Technology for Mortals

How many times have you wanted to wring the neck of an onsite technician, and ask him why he doesn’t know how to do more than read the meter and do the three things he was taught in his 30 minute training session? Probably most of the times you dealt with an onsite tech, if your luck is anything like mine. Thanks to budgetary constraints and “business reality”, companies prefer to take folks off the street, give them just enough training to read a meter or otherwise collect some information, and then look up in a book what the error codes mean. Today, I had a completely opposite experience, with a cable TV tech, no less.

I’ve been having some problems with my HD service from Time Warner. Sometimes most of the channels say “Cannot access this channel, please try again later” when I try to watch them. We’ve called into the office numerous times, they just reset the box (which takes 15 minutes) and that’s it. They decided to send a tech out to test the signal, even though a cable modem tech was here a few weeks ago doing the same. The technician that showed up, Michael, completely changed my impression of what a cable tech could be:

• He called before showing up. This is insanely rare, as we all know, even when they are supposed to call before showing up.
• He arrived precisely on time. I had a 1 – 3 service window, he was here a few minutes before 1.
• He performed preventative maintenance that was not absolutely needed. He saw that my splitter outside was a bit corroded. Even though his meter showed signal strength well within the acceptable tolerances, he replaced the splitter anyways. Note that he checked the splitter in the first place; the cable modem tech from a few weeks ago did not do that.
• He knew his stuff inside and out. Not only was he able to do his job, but he sat me down and told me about the ins-and-outs of how TV service gets delivered over the wire, and how it might be impacting my service. For example, he showed me how each channel is on a different frequency, and explained that they often change the frequencies to make room for new channels, but as they do that, the frequencies have less space between them and there is more chance for noise between frequencies to interfere with each other. He also explained that when they change those frequencies, if my cable box is not aware that it has changed, I could be having the symptoms I saw. He even explained (very well, I may add), how they multiplex some channels together on the same frequency, which causes problems. Finally, he made me feel reassured by letting me know that they were working on being able to use additional frequencies, which will allow them to stop the shuffling and keep more space between channels.
• Learning non-core competancies. In my discussion with him, I learned that Michael is currently persuing a CCNA, even though it is completely irrelevant to his current job role, and from what I can tell, his management did not suggest it either.

Overall, Michael was an outstanding technician. I loved his attitude that he needs to learn more than what he “needs to know” in order to be the best tech possible. People like him are rare. In my experience, these are the people that make the best employees, regardless of their experience level. Every person that I hired with that attitude turned out to be a superstar employee. I wish Michael the best of luck, and I hope that Time Warner does the right thing and moves him to a department or role where he can continue to learn and grow.

J.Ja