As much as I defend IT techs, I must say that I was ready to kill some these last two days.

I was brought in to do a simple site turn-up for a supermarket. Power up and set IP addresses for six All-In-One (AIO) PCs. Three had the wrong PSUs hooked up and there were only two of the right ones to replace them with. Also, all had been set up with the cabling going over the counter instead of through the nice cable holes.

Once I had finished that they asked if I could test the VoIP phone system for them. Another simple job, 15 phones with five of them wall mounted. They had only used one screw to mount three of the wall mounted phones so that when you went to use it it would swivel to either side causing the handset to fall to the ground.

The final straw was when they didn't finish running the data cables for the refrigerator control unit. I start running them and discovered they had cut all of the ty-wraps 1/4" long instead of flush and I cut my hand on one.

I was ready to kill at that point. The kicker was the painter had just painted yellow safety lines on the floor so I have to go back Monday to finish.

Life in the trenches. Oh well, at least they pay me well and fast.

The last time I ran into something like that, I muttered "who's idiot brother-in-law that wired this crap" under my breath. The doctor standing behind me asked how I knew that he had hired his brother-in-law to do the work.

It's always someone's brother-in-law.

I spent one summer changing out Nortel systems to Cisco in a major grocery store chain, luckily I only had 33 stores.

The pre-field corporate IT was unique.

Most often: 25pr Cat 3 feed from the front to the back of the store above the coolers. Cat 5 terminated on 66M1-50's and the other end only the blue pair terminated on a Cat 5 wall jack.

It saw a Cat 5 jack and marked the location as 'no work required'.

Of course some 'Project Manager' decided that we could do the turn over of a store in 20 hours.

Don't get me started on IT's and grocery stores.

as a final note: The Project Manager was in charge of the first store and it took his crew (him +1) 40 hours just verifying cabling for the cut over.

I cringe when I get a supermarket job. Most all look like the installers stood in the parking lot and threw the equipment in the door and where ever it landed, that was it. Both wired phone and IT. Why is that?

Most of the time I spend on those jobs is just cleaning up the horrid mess left behind by both IT and telephone technicians. It's not an isolated case, it's every one.

Rcaman

I think every company hired is the lowest bidder so, apparently, most workers attempt to get the job done with as many shortcuts as possible just to get their work done without losing $$$>

Therefor:

This was at a new store built from bare walls. It was the installing company that sent me out there to do the turn-up and my contact there was majorly ticked about what and how I found everything.

Everything but the ty-wraps I can deal with, but when it comes to not cutting ty-wraps flush I get tend to real mad.

Having scratched myself so many times on non-flush cut ty-wraps led me to buy a pair of ty-wrap tools to put an end to losing blood due to jagged cuts from using diagonal cutters.

I have one of those too but find a nice pair of flush-cuttters is easier in the field. My contact said he thought of buying them for his people but was worried the would use them and over tighten the ty-wraps on the cable. I mentioned that I found that there were too many situations that I couldn't use them correctly do to space limitations and it would leave an even sharper angled tab.

There's a (T&B?) tool that trims traps perfectly, Looks like a gun. Works real well. If anyone needs info on it I can dig it out of the dreaded basement with a days notice.

We also used to twist off the end of the tyrap using lineman pliers....

But to be honest, we stopped using tyraps on anything above Cat-3 years ago. As I recall the EIA/TIA/BICSI specs precluded it.

Sam

Due to my extremely limited amount of cable work, I have a small amount of velcro strips for data cable runs.

One of my ty-wrap guns has a trigger cutter. The other requires twisting & turning to break off the end.

We use tywraps on data cables ONLY loosely to hold a bundle in the ceiling or other cable management, but only use velcro on the data racks.

We use a flush cutting cutter to cut the ends of the tywraps. The cutter cuts the ends smooth and square on the wrap.

Rcaman

Most of the scars on my hands are from chainsaws and ty-wrap cuts. I always spin the wrap so that the cut end is in the back of the harness, out of harm's way. That gives the next guy a fighting chance not to get cut. I wish the previous guys would have thought of me in the same way.