I recall a coworker who I used to work with in the heyday of cable TV, a long while back:

Caller: “Yeah. Lightning struck just outside, then my cable went out. What happened?”

Coworker: “You seem to have all the relevant information there, friend!”

My coworker helped him put all the pieces together. The caller sounded half in awe, and half in annoyance by the time he was done.

Before the streaming era, I worked for a dreaded cable TV company in their payment center. A customer comes in and wants to pay their cable bill but wants to use their EBT card.

Me: “I’m sorry, but we cannot accept your EBT card for payment.”

The customer opens their Gucci wallet and flips through a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

Customer: “I can’t seem to find my credit card, and I have to save my cash for groceries.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but we cannot accept EBT for payment against your cable bill.”

Customer: “Why not? I can’t believe you’re cutting off my service! It’s winter, and you can’t shut off utilities until spring.”

Me: “Well, technically, cable isn’t a utility, so—”

Customer: “—well f*** this! I’m calling the attorney general!” *Storms out.*

A few years ago, I was working for a cable, home phone, and ISP company in a support for a frontline staff role. Part of this was faking being a supervisor so the actual supervisors didn’t have to be verbally abused. Garbage system, I know, but what can you do?

I got a call from a frontline person telling me this guy had asked to speak to someone about his three rental properties, and I took the call.

Caller: “You said that I wouldn’t have to pay for long distance on these three accounts.”

Me: “Oh. Well, let me go have a look at the notes on the accounts and—”

Caller: “NO! YOU WILL CANCEL MY SERVICES AT ALL THREE PLACES!”

Me: “I just need to look at the notes written on your account to—”

Caller: “NO, YOU WON’T! IF THIS IS THE SERVICE YOU ARE PROVIDING, JUST CANCEL THEM ALL!”

Begin malicious compliance. I needed to make sure he was, in fact, the guy who could cancel these services at all three accounts. I asked him when he would like the services to stop.

Caller: “WHY ARE YOU STILL ASKING ME THINGS?! IMMEDIATELY!”

Me: “Okay, sir, I just want to make sure you are asking to me cancel all services — phone, cable, and Internet?”

Caller: “[Series of swears]! YES! ALL THREE SERVICES AT ALL THREE PLACES!”

It was pretty close to midnight, and these places, being rental properties on a Friday night, probably had people living there. Also, it didn’t seem that [Caller] lived at any of them.

So, I went through each of the three accounts and shut down the services — the phone, the cable, and the internet. I told the system to shut everything down. It also gave us the option to immediately stop the services from working, and I told it yes. This meant that everything stopped at the properties at once.

Everything, immediately. Watching TV? Not anymore. Looking at memes? NOPE. Oh, were you making a phone call? NOT ANYMORE.

I can only imagine the series of panicky texts and cell phone calls that guy had that evening because everything was shut off.

The next time I was at work, I checked the notes on these closed accounts only to find that the tenants had called in and were told the services were cancelled. These were followed by notes from an actual supervisor — if you get loud enough, the real supes have to do their jobs — saying that after reviewing the call [Caller] had with me, they felt I had done exactly what the customer asked, and there was nothing else we would do.

It turned out that [Caller] was mad at me because I followed his directions — and because his tenants called him enraged after midnight about how nothing they had was working.

It’s been a while since I spun a tale from my wireline days, so I figured I’d talk about one of the times I was stuck training someone. This guy seemed all right. He was young, but he seemed intelligent, came across as well-spoken, and was not afraid to get his hands dirty. I wasn’t experienced enough to realize that that was, in itself, a red flag I should have paid closer attention to. He was rather young, though, so hereafter, I will refer to him (as I did in “real life”) as “the kid”.

We roll up on a house to install new service. I introduce the kid and myself to our customer, hands are shaken all around, and we get a tour of the work. Of course, they have old-a** plant outside, so we gotta rip and replace the NID (Network Interface Device), run a new drop, new Cat-5e (network cable) home run, the works. The dude doesn’t want his old cable wire (it was crap RG-59 anyway), so we get to use it for pull string. Sweet.

Now I’ve watched this kid replace three NIDs already, so I decide to let his little wings fly. I go inside to scout the layout and plan the Cat-5 (cable) run. It’s easy to run wires to two locations for computers due to the crap coaxial cable, so I upsell the guy. Sweet — more time for the job and a few bucks on my check when he pays the bill.

I go back outside and see the old NID on the ground and wires hanging off of the side of the garage. The kid is walking up with a new NID in his hand.

Kid: “Yo, I think there might be a second NID. In the garage.”

Hmm… odd, but not unheard of.

Me: “Why?”

Kid: “Oh, the drop wire went inside there. I cut it off here but didn’t go inside to dig it out yet.”

Alarm bells. I look.

Me: “Kid, that wasn’t our drop wire.”

We go inside, I ask the customer if we can go into the garage, and he waves me to the door. We go in, and I point at the box mounted on the wall.

Me: *To the kid* “You just cut their sprinkler system off.”

And I give him The Stare. He goes white and starts twitching.

Me: “So… what do you think you should do about it?”

The kid goes into full-blown panic mode.

Kid: “Do I have to pay to get it fixed?!”

I decide to terrorize him a bit.

Me: “No, the company will pay for it, but since you’re new and in training, you might be fired. And since you’re supposed to be under my watch, I’ll probably be written up for letting you do it, if not fired myself.”

More panicking. I decide to relent a bit.

Me: “But we have a chance. First, we go tell the customer what happened, and why. Be honest. Don’t bulls*** him.”

I step out of the way and gesture to him to lead the way. The kid walks like he’s at a funeral but goes up to the customer.

Kid: “Uh, sir… I have to tell you something. I made a mistake.”

The customer looks up with an “Oh, f***” look on his face.

Customer: “Well, this can’t be good. What happened?”

The kid tells the story.

Customer: “Well, that sucks. What are y’all going to do about it?”

The kid is silent. I step in.

Me: “Sir, I can call my manager, and we’ll get a claim started to get it repaired as soon as we can. Or, if you’re willing, I have the equipment to splice in some replacement wire in a waterproof enclosure. I’ll have it fixed and we’ll get your new service going shortly.”

For my own sake as much as the kid’s, I hold my breath a little bit as the customer thinks for a moment.

Customer: “Well, if I don’t like it, I’ll just do a claim. All right, go ahead and fix it, but it had better be clean.”

Me: “You got it, sir. The kid here is going to be inside soon to run the new wires we talked about after he finishes up outside. I’ll check on him periodically to make sure there are no more mistakes.”

We get to work. I’ve honestly never touched a sprinkler controller before, but I know enough to know it’s just a big-a** switch, no sprinklers running meant no voltage on the wires, and that wire is wire. It takes a while with all of the soldering and heat shrinking with my lighter, but I get it done, and it is clean AF.

I keep checking on the kid. He is absolutely on his best behavior and honestly doing the best work I have seen — everything perfect and neat.

Once I am done, after poking at the analog switch controller and figuring out how it works, I power it back up and test turning on the sprinklers. Thankfully, it works. BIG sigh of relief.

I finish up the (real reason I am there) job with the trainee and verify everything. Three TVs and two computers are happily connected to our service. We run through the service demo. Of course, I make the kid do it. Once we are done and our customer is happy, I take him to see my repair work.

Customer: “Well, of course, there are more boxes on my house, but I imagine that short of digging up the wire, that’s probably the best anyone could have done. Thanks for making it right without putting me through a lot of trouble.”

We shook hands all around again (yes, even the kid got a good handshake), I left him my number in case he had any issues, and we moved on. Never got a repeat out of that job. I told my manager what happened, since I’m that honest guy, and he laughed and told me how he would’ve fixed the wire.

The kid grew to be a pretty d*** good tech. When I quit, he was a union steward and had been taking some of the same chronic repair jobs I had been doing for waaaaay too long and was resolving them. That made me happy. Also, one night when we both happened to roll into the shop at the same time, he invited me out for beer and paid the tab. I considered that paid up in full.

We’ve all dropped the ball at some point. I was glad I helped him get over his mistake to grow to be a d*** good tech and taught him how to handle his mistakes with integrity. (Even though he had me to bail his a** out that time!)

In my younger years, I did tech support for a cable company. The senior representatives would get time off the phones to walk around and provide support to other reps. One night, I was on support when I was flagged down by another senior agent, “Leslie”.

Me: “What’s going on?”

Leslie: “This customer wants a man to troubleshoot with because ‘a woman obviously couldn’t understand something this complicated’.”

This was in the early 2000s when HD was becoming a big deal and we had recently released our second set-top box capable of HD. There were only eight channels with HD programs, but it was still a big deal.

I took the phone from Leslie.

Customer: “This technology is too complicated for a woman to understand! I’m glad I have a man on the line — finally!”

Me: “Sir, this technology is still new and definitely complicated, but luckily, some of the senior agents here were actually involved in the testing and development of the troubleshooting we use, so if I don’t have the answers, I have people around me who will.”

The customer was greatly relieved and explained his issue, to which I replied:

Me: “Okay, give me a moment to look into this… Hey, Leslie, the guy says his box is doing [problem]. What should I ask him to do first?”