My Career with The Phone Company
I started in September 1996. Hired as a temporary worker when it was still known as NYNEX. I was a splicers helper in Sunset Park, getting paid $221 a week before taxes. Sitting in a wet, rat-filled manhole or being strapped to a strand 45 feet in the air, splicing broken telephone cable. In good weather, rain, downpours, wind, snow, -7 or 107 degrees. No air conditioning in trucks. Worked in all of the New York City’s projects. Places where things were thrown out of windows at us on a weekly basis.
This is the job my dad did. This is what my brothers did. I remember reminding myself, Top pay is in five years, Matt. Just five years. Hang in there.
In 1997, NYNEX became Bell Atlantic and I became a permanent employee. At this point, I had moved on to Installation and Repair. I enjoyed doing this more than the splicing years. I got to see the customers, the elderly who would open their doors crying and hold my hand because their phones weren’t working. They couldn’t call their sons, daughters or doctors. Cell phones were not as popular then as they are today. Especially amongst the elderly.
I never left a customers house until that dial tone came on. Sure, I got yelled at for not having a higher number in productivity sometimes. I didn’t care. I’d run a wire down the block if I needed too. That woman was my mom, my elderly grandmother or my sick aunt. That phone was coming on. End of story. I treated every customer as if I was helping a family member.
Thankfully, this was also a time when acts like these were noticed by great managers — men and women who took the time to read the letters or play the voicemails the customers left about the great job I did.
It’s not always about the money some days.
In 2000, Bell Atlantic became Verizon. One year from top pay. You made it, kid. It’s gonna start paying off.
You understand the job, you learned a trade, there’s no problem you can’t fix.
I felt rewarded. I felt pride.
The change in this company came as soon as the new name appeared on the trucks, buildings and billboards.
I felt the change coming.
Great managers were “RIF’d.” (Reduction in Force.) Fancy word for fired.
Every month brought new and unattainable goals with it. They want us to be perfect. Everyday.
Perfection in itself is imperfection.
New managers all the time.
We were given time quotas. No more than two hours on any job. Five jobs a day. One job would be in one neighborhood, the next in a neighborhood on the other side of Brooklyn. If we didn’t start and end the job within that two-hour window, disciplinary action was taken. Coached, Verbal, Written, Suspension and finally, Termination from Company and Payroll.
The outside plant started to fall apart. Nothing is being fixed. Every pole is a danger nowadays. No more cables replaced. Supplies and tools we needed stopped coming into our garages.
The next step was every truck being fitted with a state-of-the-art GPS tracking system.
At the time, Verizon said it was for fleet control and would not be used for discipline.
That lasted two years.
Suspensions started coming down. Some were deserved, the bad apples, the 80/20 employee ratio. Some definitely abused the job. They needed to go.
Then, slowly but surely, everyone was being watched. We would receive calls from Texas and California wondering why we were where we were. When we answered that we we were at the Central Office to use the bathroom, we were asked if we called our managers. We had to ask to use the bathroom — at 35 or 55 years of age.
The discipline and suspensions started to hit for these “infractions.”
Men and women who never climbed a pole, spliced a cable or saw the inside of a New York City Housing Authority apartment became the ones to handle these.
No cones around truck? Discipline.
No vest? Discipline.
No hardhat? Discipline.
Two hours and one minute over? Discipline.
When FiOS originally arrived, the technicians were sent to training facilities for a month to learn how to install and maintain the new technology. A full 20 days.
A few months ago, when I was finally told I’d be leaving Installation and Repair of phones and the copper plant itself, I understood because it’s the direction the world is going in.
I rode with another technician for three days. Then I was sent out into the FiOS world.
Three days. Down from 20.
I had no idea what I was doing. I had no numbers to call. I was not given the right FiOS tools I needed.
I taught myself slowly. Everyday I was figuring out how to do new things and make progress.
Three weeks later I was on a FiOS installation when my manager came out. This was the first time I saw him out in the field. We never really talked before. I was on 43rd Street in Boro Park. I was soaked, on my third sweatshirt and finishing the job.
Everything was up and running. Customer praised the job I did. (Mind you… in under three hours.)
My manager left the customer and came back over to me. He asked where my “Ladder Mate” was. I had no idea what that was. No one ever used one. Apparently, it’s a strap you connect to the ladder and wrap around the pole. I told him I was never given one, and never taught how to use one.
I was suspended on the soaking street we stood on. Hardhat, foggy and water speckled safety glasses, steel toe boots, safety vest, gloves, electrical ground tester hooked to tool belt.
Suspended for something I was never introduced to or trained for. Not a single mark in the 20+ years of my career.
This was happening everywhere — five days for this, ten for this. A stop at a restaurant or Central Office to use the bathroom was now a 30 day suspension.
Forced assignments every night. Forced Saturdays and forced Sundays. No joking. Ten to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Money is not everything. Family and happiness are. They are destroying both of these.
This forced overtime is in its second year.
Now, they want to move us wherever, whenever. Anywhere Verizon operates.
They want all the Call Centers closed. Jobs moved overseas.
This has nothing to do with us making more money.
I enjoyed my job when I started. I am saddened by what this company has become. It’s affecting my emotional and physical health. My life in general.
I want my days to be eight hours of work, eight hours of my time and eight hours of sleep. Plenty of men and women will pick up the overtime and weekends.
Still, they don’t care. Everybody is forced and assigned.
There are no rewards to be had. I have no pride left.
We are on our fifth week of a strike. No medical, health or prescription coverage. No income. No understanding. No major media coverage. No end in sight.
While I was mobile picketing, I came across the manager that suspended me. He was doing a FiOS install. Voice/Phone only.
He stuck his hand out to shake mine, I politely declined.
I asked the customer how the manager was doing with the installation.
“It’s his fourth day here, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, I’m getting annoyed, we need you guys back, man.” I shook his hand and said, sarcastically, “Good luck with this one, this is a manager with a heart of gold…”
Then I walked over to my personal car, pulled something out of the trunk, walked over to the pole with the extension ladder leaning on it, and left a Ladder Mate I’d bought.
