Another Openreach Begging Letter

Yesterday saw another Openreach begging letter sent by it's CEO 'Steve
Robertson' who famously blundered within a few days of his appointment by
describing Openreach as an organisation that looked after the 'Last Mile of
copper' to the customers premesis. The letter was sent to most Openreach staff
but aimed mostly at it's already demoralised engineers. It basically is telling
engineers how bad things are and how much harder people need to try. Perhaps a
look at the day in the life of a normal engineer is needed. The back to the
floor crap always picks the arselicker with the easy jobs. Perhaps Mr Robertson
should get real......

Sort this out first, and then send your begging letters Mr Robertson.

(1) All systems are laptop based. Most engineers have a Panasonic Toughbook
CF-27 400mhz PII. On this is loaded a pile of software that runs multiple tasks.
It takes around 10 Minutes to start the thing up in the morning and usually
requires a restart during the day. The machine struggles to do anything and all
the engineers work is dependant on it. It was promised that a faster laptop with
even more processor hungry applications would be 'rolled out'. Im sure many
areas of the Country are wondering just what has happened to this 'roll out'

(2) You then check your emails on this ailing laptop and start to make calls to
respond if you need to. A neat trick is to use lots of graphics files in the
email to make it look pretty. You can normally boil a kettle in the time it
takes each one to load and display. Then you find you have five to ten of them.
They then tell you that it's your responsibility (there's a surprise) to comply
with something or other. It then gives you five of six 'useful' links that you
have to follow to read the 'full briefing'. These take you deeper into more
links and finally you give up as the machine does a blue screen of death or hits
a 404. The crux, you waste about 20 minutes, get nowhere, and the company covers
it's arse. It's great for moral.

(3) Moving from the email system you go into the InformE system where simular
briefings are again repeated one at a time, to the same dead links. This time
you have to commit yourself to marking them as 'read' and 'accepting them'.
Another 10 or so minutes down.

(4) You then move onto the 'workmanager' system (written in java for extra
slowness as the java virtual machine crawls to interpret the code on such a
powerful machine) and go through the jobs that you downloaded in the background
whilst fighting the other systems with no less than 3 passwords just to get the
machine up, running and connected to Openreach systems. Then another one for the
email, then another one for the briefings. Back to the jobs, you notice that it
has given you five tasks. 3 of them are Before 13.00 (am) and they are all 20
miles apart. Then they contain the words 'Multiskilled Engineer Required'. This
means you do everything from start to finish (basically) from the exchange work
to getting the pair of wires the 'last mile' (or 10 miles), putting the overhead
up across a road on your own, and then the fit to a rear bedroom. You realise
you will be lucky to get one of them done so you call your manager to ask him
for a 'slip number' to send the other jobs back. He gives it to you but asks you
to call your control to let them know the jobs are coming back. Up to an 40
minutes on hold waiting for control. You then refresh the laptop to send the
jobs back so you can get on. Hello, it's given you another job because the
software is writen by fuckwits. Repeat the above phone calls until you get
'There are no other tasks'.

(5) Look at job notes to find that they are not complete and about ten other
engineers have legged it. The workmanager system can't hold all of the notes so
you either have to go into another system (CSS requiring a further 2 passwords
and logins) and look at the full notes (if your manager ever sorted access out
for you) or call the support unit for them to read you the full notes. Another
10 or so minutes.

(6) Then you get to your van and get the laptop out, wait for it to start, book
a 'vehicle check' so the system knows you are doing. Whilst this should be the
normal anyway it's interesting. It would appear that the nice cost saving vans
(the Vivaro or Renault Traffic to give it it's proper name) also don't tend to
be that fantastic in terms of durability. They seem to use a bit of oil and
water which was unheard of in a Transit. Should you identify a fault with the
vehicle you then have to fight with a local manager, bashed by a large
workstack, to be allowed to drive the 30 or 40 miles to a BT garage to be
treated like a piece of shit. You will normally be told that you 'need to book
the vehicle in' so the question is what do you do with the defective vehicle.
It's easy. Nothing. You sit on your arse for a few days waiting for it to be
fixed or if you are lucky get an even smaller loan van that you can just get a
bag of tools in. The reason, well, it's not that the garage are short of staff.
They are all busy on private work like AA Trucks, Police and Private vehicles.
As Depeche Mode said 'It's a competeive world'

(7) Assuming you have a working van you then ger out your ancient mobile phone
and struggle to get a signal on the 'BT Mobile' network. Standing on the van at
the top of hill you call the customer, who's contact number was on the last page
of the notes and read to you on the phone. It turns out that the number is
wrong. So you then call the support unit back, then after loosing the mobile
signal twice get another number which is also wrong. You give up trying to 'ring
ahead'

(8) It's now nearly 9am, you have wasted an hour. You drive towards your
customer some 20 miles away stuck in the flow of school traffic. You finally
find it and it's a building site. You ask for the contact name to be told he is
not in to 10.30 and that BT were told this when they called. You apologise and
decide to pop to the feeding cabinet to see if you have dialtone on your 'E'
side pair from the exchange. You find that you have! Great! Then you 17070 it
and find it's someone elses line and know that the cab is famous for crap 'E
sides' and wonder what happened to Steve Robertsons massive drive on quality.
You realise that when quality meets cost, quality looses. It's been that way
since privatisation. You call up CRO (The routing division) and ask for a spare
'E' side and resign yourself to having to rejumper the exchange. The call takes
20 minutes, you are cut off and told to use the non working routing solutions on
your laptop, you call back and finally get a half decent college, as opposed to
a cunt, who helps you out. He gives you a list of spare 'E' sides. You check
them all out and find they are all either in use or faulty. You call back and
are told that there are no more spare pairs of wires. You ask if any of the
lines are 'stopped' (that is recently disconnected). You are told 'yes' but as
they are all less than 'six months' old you can't have them. You beg saying that
the customer needs the line. He finally gives in and gives you a 'stopped' line.
You thank him and hang up. You clip onto the 'stopped line' to find that a
previous engineer has already taken it, sick of waiting. You call your manager,
who is driving to a pointless meeting, and ask him if he can look something up.
He says 'Call the coach, I am driving'. You call the coach, he's out in the
field as there is a shortage of staff. He calls you back later with a list of
stopped lines. You drove to the exchange and rejumper it so the dialtone at
least gets to the cabinet.

(9) It's now 10:30, you drive back to site. You meet the customer who is happy
to tell you just what he thinks about BT and how long he has waited for his
'site line'. You feel like telling him you are Openreach, not BT, but whats the
point. You are entitled to his opinion only. In fact, you have to grovel when
you would really like to either agree or smack the bastard in the mouth for his
abuse. He shows you where he wants the phone point. The job involves a simple
fit in a container, but getting at it is a nightmare. You deal with it. You then
find you need to run 100 metres of cable around a fence, cable tie it, and 3
spans of dropwire back to a pole. The pole in the middle is rotten and can't be
climbed. You have to call a hoist out. If you are lucky, thats today, if not,
you will be coming back. The hoist is available in a few hours so you agree to
wait as you still have to get a pair of wires from the cab to the DP (the first
pole).

(10) It's now 12:00. You climb the pole to find that all the pairs are either
working or only going a hundred metres. The cabinet is some 4km away, so you are
going to need to try and 'divert' a pair of wires. You have to wait for the
hoist so you have a look at it. You manage to push the 'pair' 2km back to the
cab only to find the cable joint you need is in a roadway box on a semi busy
road. OK, no worries. You set up all your roadworks guarding, on your own, and
take your life into your hands. Once into the joint at around 13.30 you get a
text message saying you have failed to make 'contact' with your control. It's a
duty of care. Thing is, you have been on the phone to them most of the morning.
However, you can't call them as you have no signal. The text made it through but
placing a call is just a no-go. Now, do you pack all your roadworks up and go to
a point where you can make a call or leave it? You leave it. You get into the
roadway box, but off an old heatshrink joint that is buried in mud and water, to
find that it's full. There is no way you can get a pair of wires back to the
cab. You work out that the job needs 2km of 100 pair cable, all in the roadway.
You think, "I better call the routers again".

(11) It's 14:25 now and you have not had a lunch break. You have not got time
again. You need to make a call about the cable, but have no signal. You drive
back to the DP as the hoist has turned up. You put up the overhead which takes
another hour and a half as you have to keep moving to let the lorries in and
out.

(12) It's nearly 16:00. You call the routers and tell them the cable is full.
They tell you what you know. There is no way they will pull in the cable. 2km in
a roadway is going to take months or years to sort out. They suggest that you
use a 'DACS' to get the line working. You inform them the line is for ADSL. They
say 'Oh'. Then they scan the DP and find two ordinary lines with no broadband.
They ask you to 'double dacs' them to provide service. This means you have to
rejumper all three lines in the exchange, via dacs equipment, to provide
service. You take down the details, and just as you are about to head off to the
exchange the customer comes out and asks you how much longer you are going to be
before his line is working....

(14) It's 16:30, you get back to the exchange to do the jumpering. The dacs gear
quoted is in use, so you find a spare (getting tight for time now). Jumper it
up, fight the traffic, get back to the DP, fit the dacs, put the new line
through on the copper route and test it before handing it over. Bang. Test's
'Battery Contact'. You can't leave it like it despite the fact it's working.
It's back to the cab to look which way the fault is going.

(15) It's 17:45, you finish in five minutes time. You break the line down and
prove it to the D side. You ring and ask if the manager wants you to stay on to
finish the job. He say's 'No, there is no overtime unless you can guarantee me a
clear, retain the job and go back in the morning to clear the fault'.

(16) You drive to the customer, who has fucked off home, he's not given you his
number, so you cant update him.

(17) You drive home. It's now 18.40. You are nearly an hour late back and not
getting paid. You open up your laptop, it crashes. You restart it, another 10
minutes of your time, put notes on the job and finally sign of at 19:10 fighting
all the retrospective time sheet bollocks. Somebody elses job you are doing.

(18) They story is not over. You have not complete a single job that day and you
have to go back the following day to clear the little fault that the line tester
is moaning about.

(19) The following day you plug in, do all the normal steps. The machine gives
you the job back, plus another 2 morning jobs, again you return them, round the
fucking merigoround you go. Get to the job, measure the fault and pinpoint it.
It turns out to be in a manhole in the middle of the road. You are not allowed
in manholes so the job has to be sent back for 'second stage repair'. A day and
a quarter, working service, but no 'cleared' job. On paper you look shite. Every
day is the same. The phone keeps going, the texts keep coming and you keep
hitting your head.

The normal life of Openreach engineer. However, some of the arse lickers sit in
exchanges in little clusters, looking at the jobs, taking all the easy stuff and
leaving the shit for the rest. On paper they look fantastic. The pick, choose
and pin brigade. Some even put faults on to get easy jobs for themselves. It
breads resentment on a grand scale. Finally, to make moral worse, the bonus
scheme (which paid the above arselickers up to £900 a month in extra earnings
and the rest around £2-400) was removed. A pay drop of about £300 a month.

Engineers are doing more and more of other BT peoples work, have taken a
paydrop, and have to put up with begging emails and letters from the fuckwit at
the top asking engineers to do more. Well on behalf of the engineer buddy who I
spoke to last night who is going insane about this, this long post is for you
and all other beaten down, abused engineers who keep putting up with these
crappy letters, emails and invitiaitons to conference calls to be beaten with a
stick about how bad things are. The message on their behalf is, Mr Robertson.
FUCK OFF.

And mine when straight in the bin as shiny paper is no good for the toilet.

"Pier Danone" <Pier (E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Yesterday saw another Openreach begging letter sent by it's CEO 'Steve
> Robertson' who famously blundered within a few days of his appointment by
> describing Openreach as an organisation that looked after the 'Last Mile
> of
> copper' to the customers premesis. The letter was sent to most Openreach
> staff
> but aimed mostly at it's already demoralised engineers. It basically is
> telling
> engineers how bad things are and how much harder people need to try.
> Perhaps a
> look at the day in the life of a normal engineer is needed. The back to
> the
> floor crap always picks the arselicker with the easy jobs. Perhaps Mr
> Robertson
> should get real......
>
> Sort this out first, and then send your begging letters Mr Robertson.
>
> (1) All systems are laptop based. Most engineers have a Panasonic
> Toughbook
> CF-27 400mhz PII. On this is loaded a pile of software that runs multiple
> tasks.
> It takes around 10 Minutes to start the thing up in the morning and
> usually
> requires a restart during the day. The machine struggles to do anything
> and all
> the engineers work is dependant on it. It was promised that a faster
> laptop with
> even more processor hungry applications would be 'rolled out'. Im sure
> many
> areas of the Country are wondering just what has happened to this 'roll
> out'
>
> (2) You then check your emails on this ailing laptop and start to make
> calls to
> respond if you need to. A neat trick is to use lots of graphics files in
> the
> email to make it look pretty. You can normally boil a kettle in the time
> it
> takes each one to load and display. Then you find you have five to ten of
> them.
> They then tell you that it's your responsibility (there's a surprise) to
> comply
> with something or other. It then gives you five of six 'useful' links that
> you
> have to follow to read the 'full briefing'. These take you deeper into
> more
> links and finally you give up as the machine does a blue screen of death
> or hits
> a 404. The crux, you waste about 20 minutes, get nowhere, and the company
> covers
> it's arse. It's great for moral.
>
> (3) Moving from the email system you go into the InformE system where
> simular
> briefings are again repeated one at a time, to the same dead links. This
> time
> you have to commit yourself to marking them as 'read' and 'accepting
> them'.
> Another 10 or so minutes down.
>
> (4) You then move onto the 'workmanager' system (written in java for extra
> slowness as the java virtual machine crawls to interpret the code on such
> a
> powerful machine) and go through the jobs that you downloaded in the
> background
> whilst fighting the other systems with no less than 3 passwords just to
> get the
> machine up, running and connected to Openreach systems. Then another one
> for the
> email, then another one for the briefings. Back to the jobs, you notice
> that it
> has given you five tasks. 3 of them are Before 13.00 (am) and they are all
> 20
> miles apart. Then they contain the words 'Multiskilled Engineer Required'.
> This
> means you do everything from start to finish (basically) from the exchange
> work
> to getting the pair of wires the 'last mile' (or 10 miles), putting the
> overhead
> up across a road on your own, and then the fit to a rear bedroom. You
> realise
> you will be lucky to get one of them done so you call your manager to ask
> him
> for a 'slip number' to send the other jobs back. He gives it to you but
> asks you
> to call your control to let them know the jobs are coming back. Up to an
> 40
> minutes on hold waiting for control. You then refresh the laptop to send
> the
> jobs back so you can get on. Hello, it's given you another job because the
> software is writen by fuckwits. Repeat the above phone calls until you get
> 'There are no other tasks'.
>
> (5) Look at job notes to find that they are not complete and about ten
> other
> engineers have legged it. The workmanager system can't hold all of the
> notes so
> you either have to go into another system (CSS requiring a further 2
> passwords
> and logins) and look at the full notes (if your manager ever sorted access
> out
> for you) or call the support unit for them to read you the full notes.
> Another
> 10 or so minutes.
>
> (6) Then you get to your van and get the laptop out, wait for it to start,
> book
> a 'vehicle check' so the system knows you are doing. Whilst this should be
> the
> normal anyway it's interesting. It would appear that the nice cost saving
> vans
> (the Vivaro or Renault Traffic to give it it's proper name) also don't
> tend to
> be that fantastic in terms of durability. They seem to use a bit of oil
> and
> water which was unheard of in a Transit. Should you identify a fault with
> the
> vehicle you then have to fight with a local manager, bashed by a large
> workstack, to be allowed to drive the 30 or 40 miles to a BT garage to be
> treated like a piece of shit. You will normally be told that you 'need to
> book
> the vehicle in' so the question is what do you do with the defective
> vehicle.
> It's easy. Nothing. You sit on your arse for a few days waiting for it to
> be
> fixed or if you are lucky get an even smaller loan van that you can just
> get a
> bag of tools in. The reason, well, it's not that the garage are short of
> staff.
> They are all busy on private work like AA Trucks, Police and Private
> vehicles.
> As Depeche Mode said 'It's a competeive world'
>
> (7) Assuming you have a working van you then ger out your ancient mobile
> phone
> and struggle to get a signal on the 'BT Mobile' network. Standing on the
> van at
> the top of hill you call the customer, who's contact number was on the
> last page
> of the notes and read to you on the phone. It turns out that the number is
> wrong. So you then call the support unit back, then after loosing the
> mobile
> signal twice get another number which is also wrong. You give up trying to
> 'ring
> ahead'
>
> (8) It's now nearly 9am, you have wasted an hour. You drive towards your
> customer some 20 miles away stuck in the flow of school traffic. You
> finally
> find it and it's a building site. You ask for the contact name to be told
> he is
> not in to 10.30 and that BT were told this when they called. You apologise
> and
> decide to pop to the feeding cabinet to see if you have dialtone on your
> 'E'
> side pair from the exchange. You find that you have! Great! Then you 17070
> it
> and find it's someone elses line and know that the cab is famous for crap
> 'E
> sides' and wonder what happened to Steve Robertsons massive drive on
> quality.
> You realise that when quality meets cost, quality looses. It's been that
> way
> since privatisation. You call up CRO (The routing division) and ask for a
> spare
> 'E' side and resign yourself to having to rejumper the exchange. The call
> takes
> 20 minutes, you are cut off and told to use the non working routing
> solutions on
> your laptop, you call back and finally get a half decent college, as
> opposed to
> a cunt, who helps you out. He gives you a list of spare 'E' sides. You
> check
> them all out and find they are all either in use or faulty. You call back
> and
> are told that there are no more spare pairs of wires. You ask if any of
> the
> lines are 'stopped' (that is recently disconnected). You are told 'yes'
> but as
> they are all less than 'six months' old you can't have them. You beg
> saying that
> the customer needs the line. He finally gives in and gives you a 'stopped'
> line.
> You thank him and hang up. You clip onto the 'stopped line' to find that a
> previous engineer has already taken it, sick of waiting. You call your
> manager,
> who is driving to a pointless meeting, and ask him if he can look
> something up.
> He says 'Call the coach, I am driving'. You call the coach, he's out in
> the
> field as there is a shortage of staff. He calls you back later with a list
> of
> stopped lines. You drove to the exchange and rejumper it so the dialtone
> at
> least gets to the cabinet.
>
> (9) It's now 10:30, you drive back to site. You meet the customer who is
> happy
> to tell you just what he thinks about BT and how long he has waited for
> his
> 'site line'. You feel like telling him you are Openreach, not BT, but
> whats the
> point. You are entitled to his opinion only. In fact, you have to grovel
> when
> you would really like to either agree or smack the bastard in the mouth
> for his
> abuse. He shows you where he wants the phone point. The job involves a
> simple
> fit in a container, but getting at it is a nightmare. You deal with it.
> You then
> find you need to run 100 metres of cable around a fence, cable tie it, and
> 3
> spans of dropwire back to a pole. The pole in the middle is rotten and
> can't be
> climbed. You have to call a hoist out. If you are lucky, thats today, if
> not,
> you will be coming back. The hoist is available in a few hours so you
> agree to
> wait as you still have to get a pair of wires from the cab to the DP (the
> first
> pole).
>
> (10) It's now 12:00. You climb the pole to find that all the pairs are
> either
> working or only going a hundred metres. The cabinet is some 4km away, so
> you are
> going to need to try and 'divert' a pair of wires. You have to wait for
> the
> hoist so you have a look at it. You manage to push the 'pair' 2km back to
> the
> cab only to find the cable joint you need is in a roadway box on a semi
> busy
> road. OK, no worries. You set up all your roadworks guarding, on your own,
> and
> take your life into your hands. Once into the joint at around 13.30 you
> get a
> text message saying you have failed to make 'contact' with your control.
> It's a
> duty of care. Thing is, you have been on the phone to them most of the
> morning.
> However, you can't call them as you have no signal. The text made it
> through but
> placing a call is just a no-go. Now, do you pack all your roadworks up and
> go to
> a point where you can make a call or leave it? You leave it. You get into
> the
> roadway box, but off an old heatshrink joint that is buried in mud and
> water, to
> find that it's full. There is no way you can get a pair of wires back to
> the
> cab. You work out that the job needs 2km of 100 pair cable, all in the
> roadway.
> You think, "I better call the routers again".
>
> (11) It's 14:25 now and you have not had a lunch break. You have not got
> time
> again. You need to make a call about the cable, but have no signal. You
> drive
> back to the DP as the hoist has turned up. You put up the overhead which
> takes
> another hour and a half as you have to keep moving to let the lorries in
> and
> out.
>
> (12) It's nearly 16:00. You call the routers and tell them the cable is
> full.
> They tell you what you know. There is no way they will pull in the cable.
> 2km in
> a roadway is going to take months or years to sort out. They suggest that
> you
> use a 'DACS' to get the line working. You inform them the line is for
> ADSL. They
> say 'Oh'. Then they scan the DP and find two ordinary lines with no
> broadband.
> They ask you to 'double dacs' them to provide service. This means you have
> to
> rejumper all three lines in the exchange, via dacs equipment, to provide
> service. You take down the details, and just as you are about to head off
> to the
> exchange the customer comes out and asks you how much longer you are going
> to be
> before his line is working....
>
> (14) It's 16:30, you get back to the exchange to do the jumpering. The
> dacs gear
> quoted is in use, so you find a spare (getting tight for time now). Jumper
> it
> up, fight the traffic, get back to the DP, fit the dacs, put the new line
> through on the copper route and test it before handing it over. Bang.
> Test's
> 'Battery Contact'. You can't leave it like it despite the fact it's
> working.
> It's back to the cab to look which way the fault is going.
>
> (15) It's 17:45, you finish in five minutes time. You break the line down
> and
> prove it to the D side. You ring and ask if the manager wants you to stay
> on to
> finish the job. He say's 'No, there is no overtime unless you can
> guarantee me a
> clear, retain the job and go back in the morning to clear the fault'.
>
> (16) You drive to the customer, who has fucked off home, he's not given
> you his
> number, so you cant update him.
>
> (17) You drive home. It's now 18.40. You are nearly an hour late back and
> not
> getting paid. You open up your laptop, it crashes. You restart it, another
> 10
> minutes of your time, put notes on the job and finally sign of at 19:10
> fighting
> all the retrospective time sheet bollocks. Somebody elses job you are
> doing.
>
> (18) They story is not over. You have not complete a single job that day
> and you
> have to go back the following day to clear the little fault that the line
> tester
> is moaning about.
>
> (19) The following day you plug in, do all the normal steps. The machine
> gives
> you the job back, plus another 2 morning jobs, again you return them,
> round the
> fucking merigoround you go. Get to the job, measure the fault and pinpoint
> it.
> It turns out to be in a manhole in the middle of the road. You are not
> allowed
> in manholes so the job has to be sent back for 'second stage repair'. A
> day and
> a quarter, working service, but no 'cleared' job. On paper you look shite.
> Every
> day is the same. The phone keeps going, the texts keep coming and you keep
> hitting your head.
>
> The normal life of Openreach engineer. However, some of the arse lickers
> sit in
> exchanges in little clusters, looking at the jobs, taking all the easy
> stuff and
> leaving the shit for the rest. On paper they look fantastic. The pick,
> choose
> and pin brigade. Some even put faults on to get easy jobs for themselves.
> It
> breads resentment on a grand scale. Finally, to make moral worse, the
> bonus
> scheme (which paid the above arselickers up to £900 a month in extra
> earnings
> and the rest around £2-400) was removed. A pay drop of about £300 a month.
>
> Engineers are doing more and more of other BT peoples work, have taken a
> paydrop, and have to put up with begging emails and letters from the
> fuckwit at
> the top asking engineers to do more. Well on behalf of the engineer buddy
> who I
> spoke to last night who is going insane about this, this long post is for
> you
> and all other beaten down, abused engineers who keep putting up with these
> crappy letters, emails and invitiaitons to conference calls to be beaten
> with a
> stick about how bad things are. The message on their behalf is, Mr
> Robertson.
> FUCK OFF.
>
>

"SJP" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)
> And mine when straight in the bin as shiny paper is no
> good for the toilet.

Was it really necessary to repeat the whole post just to add that..? And
to top post it as well..?

Ivor

--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?

On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 09:46:57, Pier Danone wrote:

>Yesterday
[sad to snip such an excellent essay]

>Engineers are doing more and more of other BT peoples work, have taken
>a paydrop, and have to put up with begging emails and letters from the
>fuckwit at the top asking engineers to do more. Well on behalf of the
>engineer buddy who I spoke to last night who is going insane about
>this, this long post is for you and all other beaten down, abused
>engineers who keep putting up with these crappy letters, emails and
>invitiaitons to conference calls to be beaten with a stick about how
>bad things are. The message on their behalf is, Mr Robertson. FUCK OFF.

Brilliant rant.

I hope he reads it, too.

--
Jim Crowther. "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of
arriving safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside,
thoroughly used up , totally worn out and loudly proclaiming;
WOW!!! What a ride." "It's MY computer!" (tm SMG)

"Pier Danone" <Pier (E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...

You are "The Wire" AICMFP ;-)






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"Pier Danone" <Pier (E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Yesterday saw another Openreach begging letter sent by it's CEO
> 'Steve
> Robertson' who famously blundered within a few days of his
> appointment by
> describing Openreach as an organisation that looked after the 'Last
> Mile of
> copper' to the customers premesis. The letter was sent to most
> Openreach staff
> but aimed mostly at it's already demoralised engineers. It basically
> is telling
> engineers how bad things are and how much harder people need to try.
> Perhaps a
> look at the day in the life of a normal engineer is needed. The back
> to the
> floor crap always picks the arselicker with the easy jobs. Perhaps
> Mr Robertson
> should get real......
>
> Sort this out first, and then send your begging letters Mr
> Robertson.

snip -> You're lucky with the 10 minute reboot time, mines taking 20
minutes & that's only if nothing goes wrong. If you're really lucky
it's 20 minutes to the 'blue screen of death' so another 20 minutes to
another error etc. I have wasted over 4.5 hours in one day just
trying to get the blasted laptop to work & don't talk to me about
laptop support, they're so busy they dump your calls most of the day &
if you do get thru you get told that you're a liar or why have you
installed unauthorised software on the company laptop (was having a
problem with MS.Net at the time, yes IT support didn't know anything
about it). The latest issue is that as a multiskilled engineer doing
DSL, I had to signed off on a briefing which told me to update/check
the antivirus package each day.....mine goes belly up if I try
nowadays. Contacted support to be told I didn't know what I was
talking about & that the antivirus package will be updated if & when
they decide (remember this is the IT department who was so sure that
Melissa wasn't a threat & look what happened...

Isn't it funny how the emails exalt us to be heroes & we're working
wonders out there & then we get the weaselly worded begging letter
asking us to do more, I think it took 30 seconds to reach the
shredder...

"Jim Crowther" <Don'(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
message news:(E-Mail Removed) nvalid...
> On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 09:46:57, Pier Danone wrote:
>
>>Yesterday
> [sad to snip such an excellent essay]
>
>>Engineers are doing more and more of other BT peoples work, have
>>taken a paydrop, and have to put up with begging emails and letters
>>from the fuckwit at the top asking engineers to do more. Well on
>>behalf of the engineer buddy who I spoke to last night who is going
>>insane about this, this long post is for you and all other beaten
>>down, abused engineers who keep putting up with these crappy
>>letters, emails and invitiaitons to conference calls to be beaten
>>with a stick about how bad things are. The message on their behalf
>>is, Mr Robertson. FUCK OFF.
>
> Brilliant rant.
>
> I hope he reads it, too.

Don't worry he won't, he's far to up himself to loiter with usenet
users..

Pier Danone wrote:
> Yesterday saw another Openreach begging letter sent by it's CEO 'Steve
> Robertson' who famously blundered within a few days of his appointment by
> describing Openreach as an organisation that looked after the 'Last Mile of
> copper' to the customers premesis.


<snip>

Makes me glad I'm on Business Systems (or whatever they call us today)
Better laptops & we threw away Work Manager a few years ago.
Allthough to be fair Work Manager made me a fair amount of money in
overtime because it was so inflexable.

Jerry

On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 19:15:11 +0100, "kráftéé"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:


>
>snip -> You're lucky with the 10 minute reboot time, mines taking 20
>minutes & that's only if nothing goes wrong. If you're really lucky
>it's 20 minutes to the 'blue screen of death' so another 20 minutes to
>another error etc. I have wasted over 4.5 hours in one day just
>trying to get the blasted laptop to work & don't talk to me about
>laptop support, they're so busy they dump your calls most of the day &
>if you do get thru you get told that you're a liar or why have you
>installed unauthorised software on the company laptop (was having a
>problem with MS.Net at the time, yes IT support didn't know anything
>about it). The latest issue is that as a multiskilled engineer doing
>DSL, I had to signed off on a briefing which told me to update/check
>the antivirus package each day.....mine goes belly up if I try
>nowadays. Contacted support to be told I didn't know what I was
>talking about & that the antivirus package will be updated if & when
>they decide (remember this is the IT department who was so sure that
>Melissa wasn't a threat & look what happened...
>
>Isn't it funny how the emails exalt us to be heroes & we're working
>wonders out there & then we get the weaselly worded begging letter
>asking us to do more, I think it took 30 seconds to reach the
>shredder...
>
Can you actually get through to laptop support ? They had a help team
in Bridge Court but now its been shipped out to "Region 6" - Pune ??
and even if they do respond you cant make much headway anyway

jim

"jim" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 19:15:11 +0100, "kráftéé"
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>snip -> You're lucky with the 10 minute reboot time, mines taking
>>20
>>minutes & that's only if nothing goes wrong. If you're really lucky
>>it's 20 minutes to the 'blue screen of death' so another 20 minutes
>>to
>>another error etc. I have wasted over 4.5 hours in one day just
>>trying to get the blasted laptop to work & don't talk to me about
>>laptop support, they're so busy they dump your calls most of the day
>>&
>>if you do get thru you get told that you're a liar or why have you
>>installed unauthorised software on the company laptop (was having a
>>problem with MS.Net at the time, yes IT support didn't know
>>anything
>>about it). The latest issue is that as a multiskilled engineer
>>doing
>>DSL, I had to signed off on a briefing which told me to update/check
>>the antivirus package each day.....mine goes belly up if I try
>>nowadays. Contacted support to be told I didn't know what I was
>>talking about & that the antivirus package will be updated if & when
>>they decide (remember this is the IT department who was so sure that
>>Melissa wasn't a threat & look what happened...
>>
>>Isn't it funny how the emails exalt us to be heroes & we're working
>>wonders out there & then we get the weaselly worded begging letter
>>asking us to do more, I think it took 30 seconds to reach the
>>shredder...
>>
> Can you actually get through to laptop support ? They had a help
> team
> in Bridge Court but now its been shipped out to "Region 6" - Pune ??
> and even if they do respond you cant make much headway anyway
>

I think I got thru once for about 15-20 failures & it's not helped by
the lev1 telling you to report ALL laptop issues to laptop
(non)support as he isn't really interested.

Anyway getting my new super duper laptop next week, where I've been
reliably informed it does reboot in 10 minutes & runs XP so hopefully
it will have more resources to run all the crap we're supposed to, but
I have heard that there are issues with the DSL toolbox software not
working fully (2 inches forward 1.75 back)