I got Newbie Installer - yikes!

[tastysatellite]

We had a contractor come out yesterday to install our service. He said he only been working for direct as a contractor for a month. Made it to our home at 6:30pm. 3 r15's and one hr24, no whole home, no cinema kit, nothing. I kid you not, 7 hours later we had service. He finished at 1:30am. We helped him run the cable, drilled all the holes. He was under the house for almost 2 hours just hooking up the switch. Over an hour digging the hole, another couple aligning the dish. Like I said, he was very nice and we were very patient and helped where we could. I even tipped him, though less than I had planned. I felt bad for the guy.

By the way, when he called that morning, I asked If he would bring me a hr24. He actually turned around and drove 25 miles back to the office just to pick one up for me. For that, I thanked him profusely.

Extremely pleased with the hr24.

 

[raoul5788]

Wow, that's a dedicated installer!

 

[Joe Diamond]

Try again:

Only a new guy would begin a four holer after dark! Tomorrow will come at sun up and he will have another route. They overbooked him...he did his best. I can't spell unsupportable activity or I would explain.

Joe

 

[raoul5788]

I get what you are saying Joe, but I still say the guy is dedicated, or stupid!

 

[Chavez]

Tasty, I would say thank you for helping out a newbie, my guess is he never received proper training and is already being overworked, you should not have had to do what you did.

 

[markfp-1]

Tasty, I would say thank you for helping out a newbie, my guess is he never received proper training and is already being overworked, you should not have had to do what you did.

I think it's great he helped him out to even though he didn't have to. You can't blame the guy for being new or for lack of training. We all had to learn once. Whether it's an installer or a girl on her first day behind the counter someplace. It never hurts to be nice.

 

[Joe Diamond]

I get what you are saying Joe, but I still say the guy is dedicated, or stupid!

It is worse than that. He is probably not stupid because he is able to do the most recent round of installations. They are way beyond the round dish & SD box. He could be dedicated...read hungry, good work ethic, self motivated....whatever.

But for some reason he thought starting another job after dark was a good thing. As fatigue sets in you make mistakes. That his management would consider letting him proceed speaks to what is going on. The idea that you burn techs down and replace them as they leave certainly applies here.

To put the best spin on this...he probably didn't see what he was getting into and trusted the schedule people to come up with a reasonable schedule. At some point he will discover his skills and work ethic are fine . He will then have to report an eye sight problem..........."can't see my azz doin' another job at this time of day." Then it will become a management issue.


Joe

 

[Liquidforce88]

3 hours to dig a hole mount a pole and peak a dish. Good lord man that is like 30 min of work. He may have only had 3 jobs, it just took him that long to get done.

We used to have a guy that all he could handel was 2 jobs a day. We called him slow motion. It sucked if you had to give him 3 jobs, just because you could not get another tech routed to it. Because with 3 jobs the office manager was stuck there untill he was done.

Anyway atleast he got the job done.

 

[Daddy Dithers]

A lot of us have been in his shoes. Like many he was probably hurtin' for money and made the call to go on his own sooner than he was ready. If like my start..he wasn't making a dime while training. If he sticks it out and has someone to call when he runs into something he has not seen (which will occur often) then he will get faster. Like Liquidforce said, he may not have been overbooked..just not fast enough yet. A newbie's success depends heavily on how much effort his trainer put into his job. If he was training this guy because he had to and not remembering the pain he went through as a new guy then the trainee got shortchanged. My training was oriented toward "this is how you do it" with not nearly enough of "this is what you do when it doesn't work". Knowing how to troubleshoot is key. What takes me 5 minutes to figure out now took a lot longer at 1st.

Got to give the guy props for hangin in there and getting it done. Customer's compassion and willingness to help is to be commended. He may well have been in a similar situation in a new job once upon a time. Obviously wise enough to realize that helping this guy got him into bed 2 or more hrs sooner than if he had been an azz-complaining the whole time about how long the job was taking.

 

[marquitos306]

You seem to be good people helping the installer.

 

[Blktaws6]

Hell, fire his boss for not being there with him til 130.