Surprisingly Thankless Job

Many years ago I worked for a rural telephone carrier. It was good and bad. Technically I learned a lot, but as a job it turned out to not be so great. I was told it was a job that would grow, but that never happened. I was told they would send me to training schools. That never happened. I just got OJT on the fly. Fortunately I am relatively sharp and often that was enough.

One day I was in another telephone exchange doing some service work when a storm blew in. I knew I couldn't make the 10 mile drive back through the mountains because all the washes would be flooded. I would have to go around the long way for a couple hundred miles on the Interstates to get home. I never made it to the Interstate. The rain came down so hard that I couldn't tell where the edge of the road ended and the farm fields began. I pulled off in an old abandoned gas station until the rain let off enough that I could atleast see.

When I looked out the road was completely underwater in the direction of the highway, but I could tell where it was going back towards out central switching office. I decided to head back to the central office and sleep on the floor if the storm didn't let off.

When I walked inside it was like a scene out of a disaster movie. Power was out and the roof was gone and/or cave in. Water was pouring in over the equipment. Nobody answered the service radio, and I had some problems trying to make a long distance call from the office. Thinking on my feet I was able to call a local farmer and ask if it was ok for me to take some cotton module cover tarps from the local cotton gin and use it to try and protect the equipment. He said take anything I needed.

At the time I didn't realize how hard I was working, but after I had impromptu tents and tarp gutters shielding the equipment I realized I was dying of thirst. There was some distilled water bottles out front for topping off the backup batteries. I took a swig, but thankfully didn't swallow. It started to burn my mouth. I ran outside to spit it out, and face down I went into a deep puddle to flush the rest out with mud and rain water. It must have been a very weak acid, and I must have reacted quickly because the burning subsided, and I seemed to experience no actual burns. Thank goodness I didn't swallow any. They were supposed to be JUST distilled water.

Finally soaked and covered in mud I head back into the office and grabbed a test handset to check if anybody else was able to make any outside calls. Nobody had been able to connect outside of the exchange so I expected the long distance carrier had been taken out by the storm, Just for the heck of it I started plugging into and unplugging from our long distance trunks and an AT&T operator came on the line. (Might have been Mountain Bell. I forget.)

I told her my situation, and that I needed to get ahold of somebody with my company. By then I had concluded the battery power was to low, and that was why long distances wasn't working. Sorry I've forgotten some of the technical detail since then. I asked her to stay on the line in case there was a real emergency and I grabbed another test set. Any time I saw a line light up I plugged in and asked them if it was an emergency or if it could wait until the power came back on. The operator was able to get ahold of my supervisor and relayed a message back that he would be coming around the long way with a back up generator.

Hungry, cold, wet, thirsty and tired I waited it out. When my supervisor showed up we plugged in the generator and powered up the central office. Amazingly everything worked. That robust old mechanical switching equipment had all survived. Finally sometime around midnight I made a couple long distance test calls, thanked the operator who had stayed on the line for hours, and headed for home.

I didn't expect anything from that remote community. Except for one farmer who graciously allowed me to destroy a few dollars worth of tarps nobody had a clue how hard I had worked to make sure no emergency went unanswered and that the phone central office for their exchange wasn't destroyed. I kind of expected a pat on the back or an attaboy from management for going above and beyond. I didn't really expect more than that though. I was hopeful I might get to see some of that job growth I had been promised when I joined the company, but that definitely didn't happen.

My immediate supervisor (more a coworker with seniority and to whom I deferred on job decisions) did seem to recognize my efforts but that was it. When I had the opportunity to talk about it with the president of the company he said in what I felt was a demeaning and unpleasant tone, "You shouldn't have bothered. You should have let it all get destroyed. The insurance would have covered it." That just took the wind right out of my sails, but that wasn't the end of it.

A short time later I got a call from my supervisor's supervisor to go check out the work being done reroofing that central office. I hopped in my service truck and headed towards the road through the mountains, but before I got that far somebody local flagged me over to tell me they had cut a cable running a septic line on one of the farms. I was expecting a drop line, but it turned out to be a decent size multi pair cable that fed the farm office and about 20 or 30 homes.

I'd always been told multiple customers out of service takes priority over anything else so I got on the service radio. Nobody answered. I went back to my local central office and called the main office. Nobody answered. I had to make the call myself. Multiple customers out of service. I grabbed piece of cable from the yard and a couple underground splice kits from the office, and headed back to fix that cable before they buried it. After it was all spliced and bonded, and the kits were filled with resin and capped I continued on with my original assignment. When I got through the mountains and to the other central office the work crew was gone, but I did climb up on the roof to inspect it. It looked good. I'm not a roofing expert, but I had reroofed a building or three growing up. It was nice and clean. I called the main office and somebody finally answered the phone. I got reamed out for not getting over there first and watching the roofing crew finish up the job. I was stunned. There was nothing I could have done productive other than try not to get in the way, I followed company protocol regarding service outages, and I did get over to inspect the new roof.

That was the beginning of the end for me. I still did my job, but I just didn't care. If it worked when I walked away I didn't care how I got there. If somebody told me to do something I did it and that's all I did. At one point I wouldn't even roll out of bed to call my supervisor to see if he had any work for me that day. A few months later when winter broke I started running trap lines to make a few bucks because I wasn't getting any hours. Technically I had a guaranteed minimum, but I never got any of that. I did schedule and get paid for the few days accumulated vacation time I had coming at least.

One day I got called and asked if I would come in to the main office. I figured that was the end. I was being called in for an exit interview and being terminated. I told them I hadn't worked in two weeks and I really didn't want to spend gas money to come see them when I could use it to check a trap line. When they offered to pay for my day and my mileage I relented.

The president of the company met with me and he seemed genuinely surprised that I was ready to leave. In genuine sounding surprise he said, "You don't want to work here any more even if we want you to stay?" I let him have it. I told him about using my own tools because they ones they supplied were crap. I told him about risking my life to save his company's assets and being told I shouldn't have bothered. I told him about being reamed out for following company protocol and getting multiple customers back in service. There was more. I just touched on the high points in the story. Don't get me wrong. I'm no choir boy. I made my fair share of mistakes I am sure, but I was full of it up to here.

When he asked if there was anything he could do. I said, "Yes. Write me a check today for what you owe me instead of forcing me to wait until the next pay period." He didn't.

The thing is I had a job when I got that one. I was excited about "working for the phone company." I was excited about "being sent to training schools." I was excited about "potential for job growth." I was a worker and a thinker. Like anybody young I didn't always make the right choices, but when I was there I was there 100%. Not just a body, but thinking about the job I was doing and the next one I needed to do. I tried to show how gungho I was and I was prepared to be a real company man.

I don't know how to wrap this up. Vitriole would be small and it was along time ago. I'm not angry about it anymore. I haven't been for a very long time. I did learn a lot from very little and many of the things I did learn I was able to use in my communication contracting business. Heck my old supervisor even worked for me for a while. I'd name names and the company, but it doesn't really matter. I guess if anything it still disappoints me. I thought it was going to be something, and they thought I was nothing in return.