That time a senior tech told me to always flag my own drops and I blew him off

First week on the job, old timer named Jerry told me to always flag my own drops even if the prints looked clean. I thought he was just being paranoid so I skipped it on a job over in Elmwood last month. Ended up drilling through a buried fiber line from three years ago that wasn't on any map. Cost the company about $400 in repairs and I had to work late to re-run the whole drop. Has anyone else had a senior's advice come back to bite them when they ignored it?

2 comments

2 Comments

patricia_lee11h ago

Back in 2019 that exact same thing happened to me with a cable line that ran through an old drainage pipe. Jerry sounds like he knew his stuff, that fiber line probably got buried by a contractor who cut corners. I still think about that $400 repair every time I flag a drop now.

oliver_torres415h ago

Old Jerry was probably burnt before and saved you from learning it twice the hard way. Fiber lines buried without documentation are a special kind of nightmare nobody warns you about.