masshole4life

Your willingness to answer this is a bit refreshing. Usually these questions get voted to the top but go unanswered.

Not the OP but worked on the technical side of things for another company. Some things to keep in mind:

Your coax might be just fine (odds are in its favor, even). However, if that tech uses equipment that he cannot verify the quality of, and you have an issue that requires replacing that coax, it counts as a bad mark on that tech on his metrics when there is a trouble call on his install. Basically it makes the tech look bad.

Second, (and this isn't a personal shot at you or your abilities) customers in general tend to have a completely over-inflated sense of their own technical savvy, and a great deal of customer-run wiring is done wrong, using shitty splitters, splitters with too many ports, cheap coax, etc. Contrary to popular belief, this stuff actually does matter and it makes the company look like a paper asshole if the tech leaves it like that.

Most customers lose their shit when they have to pay an inhouse tech to redo their wiring because they're getting tiling on a tv because they used a fancy 10 way golden tipped splitter from the swiss alps for thier 3 TVs.

TL; DR: it's less bullshit for everyone if the company runs their own wiring. Some customers know what they are doing, but a lot honestly have no clue and just make a mess of things. So do some techs, but at least you don't get charged to fix their fuckups.

Mental health worker here. I can speak a bit about changing job duties and stagnated pay.

Since 1989, the document that outlines my job description has been changed 13 times. The pay grades have remained identical. Because it is a state job, it requires legislative intervention to alter the pay grade. No one gives two shits about the staff that get scab wages to dodge fists and feces all day, not the lawmakers, and certainly not the taxpayers. All anyone gives a shit about is that the patients are kept away from the public.

Mental health work in my agency was an entirely different thing in the 80s. Because there were far fewer human rights for the patients, "controlling" them was not a big deal. There were no cameras, injections were used for the slightest agitation, mechanical restraints were used for every little thing, taking away privileges was a common punishment, and it's my understanding that patients were sometimes beaten into compliance.

Well, it turns out that when you start treating patients with actual dignity, it's much more difficult to maintain a safe environment when someone flips out, so we have a lot of assaults on staff with zero consequences to the aggressor, which tends to encourage the behavior. We are now expected to run therapeutic groups, a job previously done by rehab staff who make a lot more money, we now accompany patients to off campus appointments and court dates, a job previously done by transport people and campus police, we are expected to perform housekeeping duties previously done by housekeepers, and assaults on staff are more frequent.

A majority of the patients now come through the courts and prisons rather than direct admissions, so now we also have to deal with the "jail mentality".

The job starts at 14 bucks an hour in a state with one of the highest cost of living in the country. If it weren't for the constant threat of assault I could see that being a reasonable starting wage, but it's not worth it to most people. We're dealing with the same shit as prison guards but our patients aren't locked in cells and we don't have any of their protective gear, we don't use weapons, and we can only use restraints and injections if there's a bloodbath. Our retirement age is 15 years past that of prison guards, our union is impotent, our pay grades are way below theirs, and we get assaulted at an equal rate.

It takes a certain type of person to be able to accept the working conditions and do this job well nowadays, but the pay does not reflect it one bit. This leads to incredible turnover and units full of short-lived rookie staff, or shitty veteran staff which makes the place even more unsafe than it would otherwise be. It's hard to fire shitty staff when you can't keep any workers, because the hiring process is appropriately full of government red tape and slow moving corruption.

That's what I have to say about that.

this was all super interesting until the "spend 15+ hours a week sitting in a car."

you give up the grind of city life to spend almost as much time in the car as you do sleeping and call it wholesome? steading duties aside, that's a way sadder existence than hearing some sirens and car radios.

you're 31 but this will break you down just as fast if not faster than the city grind. what's the point of working a 9-5 just to end up an arthritic blistered shell anyway?

you left the city but took the grind with you and also took on the grind of country living. you are looking at this through the lens of a very young man in his physical prime. your 40s and 50s will not be kind to you.

Agreed. He even answered the question about this being promotional. He's been pretty up front about everything it seems.