Fuck you for dismissing me because I lack a penis...!

[bliss_eternal]

I've just surfaced from the depths of hell with our cable company. Long story short, they hijacked our phone service :eyes: and we just needed them to give us a temp line so the phone company can fix their mess.

Dh needed to run an errand and I told him to go deal with it, I would wait and let in the cable techs. Dh returned not long after the guy got here.

When the tech said he was finished, I plugged in my phone--no dial tone. I asked the tech why that was. He checked it on "his phone" one of the components they carry with them on service calls, and tells me it's fine because HE apparently had a dial tone through HIS PHONE. :eyes: Again, I repeat to him, "We don't have a dial tone. You need to make it work so "I" have one...not just one through YOUR technical phone."

He sighs, and starts in about how he doesn't know what I want him to do. I cut him off and said flatly,"...your job. Do your job. Fix the issue--we need a dial tone." Again, he starts whining. He has a dial tone, what do I want, blah, blah. Maybe our phone is broken, blah, blah.

I lose my shit. I totally go off on him about his shitty attitude, his shitty company, how I am sick of them all throwing their hands in the air and making something that they fucked up, MY problem! How I'm not jumping through another hoop. I tell him point blank to do his job, fix my fucking phone or get a supervisor out to my home right then and there or I better know the reason why. Yes, I did say "fucking" I was beyond pissed at this point.

Get this: Tech Dude, had the gall to look to my husband and say--the second my back was turned, "man--I'm sorry but she..." Dh promptly cut him off and said,"No, no. That's not going to play here. She's right. You do EXACTLY what SHE said. WE are on the same page."

:wtf:

I was SO pissed! Don't try to get my husband to side with you because he also happens to have a penis. That bullshit doesn't work in this house! :mad::grr::mad:

[ThomCat]

1. Good for you.

His phone is called a Butt Set, because it's a portable phone that hangs off his belt over his butt. Honest, that's the name for it and the reason.

They are more sensitive than most comercial phones. It's very likely that you could register a faint signal.

And, he wasn't checking from the same place you did. He was plugged in at the demarc. You were checking at the jack. If you pay for inside wiring (and you probably do) then he sure as hell needs to verify the dial tone at the jack.

Good for you and your husband for standing up to this putz.

Thom the telecom guy.

[bliss_eternal]

2. Thank you for filling me in on the technical terms, Thom...

:hi::hug: ...and I appreciate your kind words! That guy has no idea, he almost walked out of here with no head. ;)

I was so angry, I grabbed our cell phone and went outside to call dh to test the lines. Which apparently helped PutzTech to ensure that our signal was appropriate. I was frankly at the end of my rope, with an incompetent (but greedy) company, that's grown too big in a very short amount of time and doesn't have the ability to handle it's service issues adequately. So much so, that our apt. building got fed up with them. The owners of the bldg. have secured a contract with the local phone company to do the wiring so they can provide us with internet service, and cable if we'd like. :bounce: I was thrilled to find out!

You have no idea how thrilled I wil be to tell the cable asshat's exactly what they can do with their equipment. ;)

PutzTech's asinine bid for male bonding, just came at the end of a very long, very frustrating, completely unnecessary interaction. They've lied to us and been evasive, probably because they don't have the manpower to deal with us or our issue. No excuse, just a probable reason for the insanity.

It's all the tell tale signs of a corporation on the way down. I've experienced this before with smaller companies. Everytime that I've seen this previously, the issues were signs that they were in the midst of a downward spiral, or complete collapse.

Before he left, we ensured we had a dial tone. Apparently, when I went outside to call our line (and cool off ;)) the tech tried to talk to dh again. He told me he told the guy in no uncertain terms he was out of line and inappropriate--that his company has been beyond unprofessional, and he was as well. Dh said he apologized, for being disrespectful. :eyes: Funny how HE got the apology. Again, defering to the power of the penis. :eyes: (sigh) lol.

[ThomCat]

3. You would not be surprised

to know how those techs probaby talk about women when they get back to the shop.

Our techs sit in the phone room down in the basement with a stack of playboy and penthouse magazines. At work. Nobody else in this building could ever get away with that, but they're allowed. And that's reflected in the way they talk to people, and how they talk about people.

[bliss_eternal]

4. Ugh...!

That's gross. :(

I know that I am not the "norm" for women that they deal with. I recall even the way my mother would defer to those jerks when they came to our home for service. Even as a teen, I didn't tolerate bs from sexist techs, trying to talk down to "the chick."

I am kind and can be accomodating (on hot days, I offer people cold drinks, turn on the a/c while they work, etc.). But I will not tolerate someone doing something half-assed, while telling me it's not his fault, and then disrespecting me in my home. Uh, no. Who's fault is it if it isn't yours--are you not the one doing the work? :banghead:

Knowing this attitude exists, dh tends to prefer to be the one to handle service calls like this. Except for our building maintenance. They all know me and dh and are nothing but professional with both of us.

The few times I've handled outside service calls since we've been married, most techs have been respectful and thorough. I handled many, many service calls over the years while I was single and lived alone. This guy was probably the worst one I've ever dealt with.

[geniph]

5. Oddly enough, they don't do that to me...

...but maybe that's because the last time I had a telecom tech in the house, I offered to loan him my punchdown tool, test set and toner so he wouldn't have to go out to his truck. ;-)

My husband always immediately sets them straight if they start talking to him: "I don't know anything about that stuff - you have to talk to my wife, she's the geek in the family." I love that guy.

[bliss_eternal]

6. geniph--that's awesome!

:yourock: The image of a woman offering a tech her tools, just tickled me! :rofl: The stories the techs must tell after visting your home. ;) Thanks so much for sharing that.

Reminds me of the only cable commercial to recognize women's varied interests, for once--instead of assuming we all want to watch love stories, etc. The cable tech is ticking off the list of sports channels to the husband. The husband tells the cable tech, "...actually those are for my wife." Great commercial--but it didn't stay on air very long. :(

Bravo to your husband, too. Pretty cool being with men that don't feel threatened by strong women isn't it? Mine routinely hands me off to people (when he gets flustered or doesn't understand something)saying,"...my wife is the smartest person I know." :blush:

[ThomCat]

8. That is damned Awesome!

I've only started seeing women as techs in the last few years, but two of them are my preference when Verizon has to send techs to the buildings I manage. I think they get must get grief from male coworkers because they are always more thorough than the men. They make damned sure there's no problem they can get blamed for.

I often regret that I can't get hand's on experience as a tech. But nobody is going to put a disabled guy on a cabling job. :(

[bliss_eternal]

9. It sounds like interesting work, ThomCat...

I'm very sorry that you aren't able to do it at this time, it sounds like you enjoyed it(and miss it). :hug: For the sake of discussion, and because now I'm intrigued, what kind of background does one need for that sort of work?

[ThomCat]

10. Being a tech

is one of those jobs you learn from a lot of on-the-job training. Some come in with a vocational certification or degree, but not all. It's heavy physical work at times, which is why I can't do it.

It's not that I would want to do it for a living, but it's great to be able to do it when it's needed. All of my co-workers can pitch when we have a deadline with a big cabling job or a large office move. I can do the programming end, but not the physical stuff.

[geniph]

12. I started doing the actual physical end of this stuff in the early '90s

but I started as a sys ad waaaaaay back in the '80s, on Xerox 8010 and 6085 servers. I transitioned to MS-Net and PC-based servers back in the early '90s. If you go all the way back to when I really started in this business, it's 25 years. It's a rare cabling tech who comes to my house that was born before I started in the biz.

I have a kind of sneaky trick for making sure they know this, too. I get the appropriate tools out BEFORE any in-home visit by a cable tech, and make sure they're visible and let the tech know they can use them if they need to, as soon as they come in. They don't need my tools, it's just a way of kind of waving my (technical) weenie at them to let them know they're not dealing with a Barbie here. "Kid, I've been doing this since before you were a gleam in your daddy's eye," without having to actually SAY so. It usually works pretty well.

I really floored the last one. We were replacing a 50-year-old telephone line "protector" box with a modern SNI (systems network interface) box, a line splitter, and a direct home run line to my DSL. I already had the SNI myself, and gave it to the tech to install when he came in. I think that was literally the easiest cabling job he'd ever done, and he was very grateful! (The home run was about six inches through a pre-drilled hole in the brick wall.)

Salesmen at electronics stores who try to be either dismissive or patronizing of me learn very quickly that I do my homework on geekery stuff BEFORE I go shopping, and their purpose is to go fetch boxes from the back of the store and ring me up, not to try to instruct me on electronics or audio theory. ;-) I'm not a total asshole, but I will not be treated like a "moran" because I lack external reproductive apparatus. :eyes:

[bliss_eternal]

13. geniph--were there many other women working w/you...

doing the physical stuff? I wish I could clone myself in your image when I need to go shop for such things. :bounce: Sounds like you make them squirm a bit. Hee hee! :bounce::rofl::toast:

It took me some time to figure out that some men were dismissive toward women in regard to "technology." Men weren't around much when I was growing up--so the women in my life did a lot. I was taken aback by women (dh's former buds wives), that spoke of their husbands as "useless" because they weren't good at building or putting things together around the house. :shrug: "I" put together things in our home--dh doesn't consider himself mechanically inclined. I enjoy working with my hands--so I do that stuff.

He loves to shop for groceries--so I let him have at it! He also enjoys cooking. I'm not about to chase him out of the kitchen when he feels so inclined. :loveya:

I've programmed the tv, cable, vcr, dvd players and phones--he hates doing that stuff. I built our end table, lamps and a bookcase. Actually, I need to do a run to the hardware store, as we need to put some shelves up. Why would I wait around or shame my husband about something he doesn't feel he's good at, when I like to do it and am perfectly capable of doing it myself?

When the women were complaining about all their husband's can't do, I asked why they didn't do it themselves. :think: They just looked at me as if I'd suddenly sprouted two heads. Blasphemy to them apparently.:P :spray:

Hey-maybe I should take some carpentry classes and hire myself out to women that can't get their husband's to build what they need. LOL! :rofl:

[Jamastiene]

16. Wow, let's both do that.

Who knows? Maybe we could start a whole new industry specialty. I'd love that. Hmm, this has a nice ring to it, The Handy Woman Corporation, Inc. Is HWC taken on the stock exchange ipo's? :evilgrin:

[ThomCat]

17. I'm with your guy on all of that.

I'll happily do the shopping and cooking every day. :)

[mrreowwr_kittty]

7. Putztech....ROFLMAO!!!

Sorry but I can't even make it thru the rest of your post now! :rofl:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Good for you and good for your husband!

:thumbsup:

[bliss_eternal]

14. Thanks, Lydia...!

:hi: Good to see you.

[NotGivingUp]

15. ditto!