The Cables Of Racism Were Laid Long Ago

It is years ago, and as a university student, I have a summer job installing cable for a cable TV company. More accurately, I am the one who goes around to bury the cable after the cable company has connected the cable to the house. Houses are going up so fast that the cable TV company can’t keep up with subscription demand. In most cases, they just run cables from the street to the house above their grass. They don’t have enough workers to bury the cables, so they promise residents that they will send workers out to bury them as soon as they can.

It sometimes takes six months for the workers to get there. You can imagine homeowners are not happy.

We work in crews of three; I’m with two Hispanic men. We ring the doorbell of a home and there’s no answer. We call the home. No answer. We don’t have a cell number, so we start to bury the cable just as we have done for other houses today.

We are halfway finished when a car pulls up and comes to a sudden stop. A woman gets out and starts yelling at the foreman. He speaks English, but she berates him and insinuates that he is an illegal alien. She keeps demanding that we leave, asking him:

Customer: “Do you understand me? Do you understand me?”

I walk over.

Me: “Ma’am. I understand you. What’s going on?”

Customer: “I want to speak to your boss!”

I point her back to the man she has been berating. She didn’t expect that.

I don’t ever remember seeing racism up close like that until now. I had no idea what Latino workers dealt with on a daily basis. I am disgusted by her behavior.

We explain who we are, show her the work order from the cable company, and explain that we are there to bury the cable. We ask her if she wouldn’t mind if we completed the job.

Customer: “Don’t you move. I’m calling the police.”

And she does. We call the cable company while she is on the phone.

We take a water break. A police officer shows up. I approach carefully and explain what we are doing, showing the work order. He looks at the work order and asks the woman if the address is correct. She rips it out of my hand and looks at it.

Customer: “Yes, that’s my address.”

Officer: “Would it be okay if they completed burying the cable?”

We explain that if it is a bad time, we can come back.

Just then, another vehicle comes flying up the road, the driver slamming on the brakes as he reaches the house. A man (her husband?) jumps out and immediately starts yelling. The officer de-escalates the situation, explaining that we are contractors from the cable company.

The man keeps giving us menacing looks, but eventually, he jumps back in his vehicle and speeds off.

The homeowner eventually agrees to “allow” us to finish the job.

Customer: “But I’m warning you! I’ll be watching you!”

And she does, from inside her air-conditioned house. We see her looking out the window. The police officer leaves and my coworkers go back to work. They remain polite and professional.

We have to go through the flower bed. This is before smartphones, or we would have taken pictures before starting. We carefully dig up just enough space to bury the cable, and we replace all the wood chips. We are actually proud of our work.

The rep from the cable company shows up. The homeowner comes out and shows the rep:

Customer: “Look where they’ve done irreparable damage to my lawn and destroyed my flower bed!”

The rep takes a look and comments:

Rep: “They’ve actually pulled some weeds in the process of going through the flowers.”

She just keeps getting angrier and demands a discount on her cable service. The cable company rep is ready for this. He points to the contract with the cable company that said they would send out a contractor to bury the cable. He is polite but firm. There is no promise of when the cable company will send a contractor to bury the cable. He explains that with the housing boom and record subscriptions, they have not had time to bury cables. Most of her neighbors have their cables above ground, too.

We finish and the cable company rep asks if there was anything else he can do while he’s here.

Customer: “Just get them off my property.”

He waited for us to collect our tools and apologized for the behavior of the homeowner. Normally, people were happy to see us. They were tired of mowing their lawns while dodging the big cable running from the street to their house.

The rest of the day, we were offered drinks and treats when we visited other homes. This made the other customer look even worse. She made me glad I finished my education. I don’t have to deal with people like that in my job, and it reaffirmed my belief that everyone should be treated with respect, no matter how they dress for work. But the people who work with their hands in the hot sun so that I can sit in my air-conditioned home watching TV deserve a little extra respect.