Work Weirdness - or - Copper Theft and You.
This is what I saw when I came into work this morning. I snapped these pictures with my phone as soon as I got in, knowing it had to be something interesting.
I counted 9 trucks from the phone company and a back hoe. There must have been 15-20 men in various stages of supervision and a couple guys digging a hole in the grass. After I took the pictures, sent them from my phone to Vox, I checked the status of my phone lines at work. All four lines were dead. I turned on the computer. No internet. Customers who call everyday to order materials they need to fix the cars in their shops could not get through to me. Even if they could, I had no internet connection to be able to bill the customers for the material they wanted to buy.
What happened, you ask? Just like everything else, the price of copper went up. The money one can make on scrap copper is pretty good ($3.50 per pound). The money a drug addict or homeless person can make on stolen copper isn't bad either (still $3.50 as long as it doesn't look stolen). Arizona is working on passing a bill that will make it harder for thieves to make a quick buck and easier for authorities to track down criminals who do steal copper.
I talked to the fella in charge this morning (I could tell because he was wearing nice dress shoes, slacks and a button down shirt and tie under his hard hat and day-glow orange vest) and he told me the people who stole the copper probably got away with $2 or $3 worth of scrap copper and the phone company is going to be spending thousands of dollars on material and labor to replace it. Even as I write this there are still 4 trucks and 6 workers out there. He figured they could have our phone service working again around 11am (which they did). My real problem was the internet. Now, the company just bought a laptop for my new work truck and a Sprint internet card so I can write invoices from anywhere in the area. I got the bright idea that we could use the laptop to get our invoicing done. Brilliant! Now, where is that internet card? We searched the office high and low. It was nowhere to be found. I did use it when I went to Seattle recently. Perhaps I left it at home (20 miles away from work). Damn. I left my drivers at the shop and hopped back in the truck and flew home. It could only be in one of two places. I got home rather quickly. I looked high and low. It was no where to be found. Damn. I got back in the truck to get back to work. Then it hit me. Our store manager went to another one of our locations in Dallas. Perhaps he took it with him. A quick text message reveled my suspicions were correct. Damn. A wasted trip back to my house, no internet card, no phones.
We did what we could. We had some deliveries that had been called in yesterday that we got on the road. Then all we could do was wait. We had the phones back at 11, and people started calling. They need material and they needed it NOW! I still had no internet and was hand writing all the invoices. At about 2pm we saw the workers filling the hole they had dug. But how could they be finished when our internet was not yet working??
We went out to ask. "We don't have a work order of that" they tell us. What?? A thirty minute phone call to the phone company got our internet up and running again.
So there it is. My day, so far, at work. I have to run now. I have to enter all those hand written invoices into the computer.
What happened, you ask? Just like everything else, the price of copper went up. The money one can make on scrap copper is pretty good ($3.50 per pound). The money a drug addict or homeless person can make on stolen copper isn't bad either (still $3.50 as long as it doesn't look stolen). Arizona is working on passing a bill that will make it harder for thieves to make a quick buck and easier for authorities to track down criminals who do steal copper.
I talked to the fella in charge this morning (I could tell because he was wearing nice dress shoes, slacks and a button down shirt and tie under his hard hat and day-glow orange vest) and he told me the people who stole the copper probably got away with $2 or $3 worth of scrap copper and the phone company is going to be spending thousands of dollars on material and labor to replace it. Even as I write this there are still 4 trucks and 6 workers out there. He figured they could have our phone service working again around 11am (which they did). My real problem was the internet. Now, the company just bought a laptop for my new work truck and a Sprint internet card so I can write invoices from anywhere in the area. I got the bright idea that we could use the laptop to get our invoicing done. Brilliant! Now, where is that internet card? We searched the office high and low. It was nowhere to be found. I did use it when I went to Seattle recently. Perhaps I left it at home (20 miles away from work). Damn. I left my drivers at the shop and hopped back in the truck and flew home. It could only be in one of two places. I got home rather quickly. I looked high and low. It was no where to be found. Damn. I got back in the truck to get back to work. Then it hit me. Our store manager went to another one of our locations in Dallas. Perhaps he took it with him. A quick text message reveled my suspicions were correct. Damn. A wasted trip back to my house, no internet card, no phones.
We did what we could. We had some deliveries that had been called in yesterday that we got on the road. Then all we could do was wait. We had the phones back at 11, and people started calling. They need material and they needed it NOW! I still had no internet and was hand writing all the invoices. At about 2pm we saw the workers filling the hole they had dug. But how could they be finished when our internet was not yet working??
We went out to ask. "We don't have a work order of that" they tell us. What?? A thirty minute phone call to the phone company got our internet up and running again.
So there it is. My day, so far, at work. I have to run now. I have to enter all those hand written invoices into the computer.
