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!'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Sep 14, 2024 1:00 PM EDT

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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    via Kabiur Rahman Riyad
  • You can't use a competitors phone! L Well folks, for those of you who don't know i work on cell phone towers. I used to work an extremely remote rural area for a now defunct small cell phone company. the conversations are to the best of my recollection.
    via MichigaCur
  • The area I worked was the type of area where you could drive for hours and not see anything but field, forests, and animals. Most of the sites I had were what is referred to as "island sites" meaning they don't hand off to another cell tower. And most of these sites were about 30 minutes apart on a good day... er well I worked nights, but you get the drift. So it came around that a competitor had located quite a few sites near our sites. I being of the mindset of efficiency
    via MichigaCur
  • purchased a phone from them, and with approval from my boss kept it ready especially during upgrades. But he was the type when anyone above him says. "boo". He'd jump and ask if he jumped high enough or should he jump again.
    via MichigaCur
  • So a couple of months later bosses boss leaves and we get new bosses boss who's spent 250% of his life in the confines of New York city. Within his first week, he's working the switch and sees me call in from our competitors number. Of course he takes offense to this and it quickly comes down that nobody may use a competitors phone. I
    via MichigaCur
  • bring up my concerns, but you know... They don't need to do this in new York city, so we're not going to do this. Mind you my job is to shut down our sites and upgrade or repair them. Yes I'm the guy you love to hate when you can't make a phone call.
    via MichigaCur
  • And so it happens a short time later, I'm at one of my most remote sites, a 45 minute drive to the next site on a good day. About 4 hours from home. I do my diligence, call the switch tell them what I need them to change and shut down the site. An hour later sites not up. I go through everything on my end, yep everything's good... Awee !!
    via MichigaCur
  • Now there's a couple of pay phones but... they were the competitors phone. So I start driving. It takes me about 1.5 hours to get to the next site because of a freak blizzard. that sites down too. Roll on to the next site, usually about 30 minutes but it's snowing hard and the roads are • 2.5 hours on the road after leaving the original site, I finally get service, pull over
    via MichigaCur
  • and in 5 minutes we figured out the switch crossed a number and took down the wrong site. Switch promises to fix it and I drive 3 hours back to the original site. 30 minutes later its still not up. This time it takes an hour to get to the closest site, call the switch again, they get it up and after about 30 minutes i verify it's up. Hurray!
    via MichigaCur
  • But I still have to drive back, clean up and make some testing calls. 18 some odd hours after I left my driveway, I pull back in and submit my time, complete with the OT. It's my Friday, I turn off my phone and hit the bed. Monday morning, I turn on my phone for our weekly call in meeting and I you not it buzzes with new texts and voicemals for 20 straight minutes all from boss and bosses boss. I jump on the call and first thing I hear is bosses boss.
    via MichigaCur
  • did you have a BB "Why the nearly 9 hour outage for a 30 minute upgrade!" before I get a word in "and how dare you claim 9 hours of OT when you were clearly your job." around not doing
    via MichigaCur
  • ME "well there were a series of issues outside of the site and a freak snowstorm slowed my response" I hit send on emails I had already prepared before clocking out for the weekend with full rundown of events of the night, as a reply to the emails coming down from him dismissing my needs for a competitors phone. And included his boss (vice president of the company)
    via MichigaCur
  • BB "I don't want to hear excuses from you, why didn't you just use a I pay phone and call for help" literally everyone on the call groaned.
    via MichigaCur
  • ME, "in case you don't remember I just replied to a series of emails where you forbade me under threat of termination, from using a competitors phone." at this point I hear VP join our call. "and since payphones are owned by a competitor, I spent 6 hours driving around in a blizzard searching for service, instead of spending 45 minutes to an hour and making a call on a competitors phone." BB "I never threatened to terminate anyone! Don't be stupid you could have used a pay phone."
    via MichigaCur
  • VP cuts in "it appears BB that you do not remember what you said, and Mr Cur has clearly documented his actions on the night in question. BB please call me immediately, thank you everyone else for your time this morning, please have a good day, this meeting is over"
    via MichigaCur
  • BB was removed shortly afterwards having a fairly Rocky rest of his short employment. I now work for the company which purchased our competitor. I've moved to my home state though still work a rural market, it's not quite as bad.
    via MichigaCur
  • TL/DR I worked for a small cell phone company in a very rural area. I used a competitors phone while working on sites. A new boss did not like this and forbade me from using a competitors phone under threat of termination. During a freak blizzard I ended up with an extended outage driving around looking for service collecting many hours of overtime, contributing to bosses own termination.
    via MichigaCur
  • Edit: because it's been asked a few times how bosses boss knew I wasn't using one of our phones to call in with. In the US your ten digit phone number is set up by the area code (first 3 numbers) exchange (second 3 numbers) then number (last four). The exchange was pretty much. owned by the phone company providing the service before porting became a thing. So in our
    via MichigaCur
  • case we had two or three exchange numbers at the time. Like 406 and 685 (random numbers).. so when I called in on a 962 (again random number) he knew I was not using one of our phones. Also, there's ways in the switch to tell how the call is coming though, if it's on our equipment or not, if someone wanted to look.
    via MichigaCur
  • Survive1014 Moral of the story: CYA and document, document, document your work and instructions given.
    via MichigaCur
  • Ich_mag_Kartoffeln We have no phone reception at our family farm. This is known and appreciated by many of the technicians/contractors/etc. who need to visit us from time to time.
    via MichigaCur
  • Once we even had a technician visit us to do a non-urgent, 10 minute job. Of course, it was actually so he could get a few hours peace to catch up on paperwork, clean and organise his service truck, etc.
    via MichigaCur
  • [deleted] It's amazing how many managers can manage to stick their head up their Good on the VP to call him out
    via MichigaCur
  • Prof1959 I worked for a direct mail company that had the big telecom carrier as a big client. They highly recommended all employees use that carrier, though it is the most expensive.
    via MichigaCur
  • For managers, the company supplied phones and offered a 10% discount on the service. OK, so nearly all managers used it. (Though most had to have a second phone anyway because our company claimed all data, including calls, on their supplied work phones, were company property).
    via MichigaCur
  • For the working class, we get the 10% discount, which was still more than most of us were paying with other carriers. Gee thanks! Oh, and employees who went with the chosen carrier were seen as "more loyal". SMH
    via MichigaCur
  • Grubsnik Any reason they didn't issue you a satellite phone even before the competitor showed up in the area? Would have expected it to be a smart investment simply in the reduced time wasted on site
    via MichigaCur
  • matti208 Sounds like BB was exiled from his comfy job in New York to your middle of nowhere because he was a nightmare to work with/for
    via MichigaCur
  • Borngrumpy I used to work for a carrier here in Australia in IT, we did a numbers swap with a competitor so if our network went down we could communicate, same for them. If their network was down we just went through a little service outage for a few phones, no big deal we all had backup phones.
    via MichigaCur
  • Nig... In the 80s I worked contract security at a large long distance company in one of their larger offices. I'm really a sort of night watchman and doorman. Not really any security issues. But, they put an early digital phone system in and removed the security phone.
    via MichigaCur
  • I asked "If that phone switching system goes down- like a fire- how do we call the fire department?" They did see the wisdom and setup a single, red, POTS phone in the security station.
    via MichigaCur
  • Hey_Allen I still remember working as a cell site contractor for AT&T years ago, and carrying a Verizon phone because any time I was at work, it almost guaranteed that there was no AT&T service for many miles. There might have been Sprint or Nextel service, but even that was iffy on some of the areas. There were some amazing views from all the mountain top locations I visited over the years, and I now wish that I'd taken more pictures.
    via MichigaCur

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