two weeks installing security cameras and card readers

For two weeks I worked this job which required me to install security cameras and card readers. The objective was simple: install the cameras and readers. However, security cameras need cabling to work, so we had to run cable across the drop ceiling with poles called 'glow rods'. The idea is to run the cable across the drop ceiling from where the camera or reader is going to be installed to the utility closet where the power box is, or vice versa (from the box to the camera). Either way, you’re going to be in pain. That's why they hire idiots like me.

Sometimes it’s not clear where to direct the wire. Electricians install pipes in the walls in commercial buildings for us, but usually alongside several other pipes, which are often unlabeled. So they use something called ‘fish tape’, which is a spool of metal wire that can be fed up the keyhole where the reader is to see where it comes out.

Then you have to use a crimper, which crimps the plugs on the ends of the wire, so you can plug the cameras in. First, you strip the wire sheath off and expose the wires inside. They all come twisted together in 5 pairs. The wires have some kind of cream on them which gets all over your fingers. Also, there is a fuzzy piece of string that is alongside the wires, which is used to strip more of the sheathing off. Then you're supposed to untwist the pairs and place each wire in the following sequence: Solid Brown, Brown & White, Solid Green, Blue & White, Solid Blue, Green & White, Solid Orange, Orange & White. After that nightmare is finished, you push the wire through the plug and crimp the plug with the crimper. Then you hope it works.

The task is simple, yet time-consuming, especially when it's only you and an old Puerto Rican man from the Bronx who is a worrywart that incessantly talks. He was a kind man but absolutely intolerable at times. He had a lot of installation knowledge but moved and thought through things meticulous and slow, hesitating in his every movement. Real bad anxiety with this guy. I knew after day one that I could not ride in the company van with him. He talked the entire time, and I couldn't get a word in. He could not hear anything I said and conversations were always one-sided, where he did most of the talking.

One day on the job, which went like many with him, had gone as follows:

"Pull the cable!" I shouted.

"What's that?"

"Pull! Pull the cable!"

"I can't hear what you said?"

"Pull the cable!"

We were both standing at opposite ends on 10ft ladders, attempting to shove the cable from my end of the drop ceiling over to his with the glow rods. Either he would be pushing the cable, or I would be pulling the cable. Whoever was pushing or feeding the cable had to make sure that the cable did not get obstructed by the vents, pipes, and whatever other stuff that gets installed above drop ceiling. In the above instance, he was pulling.

"I can't hear you!" he said. Then he climbed down from his ladder and came over to me. Let me repeat that, he climbed down from his ladder and came over to me.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I said pull the cable!"

I'll be honest, I would get short with him at times. I tried hard to contain it, but the frustration would make even the meekest soul snap.

"Oh! You want me to pull the cable?"

"Yeah," I would say high-pitched and defeated. "Pull the cable."

I had been shouting it at the top of my lungs from the other side. I couldn't help but maybe think he was being passive-aggressive, but he did have trouble hearing and seeing. He needed to retire, I thought. But maybe he couldn't afford to.

After we had gotten the cable to the correct length from the camera or reader and then over to the box, we would cut it. Then we had to mount these things called 'J-hooks'. They were metal hangers that held the wire along the wall. It was an electrical code violation to have wire laying across the drop ceiling. Every six feet or so, I would drill one of these things into the stud inside the wall, if I could, and then placed the wire in it. It was also an extraordinary pain.

My first week on the job we ran out of 'J-hooks' at a commercial site and couldn't finish wiring the building. My supervisor tried to find fault with us, like we hadn't done enough, to which I replied, "Yeah, you left us here alone without the required materials to finish the job." He didn't care and there was no way I was paying for them out of my pocket. Besides, they didn't sell them at The Home Depot, according to the supervisor, which sounded like nonsense. You had to drive an hour out to this place to get them.

After only a week of being at the job, the supervisor would leave the two of us alone to go off somewhere else. The man took lunch breaks that were well over an hour, verging on two, talking on the phone with his fishing buddy. I knew this because he had the window down on one of the company vans, talking in high decibels about it, along with his plans to get shit-faced on the weekend.

I can put up with a lot at work, but not when my hours aren't being recorded reliably. I had not been punched into an app or timeclock for the entire two weeks I had worked there. The operations manager said he would take care of my first week as far as the hours and drive time (The company pays for drive time outside a 30min radius). So I said, okay, but next week I want to be punched into something. I don't want people making my hours up off the top of their heads. The next week arrived, and I was still not clocked into anything. There was all this talk of a link that was supposed to be emailed to me to get it set up, but I never received it. I emailed HR, they said to reach out to another technician. To another technician? Why was the operations manager not helping himself? I spoke with the Ops manager and the guy accused me of having a tone of voice he didn't like. We'll I told him I like being paid accurately, and I'm not going off your word as far as my hours go, so either punch me into the app, or I quit.

"We'll talk about it on Monday," he said.

I quit.