All Episodes

November 15, 2023 • 16 mins
It's about friggin time AT&T
Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And everyone Happy hump Day. Attackson my Friday today going back down to
Miami and some of the worst rainI've drove for in a while, and
going to get another VHF icon basestation working with a circuit to another site
so that today but real com makethis real quick, cause in the last

(00:23):
last couple of times I rambled onit and had nothing really fruitful to say.
But so, uh, there's aokay. So I worked for AT
and T for years, right,seven eight years, and when I was
there, you know, nobody cared, nobody knew what HAM Radio was.

(00:44):
I even tried talking to you know, higher ups. And when we were
doing we were when I was doingAT and T training courses for the new
hires and refreshers, when we gotslow, the district Southeast manager would appoint
me, you know, a placelike Port Saint Lucy with another guy sometimes
to say, hey, you know, come up with some training material to

(01:07):
you know, based on what wedo for refreshers, you know, the
guys that you guys go through thetraining for like eight weeks, which really
is very basic. I remember whenI went through it was like, you
know, first week was ladder andpole climbing, the second week was driving,
then the third week was safety.Then you went out in the field
for a week as a monitor ofanother tag. Then week five and six

(01:29):
you did VOIPE and you know,running data you know and sink or whatever.
Then seven you're out in the field. Then eight you were doing you
know, other stuff. And itwas kind of very basic, you know,
like like, uh, you know, going, you know, okay,
you're gonna You're gonna go to anew house, and here's a mock
home and uh, you know,you're basically running a piece of CAF five

(01:52):
behind a sheet of plywood two feetput in a wall, jack in a
box that's already there for the lastclass, and there you go. You
got to say, go that intoreal life, you know how I had
to crawl through addicts and dig underdriveways and stuff like that. Anyways,
so in this just to ramble on, in this process, I would always
somehow relate ham radio in the troubleshootingand the material that I would come up

(02:15):
with. For instance, like youknow, troubleshooting when there's interference on certain
VDSL lines back in the day.Now we're running fiber everywhere with AT and
T. I don't work there anymore. But they're running fiber, and I
was running fiber before I left.But you had neighborhoods where there was traditional
f ones with pots lines from theCEO, and you would have that,
you know, I had been theresince the fifties, paper pulp cable,

(02:38):
and then there's fucking phones and keepringing. And then you had the new
stuff, which was adsl VDSL slowat at best. Sometimes you were doing
all day installed for a twenty fourmeg internet circuit. Well, in the
process of this BBTD broadband tools,you would see interferers. You'd see things

(02:58):
that would happen on these you know, noise and stuff like that, and
I always knew what was causing what. I was like, really good troubleshooter.
I had a lot of low repeats. Okay, So in this classes
that we would do sometimes it wasdown there two months every day and I
would bring it up, you know, And some of these guys were pretty
bright individuals. They were pretty Someof them were you know, they they

(03:20):
went to college just nap and nowthey're you know, work for AT and
T. And I would bring upyou know always, you know, okay,
you see this, now, let'slook at this chart here, what
would be wrong? You know,I would throw it, Hey, maybe
it's Ham radio blah blah blah,and they would look at me like,
dude, nobody does this anymore.What are you? You know, what
are you talking about? But no, really, there could be somebody in
ham radio. There could be arepeater nearby, there could be someone ungrounded

(03:42):
equipment. There could be someone inthat house that's doing Ham radio that you
need to be aware of. Whenyou see the antennas, that could be
what's knocking out their service. Andthis is why, you know. Well,
then on lunch breaks, you know, we would do lunch breaks with
a little lunch come back, andI would give like a half hour to
communicate with the guys that were inthere with me, so to jump right

(04:02):
back in the tier because everybody's tiredafter that. So I'd give some stories
about what I do in ham radio, and you know, get some stories
and satellites, and they would alljust make it sound like, wow,
this is silly, like what areyou talking about? Nobody does this.
And then the managers would check inonce in a while to see if I
was actually teaching courses. And atone point I won't mention his name because

(04:23):
he was a douchebag. But thisguy thought he was the Beasnies. He
thought he was the best thing inthe world. He used to fold his
underwear in a certain triangles like this. This dude is I don't know.
Well. He used to pop inand say, Eric, why does this
have anything to do with what parteaga? I said, it doesn't. This
is our little breakout for lunch.And you know, somebody asked about this.

(04:44):
I figured, you know, Iwould explain about it. Well,
he says, Ham radio and atenshave nothing in common. It never will.
I remember him saying that. Isaid, well, actually it does.
It's radio signals. There's troubleshooting youcan do. I'm not saying that
you need to know Ham radio inorder to do your job a AT and
T. What I'm saying is Hamradio is out there, It's gonna be
out there, is out there forever. And then I would say, when

(05:05):
they start ragging on me, I'dsay, listen, what all else sales?
You know? And and even justfor fun? Great, but what
about emergency communications? You ever thoughtabout that? And I won't say his
name, he's oh, well,I know soull phone. I said,
dude, you work for the cellphone company. How many times have you
never had service? Well? SometimesJoe, but he was bleeding blue like
this guy thought he was He thoughthe spelled his name with the letters AT

(05:28):
and T, you know. AndUh, I'm like, dude, listen,
when when we had that hurricane.I forget what hurricane it was,
IRMA. I think I worked atAT and T at IRMA it was before
that. And I said, youremember when a hurricane came through here and
crossed on ninety five and the celltowers and god, I said, I
had plenty of communications. In fact, the other guy that's in hand radio,
his name was Tom. He died, another fellow tech of mine.

(05:49):
I said, we'd communicate back andforth during work on you know, after
you guys were left in the darkin the office, right, Well,
nobody took that. And then nowI'm hearing I had to look it up
for confirmation. I was hearing froma couple of texts. You remember Dan,
Uh, he worked with men andI worked with him outside of AT
and T. We worked together.Whatever. He has got ham license.

(06:12):
Now he's got friends and co workersare getting HAMD radio licenses. And I
said, what is it what youguys want to do? Is well,
AT and T is pushing us allto get Ham radio licenses. Now,
I said, get the beep outof here. I said, what are
you talking about? AT and T? He could give a shit less about
Ham radio. Nope, they're they'rethey're offering like six week courses to study

(06:40):
for your hand radio license. Okay, And then I looked it up online.
I had to look this up.Yes, it's in cybersecurity documents at
AT and T. It's in itpostings of the AT and T corporate sites
or whatever they are. Quote foremergency preparedness and disaster relief, Ham radio

(07:04):
would be the most valuable asset youcould have. I feel like walking into
AT and T and smacking those peoplein the face when it's not there.
Uh, it's not their reason whyI'm that. But guess who's getting their
license? Yeah? Those people thatused to rag on me, those managers

(07:28):
are sitting there like, oh,we gotta get our HAMM ready a license.
Yeah. Real funny. When Iwas telling you about it seven years
ago, six years ago, longerthan that, nine, ten years ago,
they would make fun of me.And now they're bleeding blue at and
T because AT and T says todo it. Now they're like talking about
radios and reaching out to me onlike Facebook and stuff. Hey dude,

(07:51):
what kind of first radio? Youknow? That's like a kick in the
balls, like the fact that ATand T is using ham radio as a
leverage thing, Like you know,you need to get this. This is
valuable for your job, verguy communications. But you know what happens during layoffs.

(08:11):
This is what happens. I wasI wasn't part of a layoff,
but I saw this. AT andT will take out for so many years,
they'll do a layoff when you know, when all those fibers out,
it's out. It requires very littlemaintenance. And then they'll say, well
we got too many technicians, nowlet's do layoffs. Who's getting laid off
the ones that don't have any sortof advancement of their career, such as

(08:33):
these many classes they recommend, orPython programming or you know, cybersecurity.
You know they do these things.You know, you can take these at
night class and this stuff very basiccourses, very basic and they're like learning
modules, you know, so you'llget a certificate that really only means anything
in AT and T and maybe oneother company out there that would say,

(08:56):
oh, you did these, that'scool. You know, well, it
looks like you're trying to progress yourlearning. But also Ham Radio I could
tell you why, because they arepushing this and offering incentives for technicians to
get it. And if they're gonnaoffer incentives for text to get a hand
license and study during work hours,that's a hell of an incentive because a

(09:18):
lot of these things that I wouldgo for with AT and T, they
told me this is on your ownpersonal time, not on company time.
You're dispatching and doing these jobs ongetting paid for it. You're not gonna
get paid to do a hamd redylicense. That's what they would have told
us years ago. Now they're encouragingus or them to do it. So
it isn't it funny? Other circle, the the you know, world goes

(09:41):
full circle and why they wouldn't chooseto partner with something like Ham Radio Prep.
And I'm gonna talk to Hambradio Prepand see if they could dig into
it and see because you know,six weeks on this and he's the one
guy said it's it's a couple ofwomen in there that are just reading out
of these old literature books. Howabout something new and engaging, something that

(10:03):
the text can do. Uh atwork on an iPad or a computer or
whatever on your company official use device. That could they could offer things with
you know, AT and T whatever. I just think that I'd love to
know more about it. I wouldlove to be a part of this training
thing because, uh, you maynot see it on these mediocre podcasts,

(10:26):
and you may not see it onmy YouTube videos over the years, but
in a classroom environment, I amconsidered top notch. Okay, I can
go. It's I mean, whatthe what the guys used to tell me
in there was, you know,aside from ham radio when I was teaching
about AT and T stuff and andyou know a lot of problems. I
dealt with a lot of troubleshooting techniques, a lot of things that they don't

(10:46):
teach you or they do teach you. At the original training at AT and
T. They all said, dude, I was lost the last year that
I've worked here, the first yearI've worked here, I was lost until
I spent three days in this class. And I greatly appreciate it. And
some of those guys were, youknow, some of them weren't engineers.
Some of them weren't, you know, they never worked for a telecom company

(11:09):
in their life. They're basic trainingat AT and T. The way AT
and T does it is they tellyou this, this, You do a
knowledge check every two hours, whichis a ten thing, multiple choice questions,
and okay, you're good. Theythrow you out there on day one
once to training and say here's yourdispatch. You got a three TV,
VoIP and internet install and they gaveyou two hours or twenty five minutes to

(11:31):
do it. And that's your firstjob. You're calling somebody right away because
you can't figure out half the thingsbecause it wasn't in training or what they
showed you in training was textbook method, right. So the guys would say,
dude, I'd see him out inthe field after like, dude,
I know what the hell I'm doingnow, Like I have, my repeats
have gone way down. I've figuredout some of the problems that you used

(11:54):
to stump me. And you madeit so easy to understand better than any
of the training I had for eightweeks in AT and T. This was
three days and they were like,thank you so much, dude, And
so what happened was now I'm gettingon a rambolethon here again. What happened
was the Southeast manager got so muchgood feedback that he said, hey,

(12:16):
you know this this, You're goodat this. Like you ever thought about
teaching? I said, I,Well, I mean not. I don't
know if I could deal with kids, and I wouldn't have patience for high
schools, but it'd be cool toI don't have no education for that.
I can't just go teaching, youknow. He goes, no, no,
no, I mean that's good andall. But the one of the
instructors at the AT and T University, have you ever thought of doing that?

(12:39):
I said, I would love to. So he sent me on a
secret mission as a new person.Okay, I was already there in six
years, seven years. He sentme as a new person to a somehow
he's been agled this to go toa new hire thing. So during the
new hire he's out wanting to watchfor a week. And it wasn't a

(13:01):
new hire like ladder in Pole climate. It was sitting in there, you
know, troubleshooting, testing circuits,understanding your test tools, stuff like that.
So I sat there a couple ofdays and some of the things that
they were, like the instructors werenot good at all, but some things
you know, were valid. Butyou can tell her just getting out of
textbook. So I was there becausehe wanted to see if this is something

(13:22):
you want to do, I canmake that happen. Unfortunately, it's a
management position and once you go tothe management position, you can never take
your tools back if you don't likeit. Well, the writing on the
wall from Randall Stevenson before a rightwhen I was doing that, said by
twenty twenty, this was years beforethat. By twenty twenty, if you
haven't done anything to advance your careerwhatever, you're not going to have a
job. You're at at andt notonly that, layoffs are coming, so

(13:45):
you better make sure you do that. And once I saw that, I
said, yeah, I'll go throughthat week thing, but i'm a week
long thing, but I'm not goingto go to that because this why wasn't
going to lay off? They haveno need to train and you're out of
a job. And he said,that's why I want you to make that
decision. So I went there andafter about day two and a half,

(14:05):
I would answer some questions and nobodyelse knew what the hell was going on,
Like, what do you what doyou think this is? I'm like,
yeah, it's a bridge stap fortysix feet? How the hell do
you know that? You know?Then they pulled me aside after like you've
been doing this before, and theylooked at me up and said, okay,
so what's your deal? Did whyyou're here? I said, I'd
like to see what you guys aredoing. And my Southeast manager had arranged

(14:26):
us so I could see if thisis something I want to do, and
they had told me, well,here's a deal. There's a lot of
travel. Today's Tuesday. By Friday, I might be getting my next assignment
in Colorado to teach pole climbing,and after that, after a week,
I'm gonna leave Colorado. I mightbe in Saint Louis, Missouri for a

(14:46):
training course like this, and thenafter that I might have nothing for four
weeks and I have to go doside jobs. I'm like, oh,
he's like, yeah, this isn'ta steady job. If you'd like to
do it, you're not hurting usbecause we all meet at different training centers
and do and then we're apart andyou never know you're gonna meet, so
I thought about it. I'm like, nah, I ain't doing that,

(15:07):
no way. But if there wassomething stable down here, like at the
West Palm area or whatever, Iwould love to real world scenario, real
world nineteen years of a hand license, be able to show instead of these
people that don't know what they're teaching, that have never worked, you know,
a DX country on a shopping cart, and how did I even get

(15:31):
that done? You know what Imean? So my phone's been ringing.
You can hear. I'm driving throughrain. People just won't leave me alone.
This is what happens. But anyways, I want to thank Hey,
I'm Radio Prep. You know why, the biggest sponsor I've ever had,
and the best sponsor. People like, now, this is funny. Well,
all the thing's going on in theworld. I've told you the last
couple episodes. The numbers are goingway up. People are using the code

(15:52):
eric twenty more than they have allyear in the last three months. Okay,
so people are using that, butthey're getting it. They're getting a
license on their own iPad. They'restudying fits and getting a license in a
week. Whereas you're telling me theseat and t guys are gone. They
can't even make it fun doing thatfor six weeks with this old material or
textbook stuff. That can't be fun. How about get someone teaching that stuff

(16:17):
that I mean, the people inthe videos at Ham Radio and Hamridio Prep
and all the people that designed thatcourse are all Hams. That's the thing.
So Ham Radio Prep really makes itworthwhile to study and get your license,
and it make it so easy.So use the code Eric twenty save
twenty percent on any course. Goodbyeand thanks to Hanrio Prep re sponsored me.

(16:37):
Let me get back to some ofthese phone calls here and continue my
way to Miami Seventhary
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.