I'm trying to enjoy my Memorial Day, and my phone rings. It's one of my good clients, so I answer the phone. Turns out the cable guy is there installing boxes on TVs that used to work on just basic analog. Next thing I know, I'm on the phone with him, talking him through his job.

Now I'm up to three phone calls with the guy, and I'm yelling into the phone, "don't touch that. Leave it alone"

Make sure you send an invoice at holiday rates for this. A reminder to you good client your time is valuable.

Call #4. The house is around 100 years old. Retrofitting wire isn't easy in it, so some things had to just make work however we could. In one room, the modem is in the cabinet with a cable box. He can't figure out where the splitter is. How tough is it to look in a cabinet and follow the wire from one point to the next?

I'm trying to enjoy my Memorial Day = don't answer the phone. Period.

Next call you need to tell them to reschedule so you can be onsite. More than one call is at least 2 to many.

I had a customer text me last night around 8:00. He is a total a$$ and not a good client. Never says thanks, talks down to his wife like she's a doormat. Said customer did not get a response from me.

I got a call today on a pre-wire I'm doing. "The sheet rockers are here and they want to know where they need to pull my speaker wire thru".
"??What??"
He said the wire is just hanging out of the wall. "No! No it wasn't". I had it secured tightly so as to be covered up, since he did not know if he wanted to install the speaker initially or wait a few years. THEY pulled my wire loose (with great intent, as it wouldn't have been easy) and have it now this way.
It's Memorial day, why is anyone working on the house?
"Tell them to put the wire back the way they found it (I know they did it)" "If they can't do that, leave it alone. I'll come out tomorrow".
 

My wife brought two extra kids home from school (due to all the snow days this year, my kids had school today). So I decided to jump in the truck and swing by as an excuse to not listen to screaming 9 y/o girls. On the mrf350, the guy moved the antenna wire to the RF out. He plugged the flasher into RF in, then stuck the flasher on the side of the cable box and couldn't figure out why the channels wouldn't change.

school? on memorial day? That's not very respectful.

If you look up idiot in the dictionary, the number one meaning given is "Cable guy".

He said there has to be a dedicated coax run for each box and the modem. Can't use splitters. Hell, if I could figure out how to do that in this two story 100+ year old house.

Tell him to go for it.
As long as the client approves whatever the dumb ass suggest for running the coax thru (read drill thru walls, stapled along baseboards/trim) than you SHOULD be off the hook.
Hell, while the cable guy is at it, ask him to run couple of cat6s and some fiber for good measure. :-)

I'm looking at possibly hiring a Comcast guy and he is a level 4 tech who had networking experience according to his resume. So I asked him if he has ever done anything more than hooking up a simple modem/router. His response was no. If your experience is nothing more than making sure a modem is online then that doesn't constitute having "A LOT" of networking experience.

This X1 rollout has been the source a many headaches!

A client who only calls me on Sundays, and it's always for something small, didn't call yesterday. He called today. Nice adjustment for the holiday, I say!

But this time it was with a job lead, so, not so bad.

All my peeps were quiet this weekend! Yahoo!