They said it wouldn't work, you did it anyway. How did that work out for you?
I took on a job back in around 2013 upgrading domestic power supply revenue meters. Easy work, but at the interview the boss said I might not enjoy the work as it was well beneath my pay-grade so to speak. Also I had been self-employed for a few years and he was worried I might get bored fast.
They gave me a chance, and I excelled of course.
I had several people at houses give me stuff to take away for free (I don't know why) - I was given a weed-whacker by one old lady who's husband had died. I handed it in at the office on the following Monday at the team talk. That was something else I enjoyed.....I had a story most weeks, and I'm sure the guys looked forward to that part every week. :lol:
One of the first things was to pass the aptitude test...easy, but the driving test was a horror show. They employed this little squirt of a Fijian as the Instructor, and he was a real a-hole. He claimed I didn't look around when performing a 3-point turn. I pointed out that I had excellent peripheral vision, and I didn't need to jerk my head around like a side-show clown. He wasn't wearing that....I had to be on probation for 2 weeks driving....whatever. :rolleyes: The vans were fitted with GPS tracking...or so I was told. It was two months before I got a call to ask where I was so that the Tech could fit my GPS......I asked why I hadn't been told that earlier.
Anyhoo, the worst part of the job was running the PDA to record all the data and take pictures. Damn Motorola couldn't make a decent handheld if their lives depended on it. The stupid thing kept crashing, and of course then you were 'supposed' to re-run the job from the start to keep everything sequential. Stuff that....I fudged most of that...easily done. They asked if anyone was interested in Saturday work so that they could catch up on the contract. I volunteered. One Saturday and it was all over. The first job was done in 45 minutes. The second took an hour and a half. The third was nearly three hours. I drove home after that one. Never again. No PDA Help Desk on a Saturday to reset from the office.
We were on hourly rate, because they used to be per job. Some guys were a bit slow, and some jobs were unfairly balanced time-wise, so to be fair to all staff it was decided to pay hourly plus a bonus for good numbers. I got my bonus every week.....some didn't. I came back to the office one day just after lunch to get more supplies....the boss called me in and said that I was showing a good run that morning - 11 units swapped by 1:30pm.
Some guys hadn't even done 2-3 units in the same time. Most of those guys were sacked not long after that.
The final straw came after about 7 months when I was at a house where the dog was chained up and trying desperately to get off and kill me. I had to step through dog poop to get to the house, and to cap it off, when I started disconnection, the owner went for a dump inside. Normally that would be OL, but the toilet window was a fixed open louvre, and it was right next to the meter box out on the deck. I nearly gagged from the stench.....he must have had a big night on the 'pork bones & puha'. (weeds found in roadside drains)
I went home that day, decided I was going to quit, and went to see the boss the next day. He thanked me for my service, and wished I could stay, but after telling him all the stories.....he was fine about it. Storied like rolling up to a job and the bene's (beneficiaries) were laying about drinking booze, smoking weed....and this is mid-morning. I hated seeing my tax dollars being squandered in that way.
