19 ms·

I was a "broadband technician" around then and AT&T Broadband did not give AF if you were stealing cable or not. I only handled cable modem installs and quit af

I was a "broadband technician" around then and AT&T Broadband did not give AF if you were stealing cable or not. I only handled cable modem installs and quit after a year to go major in philosophy and because: - Getting quietly threatened once (with AR-15 up against the customer's front door) on a troubleshooting call that I wasn't able to leave until "the internet started working". - Having to increasingly go do cable TV disconnects because people were usually in a bad way and I had more than one colleague that had either had a gun pulled on them or straight-up shot and left to die up a pole for most of a day while trying to disconnect cable. - Having to increasingly go on cable TV installs because people's shitty TVs backfeeding electricity into the cable line meant I was getting zapped at least once a week. That said, I met a lot of cool people, gave out a lot of free TV/HBO because I didn't care unless the customer was a dick, wrote down a lot of funny stories and ultimately realized that I could go college in spite of dropping out of high school because I happened to install the non-traditional student advisor's cable modem. My colleagues said they'd see me back at the shop in four years after I graduated with a philosophy degree. Jokes on them, I dropped out after getting a job at Google.

boneitis 3y ago
I guess it really did depend on the mood and demeanor of whatever technician got sent out on a given day. Back in those same years, it was a painful, nonstop pendulum swing every month-or-two, between a) cripplingly unusable internet, and b) working Internet but with absolutely every channel unlocked for free. Everytime something happened that required a technician to come out while it was in state "b", it always triggered a stern talking to to teenage-me from a tech and them putting the filter back on and ruining the Internet again until finally the next time another tech presumably couldn't fix it without again removing the filter. I frequently had successive visits that left me stranded in state "a". Comcast, man.
- euroderf 3y ago
  The invisible hand of the free market has clearly worked to perfection.
  - Cyphase 3y ago
    Whatever else you think on these topics, government-enforced utility monopolies aren't the free market.
    - OhMeadhbh 3y ago
      The phrase "free market" comes from Adam Smith who used it to describe "markets free from rent-seeking behaviour." So careful there, free markets may not be what you think either.
    - throw0101c 3y ago
      > Whatever else you think on these topics, government-enforced utility monopolies aren't the free market. They tried non-monopoly power and wireline phone markets in their early history and they didn't work. A lot of times a company would go bankrupt, but their wires would be on the poles and would degrade to the point of falling apart and dangling, which would then make contact with a live wire and folks would get electrocuted when they touched it.
      - agloe_dreams 3y ago
        In fairness, this would be in the times before common usage. Also, this totally happens in the current state too as major companies buy the little guys up and then do little to actually care for the lines.
noduerme 3y ago
Most of this story is horrific and ...funny. You should write a screenplay. We had free HBO in my house in the early 90s because the cable guy apparently just decided to let us have it. I never understood how that worked.
- hn72774 3y ago
  A small in-line filter
  - MertsA 3y ago
    Or really the lack of a small in-line filter. Nobody at the head end knows if a house is getting more channels than they paid for until an audit years later turns up a discrepancy. At that point you don't really know if it was the homeowner doing it or a mistake by a technician so all you can do is install the filter and watch that house for convenient mistakes from that point on.
tamrix 3y ago
Sounds like a bigger problem with your society than the job.
- OhMeadhbh 3y ago
  Now now. Be nice.
Aloha 3y ago
It generally was never their TVs. It was the neutral to their house failing and using the cable line shield and it's associated grounds as a neutral.
wkat4242 3y ago
The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job early on in my career (involving cheap phone calling devices with customers including consumers and often dodgy 'calling shops'). But the most dangerous situation I faced was a customer with a heavy dose of the flu, lol. And roadside fastfood.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  > I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing or murdering people. I take it you have not actually visited the United States.
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    It seems like you’re the one that hasn’t been here. That’s a shocking number of gun related incidents in the GP. Seems like accessing TV/internet must be an issue like road rage that brings out the absolute worst in people. People don’t go around popping shots at technicians or waving their weapons around in the US.
    - noduerme 3y ago
      I'd be interested to know what state they were working in.
      - cutemonster 3y ago
        If you work as a cable technician, 6 customers a day, that's around 2000 in a year. If 1 in 100 is mentally ill, in a bad mood (TV broken!) and with a gun ... Maybe there's some selection bias: You'll tend to meet angry people, who are more dumb (couldn't fix the problem themselves?)? Maybe in any weapon loving place, a job where you visit lots of people at their homes and help fixing something that's broken, is mildly dangerous?
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
I feel you about getting zapped. I visited Catalonia for a month in 2008, and I was trying to help improve OTA reception on my fiancée's TV. She had a roof antenna installed. Little did I know that the antenna in Europe is actually energized by design (I think I found out later?) and I received several non-damaging but definitely "means business" shocks whilst trying to manipulate the cables.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > Little did I know that the antenna in Europe is actually energized by design (I think I found out later?) A normal rooftop antenna is not energized. However, if that's in a house, there likely is a power amplifier placed in the line (or, for more fancy setups, a powered splitter box) to make sure every antenna socket can have a TV plugged in without compromising signal integrity.
- NavinF 3y ago
  > the antenna in Europe is actually energized by design wtf. Wanna drop some links?
themerone 3y ago
I met an at&t installer who was intercepted by law reinforcement who wan'ted him to go into a house wearing a wire.
tortue0 3y ago
When I worked at an ISP in the 90s the amount of threats and verbal abuse from customers was wild. One guy who ran a event ticket operation (selling tickets to events) we installed a T1 for the phone company wouldn't go out unless they could bring a security guard. The same guy once came to our office and waited outside in the parking lot and followed one of my coworkers home demanding that she fix his internet. Her father came out and confronted him and he took off. Another time someone was mad that his address didn't qualify for DSL because "the man was keeping him down from getting fast internet". Later in life I worked at the phone company and linemen told me stories about being high on a pole in rough neighborhoods and being accosted by folks on the ground brandishing pistols demanding to know whose phone line they were tapping (they tried to explain that stuff is done remotely but they didn't understand).
- znpy 3y ago
  > "the man was keeping him down from getting fast internet". as a non-american... who is supposed do be "the man" ?
  - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
    Any person in authority. In the abstract, the government or big business.
foobazgt 3y ago
A very long time ago I had internet (but not cable tv service) with Comcast. It was generally mediocre reliability, but it's the only option we had. At some point, the service just up and went out entirely. For approximately two months, we had absolutely zero internet service, while Comcast continued to collect our monthly fees. We kept calling, and they kept sending out tech after tech. I don't recall what the final tech fixed, but they complained that all of the previous techs should have spotted the issue. We never got reimbursed for those two months of non-service, but we did magically start getting cable tv after the final tech visit. We figured it was their gesture of kindness for the Comcast hell we'd been through.
- OhMeadhbh 3y ago
  In 2006 we lived at the end of a wooded street and the lineman told me squirrels would run along the elevated cables and after a couple years they would nick the insulation sufficiently for water to seep in and then suddenly the whole neighborhood would lose IP dialtone for several months while they replaced the cables. Sometime around 2015, Comcast seemed to get better. I was able to get dual-stack v4/v6 to the house and bandwidth exceeded advertised rates. When I returned their cable modem after buying my own, returning it was zero-drama / no paperwork problems. Also... in 2015, if you got dual-stack, your support calls were handled by a group with better hold times and generally knew more about what was really going on (rather than reading off a script.) My last experience with Lumen was pretty horrific. Worse than any problems I ever had with Comcast (including the time we didn't have internet service for 3 months.) It's very strange to hear myself say this, but I now have a generally positive opinion of Comcast.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Only about 1 out of 5 techs actually have any idea what they are doing at these cable internet providers. It's great because the company doesn't actually care whether the techs do their job or not because they will bill regardless, and as long as you are waiting for a tech to come fix your service, you aren't taking them to court to get it actually fixed. What the fuck are you going to do about it? Spectrum's ancestor agreed to not offer service in this county so go ahead and switch back to dialup you worthless maggot.
throwaway_e66m 3y ago
I'm not questioning the veracity of your comment, but given the number of comments here (from e.g. non-Americans) expressing surprise or disgust at the seeming frequent and cavalier use of firearms, I think it should be pointed out that it is missing some details that are highly relevant. 1. Pointing a firearm, AR-15 or otherwise, at the cable guy (or anyone else) in a threatening way is a felony in all 50 states, just like in Europe and elsewhere. Using threat of force to prevent a person from leaving is an additional felony (kidnapping) in all 50 states, just like in Europe. I assume you called the police as soon as you got out of there and the perpetrator went to prison for many years? You left that part out, and it's important to stress because non-Americans seem to be getting an erroneous or exaggerated perception of everyday life in the USA. 2. A nitpick, but the firearm in question likely wasn't an AR-15 as "around then" was midway through the valid time frame of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban [1] and while a limited number of pre-ban AR-15s were grandfathered in, they were rare and very expensive. The floodgates opened after its sunset in 2004, after which they became very popular, unlike before the ban. 3. "Pulling a gun on" the cable guy, or shooting the cable guy and "leaving to die up a pole," like all murders, is a felony in all 50 states. You made the right decision to leave such a dangerous job, I feel awful for all your colleagues, and I do hope that the perpetrators did a long time behind bars. 4. Fortunately, that spate of violence seems to have been localized in both space and time: to the best of my knowledge, while such incidents do occur, they're rare. I don't work in the industry, I know several people who do (for many years), and they've told me that they've never had anything like that happen, the main problem they encounter is peoples' hostile dogs in the yard/house. A web search turns up a few incidents, but not many considering how many cable installations take place in America each year. Also, keep in mind that it goes both ways: sometimes the cable guy attacks the customer (and there's no need for a gun, e.g. [2]). 5. "People's shitty TVs backfeeding electricity into the cable line" My guess is, it's not shitty TVs, but rather faulty wiring in the user's house (ground loop, etc.). Anyone who's performed with enough PA systems has had the experience of grabbing the mic and getting a 110 VAC shock. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban [2]: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2022/07/07/company-cable-repair-crime-house-call-responsibility/7654788001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2022/0...
JohnClark1337 3y ago
[dead]

boneitis 3y ago

I guess it really did depend on the mood and demeanor of whatever technician got sent out on a given day. Back in those same years, it was a painful, nonstop pendulum swing every month-or-two, between a) cripplingly unusable internet, and b) working Internet but with absolutely every channel unlocked for free. Everytime something happened that required a technician to come out while it was in state "b", it always triggered a stern talking to to teenage-me from a tech and them putting the filter back on and ruining the Internet again until finally the next time another tech presumably couldn't fix it without again removing the filter. I frequently had successive visits that left me stranded in state "a". Comcast, man.

euroderf 3y ago
The invisible hand of the free market has clearly worked to perfection.
- Cyphase 3y ago
  Whatever else you think on these topics, government-enforced utility monopolies aren't the free market.
  - OhMeadhbh 3y ago
    The phrase "free market" comes from Adam Smith who used it to describe "markets free from rent-seeking behaviour." So careful there, free markets may not be what you think either.
  - throw0101c 3y ago
    > Whatever else you think on these topics, government-enforced utility monopolies aren't the free market. They tried non-monopoly power and wireline phone markets in their early history and they didn't work. A lot of times a company would go bankrupt, but their wires would be on the poles and would degrade to the point of falling apart and dangling, which would then make contact with a live wire and folks would get electrocuted when they touched it.
    - agloe_dreams 3y ago
      In fairness, this would be in the times before common usage. Also, this totally happens in the current state too as major companies buy the little guys up and then do little to actually care for the lines.

noduerme 3y ago

Most of this story is horrific and ...funny. You should write a screenplay. We had free HBO in my house in the early 90s because the cable guy apparently just decided to let us have it. I never understood how that worked.

hn72774 3y ago
A small in-line filter
- MertsA 3y ago
  Or really the lack of a small in-line filter. Nobody at the head end knows if a house is getting more channels than they paid for until an audit years later turns up a discrepancy. At that point you don't really know if it was the homeowner doing it or a mistake by a technician so all you can do is install the filter and watch that house for convenient mistakes from that point on.

tamrix 3y ago

Sounds like a bigger problem with your society than the job.

OhMeadhbh 3y ago
Now now. Be nice.

Aloha 3y ago

It generally was never their TVs. It was the neutral to their house failing and using the cable line shield and it's associated grounds as a neutral.

wkat4242 3y ago

The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job early on in my career (involving cheap phone calling devices with customers including consumers and often dodgy 'calling shops'). But the most dangerous situation I faced was a customer with a heavy dose of the flu, lol. And roadside fastfood.

dreamcompiler 3y ago
> I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing or murdering people. I take it you have not actually visited the United States.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  It seems like you’re the one that hasn’t been here. That’s a shocking number of gun related incidents in the GP. Seems like accessing TV/internet must be an issue like road rage that brings out the absolute worst in people. People don’t go around popping shots at technicians or waving their weapons around in the US.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    I'd be interested to know what state they were working in.
    - cutemonster 3y ago
      If you work as a cable technician, 6 customers a day, that's around 2000 in a year. If 1 in 100 is mentally ill, in a bad mood (TV broken!) and with a gun ... Maybe there's some selection bias: You'll tend to meet angry people, who are more dumb (couldn't fix the problem themselves?)? Maybe in any weapon loving place, a job where you visit lots of people at their homes and help fixing something that's broken, is mildly dangerous?

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

I feel you about getting zapped. I visited Catalonia for a month in 2008, and I was trying to help improve OTA reception on my fiancée's TV. She had a roof antenna installed. Little did I know that the antenna in Europe is actually energized by design (I think I found out later?) and I received several non-damaging but definitely "means business" shocks whilst trying to manipulate the cables.

mschuster91 3y ago
> Little did I know that the antenna in Europe is actually energized by design (I think I found out later?) A normal rooftop antenna is not energized. However, if that's in a house, there likely is a power amplifier placed in the line (or, for more fancy setups, a powered splitter box) to make sure every antenna socket can have a TV plugged in without compromising signal integrity.
NavinF 3y ago
> the antenna in Europe is actually energized by design wtf. Wanna drop some links?

themerone 3y ago

I met an at&t installer who was intercepted by law reinforcement who wan'ted him to go into a house wearing a wire.

tortue0 3y ago

When I worked at an ISP in the 90s the amount of threats and verbal abuse from customers was wild. One guy who ran a event ticket operation (selling tickets to events) we installed a T1 for the phone company wouldn't go out unless they could bring a security guard. The same guy once came to our office and waited outside in the parking lot and followed one of my coworkers home demanding that she fix his internet. Her father came out and confronted him and he took off. Another time someone was mad that his address didn't qualify for DSL because "the man was keeping him down from getting fast internet". Later in life I worked at the phone company and linemen told me stories about being high on a pole in rough neighborhoods and being accosted by folks on the ground brandishing pistols demanding to know whose phone line they were tapping (they tried to explain that stuff is done remotely but they didn't understand).

znpy 3y ago
> "the man was keeping him down from getting fast internet". as a non-american... who is supposed do be "the man" ?
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  Any person in authority. In the abstract, the government or big business.

foobazgt 3y ago

A very long time ago I had internet (but not cable tv service) with Comcast. It was generally mediocre reliability, but it's the only option we had. At some point, the service just up and went out entirely. For approximately two months, we had absolutely zero internet service, while Comcast continued to collect our monthly fees. We kept calling, and they kept sending out tech after tech. I don't recall what the final tech fixed, but they complained that all of the previous techs should have spotted the issue. We never got reimbursed for those two months of non-service, but we did magically start getting cable tv after the final tech visit. We figured it was their gesture of kindness for the Comcast hell we'd been through.

OhMeadhbh 3y ago
In 2006 we lived at the end of a wooded street and the lineman told me squirrels would run along the elevated cables and after a couple years they would nick the insulation sufficiently for water to seep in and then suddenly the whole neighborhood would lose IP dialtone for several months while they replaced the cables. Sometime around 2015, Comcast seemed to get better. I was able to get dual-stack v4/v6 to the house and bandwidth exceeded advertised rates. When I returned their cable modem after buying my own, returning it was zero-drama / no paperwork problems. Also... in 2015, if you got dual-stack, your support calls were handled by a group with better hold times and generally knew more about what was really going on (rather than reading off a script.) My last experience with Lumen was pretty horrific. Worse than any problems I ever had with Comcast (including the time we didn't have internet service for 3 months.) It's very strange to hear myself say this, but I now have a generally positive opinion of Comcast.
mrguyorama 3y ago
Only about 1 out of 5 techs actually have any idea what they are doing at these cable internet providers. It's great because the company doesn't actually care whether the techs do their job or not because they will bill regardless, and as long as you are waiting for a tech to come fix your service, you aren't taking them to court to get it actually fixed. What the fuck are you going to do about it? Spectrum's ancestor agreed to not offer service in this county so go ahead and switch back to dialup you worthless maggot.

throwaway_e66m 3y ago

I'm not questioning the veracity of your comment, but given the number of comments here (from e.g. non-Americans) expressing surprise or disgust at the seeming frequent and cavalier use of firearms, I think it should be pointed out that it is missing some details that are highly relevant. 1. Pointing a firearm, AR-15 or otherwise, at the cable guy (or anyone else) in a threatening way is a felony in all 50 states, just like in Europe and elsewhere. Using threat of force to prevent a person from leaving is an additional felony (kidnapping) in all 50 states, just like in Europe. I assume you called the police as soon as you got out of there and the perpetrator went to prison for many years? You left that part out, and it's important to stress because non-Americans seem to be getting an erroneous or exaggerated perception of everyday life in the USA. 2. A nitpick, but the firearm in question likely wasn't an AR-15 as "around then" was midway through the valid time frame of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban [1] and while a limited number of pre-ban AR-15s were grandfathered in, they were rare and very expensive. The floodgates opened after its sunset in 2004, after which they became very popular, unlike before the ban. 3. "Pulling a gun on" the cable guy, or shooting the cable guy and "leaving to die up a pole," like all murders, is a felony in all 50 states. You made the right decision to leave such a dangerous job, I feel awful for all your colleagues, and I do hope that the perpetrators did a long time behind bars. 4. Fortunately, that spate of violence seems to have been localized in both space and time: to the best of my knowledge, while such incidents do occur, they're rare. I don't work in the industry, I know several people who do (for many years), and they've told me that they've never had anything like that happen, the main problem they encounter is peoples' hostile dogs in the yard/house. A web search turns up a few incidents, but not many considering how many cable installations take place in America each year. Also, keep in mind that it goes both ways: sometimes the cable guy attacks the customer (and there's no need for a gun, e.g. [2]). 5. "People's shitty TVs backfeeding electricity into the cable line" My guess is, it's not shitty TVs, but rather faulty wiring in the user's house (ground loop, etc.). Anyone who's performed with enough PA systems has had the experience of grabbing the mic and getting a 110 VAC shock. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban [2]: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2022/07/07/company-cable-repair-crime-house-call-responsibility/7654788001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2022/0...

JohnClark1337 3y ago

[dead]