turns out you had an mso chargeback for $22.00 because you failed to write down the reason you added the two outlets on the work order. Policy is mso requires a reason next to bill codes on work orders to justify payment. You're told sorry but it can't be resubmitted because mso only provides a 14 day window to resubmit work orders.
Job over right? -$7.70 @ 2:05 = Cost of doing business
Boss pulls you into his office for a private chat. He asks you if you recall installing two outlets and a box at xyz address for such and such 6 months ago. For some odd reason you readily recall the job and explain away the particulars. He tells you the customer called and complained that there are several cracks in the ceiling and the only person that has been in their attic in the last six months was the cable installer. The boss explains that policy is any reasonable allegation of damage makes the installer liable and you will need to fix their ceiling. He politely offers to handle the matter for you with your liability insurance carrier if you prefer.
For purposes of this example were not including any of your time spent in the shop or for any accounting and record keeping, that is assumed to be in the above stated cost of doing business.
While I am certain the above scenario would only represent a small percentage of jobs. I am equally certain I receive a smaller percentage of the installation monies and a larger percentage of the cost of doing business installing services for mso customers.
The Real World
Member #: 43860
Registered: 1/23/2006
Posted:
82
Name:
TDD
Company:
Cable
Occupation:
Slave
Location:
U.S
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