Preface: I work in telecom. From field work to engineering, I've done it all (and still do). This takes place early-ish into my career, right about the time I had finally figured out how to do my job well enough to prevent my boss from calling me (ever).

Note: This tale on Pandora's Closet reminded me of this whole event (the memory of which I thought had long been laid to rest).

$BT - Me

$OT - Odd technician who I was working with that day

$MAN - My manager

I guess I should start this tale at the beginning. I had spent the first few years of my career learning the ins (and outs) of the industry in small towns that no one wanted to move to in the Midwest. While many of my peers were slugging it out for low pay in big cities, and trying to work their way up the ladder while barely staving off poverty, I quickly discovered (early on) that I could make the same amount money as them (at an entry level position) with a lower rent, if I was willing to give up a few amenities.

So...I had finally done it.

My boss needed me to cover [largest city in the Midwestern United States].

I didn't want to do it, of course. After all, I wasn't going to be paid anything extra for my effort (other than the usual attaboy in the weekly phone meeting), but I knew that to really advance I would have to do what I was told.

You see, a few weeks prior, manglement management had discovered that a large portion of physical assets owned/utilized by the company had not been accounted for in some years. In telecom, where equipment can stand for decades in service, it's not uncommon to horde and inventory every spare, as things could break on a system that had long outlived the company that produced it.

As such, I was tasked with heading into the city to, "find, tag, and document," every piece of equipment currently in service at our switch sites and every spare that went with them. To accomplish this task, I was partnered with one of the local switch technicians, $OT.

Side note:

$OT's name has dual meaning. It's not hard to figure out.

As I walked through the front doors of the switch, I was greeted by a fellow who had the enthusiasm of a castaway seeing his first human in nearly a decade, and the look of Suzanne Warren about the eyes.

$OT - You're here!

$BT - ...yes?

$OT - We have to do lunch!

It was only 10AM.

I looked at my watch, hoping he would take the hint.

Side note 2:

The drive to [City] from my normal reporting site was about an hour and a half...without traffic.

$BT - Let's hold off on that for a bit.

$OT - Okay!

$BT - Do you have a place I can connect to the LAN so I can get the scanner and inventory system up?

$OT - Yeah, yeah! Over here.

I followed him through the site, and a peculiar thing stood out to me: there were boxes everywhere. Besides being a fire hazard, it just seemed excessive.

After a minute or two, we arrived at a desk in what appeared to be an abandoned office in a back hallway.

$OT - Here we are! Go head and get situated and let me know when you want to start scanning!

$Internal BT - Can we not and say we did?

$BT - No problem.

I fiddled around with the software and handheld scanner for a few moments, and while that was loading I looked through the asset tags I had brought with me. Over the past decade the company had apparently switched between three or four different asset tag types and part of my job was to move everything over to the latest standard (in addition to making sure everything was actually tagged). I had brought two rolls of one hundred along for the trip.

Once I was ready to go, I went and grabbed $OT.

$BT - I'm ready to go.

$OT - Sure! Let's do this!

We walked for a few feet and then stopped.

In front of a pile of boxes.

$OT - Let's start with these!

I looked at him.

I looked at the boxes.

I looked around the site.

$BT - Are all of these boxes-?

$OT - Yep!

This wasn't so bad. There were probably a hundred boxes total scattered around. Most were unopened, so if we wanted to be a little more efficient, we could probably just open and repack several cards/modules/optics to a box and get it down to thirty or forty.

Though as we went through them all, something was nagging me about the whole situation.

It finally hit me.

$BT - $OT, don't you have a storage room we could put these in?

$OT - Well yeah, we have the garage for storage.

He said this so casually and just kept on tagging, scanning, and verifying that the entry took on his laptop.

I saw the garage from the outside when I arrived. It was a two bay deal and looked fairly spacious...

Then it hit me.

$BT - So why aren't these in the garage?

The moment I asked the question, $OT's demeaner fell for the first time since my arrival.

Without saying a word, he looked at me and motioned for me to follow. Worried that I was about to step into some weird kinky telecom strangeness, I followed him to a door that was clearly labelled, "Garage Entrance."

He turned the key to unlock it, opened the door, and I nearly passed out from what I saw.

It was an entire warehouse stacked ground to twenty-four foot ceiling of boxes. The walls were lined with shelves of cards neatly lined up in rows, still fresh in their protective plastic.

I was nearly at a loss for words.

$OT - Quite a sight, eh?

$BT - What? How is this possible!?

The inventory software I arrived with only listed eighty or so items TOTAL for the entire site. I knew that number was low, there was probably ten times that amount just in CARDS.

$OT - Whenever I order a replacement card for one that has gone bad, or a new one for an install, I make sure they send me at least one spare with it.

$BT - There's no way you ordered this all by yourself...

$OT - Well, there used to be six people based out of here, and we were all taught to do the same thing by [Crotchety Tech].

Side note 3:

[Crotchety Tech] was a strange fellow. He apparently used to brag that he would retire once his wife died, because if she was alive she would divorce him and take half his pension.

It was incredible. I couldn't even get through the door. That's why $OT was using the rest of the switch site as storage space.

I had to call my boss, as this was going to take more than the three days he had given me.

$MAN - This is $MAN, with [COMPANY].

$BT - So about that inventory job you want me to do.

Epilogue:

We ended up spending three weeks (with some additional manpower helping), doing inventory, repacking, and organizing the site. In total, we added some eight thousand items to the database.

Needless to say, $OT got called into the local VP's office to explain when it was all said and done.