Cell tower technician forbidden from using competitor's phone, leaving them unable to communicate while working on site, leading to boss's firing: 'You can't use a competitors phone!'

If you've ever worked a job where your work site was off-site, then you know exactly how this goes. It's not unusual for some superior, probably your boss's boss or boss's boss's boss, to make important decisions about the manner of your work and instate policy that makes very little sense in the reality of your working conditions. Almost always, they're sitting behind a desk in a city a long way away and entirely disconnected from the reality—even the context—of your job.

The problem is that these types typically lack the foresight and ability to understand that there are things outside of their own experience that they don't understand. Plus, they're all too certain that any feedback and protest is just a symptom of workers' laziness and further proof that their ill-advised direction is the right one.

My experience with this was an organization that sought to implement a system that would replace the traditional paperwork. The true reason for this "upgrade" was that they wanted to be able to track the efficiency of each worker in real time. The problem that presented itself rather quickly but that no one at head office designing the system had considered was that the software needed to be connected to a mobile network at all times on the workers' phones… and these workers were technicians who were attending sites that were completely out of reception 50% of the time. So, their paperwork that was supposed to be completed in real-time for health and safety purposes instead needed to be completed off memory once the technician had left the site and parked up somewhere where they had service…

The situation like the one described above was a bit like that, except the employee worked for a technician cellphone company where their boss, with no conception of the reality presented by rural work, forbade them from using a competitor's phone when their own company phone was out of service. The problem was, well—their work location was usually determined by towers being out of service, leading to an altercation that would see their boss sent packing.

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Posted by Brad Dickson