Well, That Was Decidedly Unfun

I went to Hereford today. When the job came up, I believed that it was possibly because they had a tech back out; when I got to the site, I found it was even worse.

After awhile on certain jobs, you develop a sort of sixth sense, and I decided it would be prudent to stop in when I got into town, about an hour before I was set to begin. Nobody knew where any of the equipment was, so I needed to get ahold of the company, verify the equipment and find out who signed for it to hunt it down.

A little sleuthing found that the tech that had been hired as an underbidder (I bid the job out, but it went to someone else when it was first offered) had looked inside the box of the first hard drives they sent and designated the box as trash. He had apparently never seen a solid state drive before, because he never moved the paper packing to look for it and told receiving the box wasn't big enough for it.

Then, despite very specific, to the letter instructions (to a tech, this project is pretty easy. To a non tech, it is not), he decided one of the computers wasn't configured properly, and left it undone. So basically, he installed one computer and made me play Blue's Clues to find the other equipment to be installed.

This is my frustration, in a nutshell. I am no longer competing with techs, I am competing with day labor! These people are being lured onto the site off of places like Craigslist because they will, say, install video game displays, and once they're on the site, they are being recruited to do major network project installs because when these guys offer $20 an hour for 6 hours it looks pretty danged good to a guy whose regular job is the night shift at Five Guys!

And part of the reason for the excessively long hold times on this project has been the support on the other end dealing with the providers asking them what a Mac address is!

It wasn't always this way; at one time, there was a labor bubble on these jobs. You could ask for, and receive, a good price for your work. Now you're competing with buyers who figure that knowhow can be circumvented with a good technical writer, and providers who, in trying to make a living, will take any job that's offered at any rate, and then tout that experience to get IT jobs in place of qualified personnel at a fraction of the price.

I'd give it up, but I love the work. I just hate being disrespected in a field where I've worked so hard.

But there were a few upsides: I salvaged a pretty decent week that didn't look too promising early on, and I did have the best Kung Pao chicken I've had in years at the Hunan Chinese Restaurant on 25 mile road. Stop in sometime and tell 'em the High Tech Hobo sent you. They won't have a clue who I am, but they'll probably be happy you came by!