The lovely situations I find myself in:
Keyed an add-outlet for a customer [was there on a service call on a busy day] to replace their self-ran 59 spaghetti which was borking up their digital, wind up going back a couple of weeks later for an out-of-spec modem [see next entry] and the installer that came out just told the customer, "You already have cable in those locations, I don't need to install it." Needless to say, they still had a tiling problem.
Go back to above job for an out-of-spec mta, tx is at 51. Ok, first things first, remove the splitter I was told to put on during original call not to get it in spec, but to show an effort [again, see next entry] and run it again. Tx still too high. Swapped the outlet/splitter config in the house box to give it another 3.5 dB. "One more time, please, mrs dispatcher!" It didn't budge. "Are you running the modem or mta?" "I'm running the mta on your out-of-spec sheet." Well, let's have a look. That mac is not on the account or in the house. So we run the one on the account, and I get "tx too low - give it 7dB of split."
Each house we hit, we must run levels on all modems and mtas, and either get em in spec, get the sro keyed to do so, or get the line call keyed. Not complaining about this, it's a healthy approach. However, if we can't get it in spec, and key a line problem on the plant, before we do so, we are told to put extra splitters on em and re-run levels to "show that we tried to get it in spec." I'm sorry, but putting extra loss on a modem line that has too low of an rx or too high of a tx is NOT GONNA HELP. Someone smack em one for me.
Let's talk keying line problems. All line probs must be approved by sup before keying. Alright, but can we do two things - get a sup that knows what you are talking about when you tell him a single dig. carrier is bad at the tap, or that can count drop loss for that matter. Second, I'm no lineman, but I would bet it would help ya'll fix the stuff if the people keying our line escalations ENTERED THE ACTUAL PROBLEM instead of just levels, tap info, and which lines of bus are affected. I'm tired of hearing, "the plant maintainance crew didn't find a problem with the tap," because the levels all look good even though the pic's fuzzy, and noone told them what the fucking problem was to begin with. I'd kick the shit back too if I had no clue what I was looking for.
I know there are plenty of you dawgs that have years and years on me, but I have enough to say, there are companies you work for that you get to the shop early, get the hell outta there and into the field to make everyone some money, stay hungry for the work, and love every hour of OT. There are also companies you work for that when you hear the alarm every morning, you seriously consider whether or not you wanna deal with it that day.
