One day I came home after being gone for a few days. As I drove into my subdivision, someone had painted red, yellow and green paint down the sidewalk and into the grass. I said "Oh.. No! What are they going to do to our street?"
On the door handle, there was a sign hanging. It was from AT&T, telling us they were going to lay cable down our street. That wasn't a request .. it was a statement. I know the county has the right of way on their side of the sidewalk, but even that was not going to be nice. It was spring and the lawns had just turned a pretty green after having brown grass all winter.
So about a week later, they started digging at the entrance of the subdivision. In a few days, they were at my house, digging on MY side of the sidewalk. I just swallowed hard and shut my eyes to what they were doing. I went to the mailbox one day and they were right there digging a big hole, about 4 feet deep, about 2 feet wide and 6 feet long. I looked at the guy and he looked at me.. I didn't say a word. I disapproved and he knew it.. and he also knew I couldn't do anything about it. I could see in the hole, there was a big pipe that was exposed.. and I figured that was where our underground utilities had been run .. and they probably were running that cable inside or along that large pipe.
As I looked at my yard, they had dug 5 of those size holes on my side of the sidewalk.. way inside of my sidewalk. They had a huge roll of orange cable out in the street..and that is what they were running down the street in those dug holes.
At the end of the day, they finished up and my house was the last house on their list to lay cable. They also laid it on the other side of the street, but didn't go any further down to the next house on my side. So at the end of my yard, they also put a new big green lid for the large meter they added in my yard.. all on my side of the sidewalk.
All in all, I had 5 of those big holes in my yard.. more than any other house on the street.
In a couple days, I had my sprinkler system water turned on so I could water the dead sod they laid back on the holes they dug. Lo and behold, one of the sprinkler heads sprung a leak. It bubbled up and ran into the street, taking dirt with it. They also broke the lid on the water meter that was in the edge of my yard.
I called the number that was on that card they had hung on my door handle. I reached the headquarters of the outfit who had been hired by AT&T to do the digging. She said she'd call one of the head guys and they'd be out within a couple days.
So in the meantime, I drug the hose down to that dead sod and sprayed them at night.
Two days later I got a phone call from a man named Omar who said he'd be at my house in the morning at 8 or 8:30, would I be there. I told him I'd be here waiting on him. I told him he had hit my sprinkler system and it had to be fixed so I could water his dead sod on the holes he had dug.
The next morning, I was waiting on him at 8 am. I was still waiting on him at 10:30 am. He then got a phone call from me.. and he answered the phone, for which I was glad. Omar apologized and said he's be here in 15 minutes. Forty-five minutes later I called Omar again and told him I was still waiting. He apologized again and said he'd be here in 5 minutes. This time I told Omar he'd better be or I was going to call head quarters. He was here in 5 minutes, with another man in his truck.
They dug up the place where the leak was, and then said they had to go to Home Depot to get the head to fix it. I said, okay but they'd better be back and not leave it like that. They were back and fixed the head they had broken. They covered the hole again and laid the sod back on the dirt.
Then a week later, my internet connection quit. I have my TV, Internet, and landline telephone all with Comcast and it quit on a Saturday evening after 5 pm. Doncha' know. One thing I didn't want to do was spend the weekend without a TV or a computer. I spend a lot of time on my computer doing my work. It was going to be a quiet weekend. I called Comcast and they tried to fix it on their end. Not knowing what had happened, I even tried to find the problem when Comcast couldn't fix it on their end. I worked on trying to find the problem until 3 am and then gave up.
Comcast set me up for an appointment for the following Wednesday. Wednesday!? That was 5 days away... !! By the time Monday rolled around I was not a happy camper.. I still had 2 more days to go.
By the time Wednesday came, at 2 pm.. the Comcast truck pulled into my driveway. I opened the door and told the technician how glad I was to see that truck pull into my driveway.
He started checking everything. I told him they had dug out in the yard, but that was a week before I lost my connection. He said, probably wasn't the problem. Half an hour later, he came back inside and said, "They cut your line." He laid all new cable from the sidewalk to the Comcast box on the side of the house. Now the cable he laid has to be buried.. and it runs the length of my yard. He said to make sure they don't cut my sprinkler line.. did I know where it all ran... Yes, I do.
I am thankful I have it all back in working order. But what does that say for AT&T and what does that say for those they hired to do the job? It was marked .. sprayed with paint... and they took out my sprinkler system and took out my connection for my TV, my computer and my phones... for 5 days! I wanted to throttle Omar. I wanted AT&T to do a better job of what they did when I didn't want it done in the first place.. and didn't think they had the right to dig that far inside my yard with such unconcern for things like cable and water line.
I think all jobs like that are suspect for having people who aren't careful enough. They cut the cable line and then tried to put it together and not tell anyone what they had done and hope it lasted long enough for them to leave. The moisture eventually got into that cable line and that's when it went out. Of all the houses on this street, I got the worst of it.
Sometimes just writing about an aggravation helps... do you reckon?
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