So another day under my belt. Tomorrow I need to drop my blockbuster store to pick up my last paycheck. It’s a bummer it’s only going to be about $100, but it should be enough so I can buy lunches all next week during my ride-along and renew Rush 24/7. — I’m dying to listen to some Rush Limbaugh.

So today was the Customer Service, Electrical Hazards, and Asbestos part of our training. We had two tests and as far as I know, passed them both. The thing I liked about this job is the opportunity it presented to me. Up till recently, AT&T was obligated to only hire techs with existing telecommunication degrees, this limited the potential employees they could hire and made payroll higher, i.e., specialty field. This also meant AT&T could not training hires in-house. However, recently, Comcast — The largest midwest cable provider — and Time Warner — Another juggernaut — got into the telecommunications industry and were allowed to hire without prior training. AT&T took the matter to court and argued that this law gave the cable providers an unfair advantage. This same argument was also used to partition Illinois to let AT&T start offering television subscriptions, i.e., U-verse. This all according to our instructor. He also said that we shouldn’t be surprised if, in 5-years, AT&T takes us good techs and promotes us to installing U-verse in businesses and high-rises. Back to my first point; This means people like me with no formal training to get my foot in the door and maybe even one day getting a promotion to I&R. Currently, we U-verse techs work under a separate contract from the rest of the company techs, but it’s possible we could get moved to the CORE contract, doubling our pay rate and making U-verse the new flagship service of AT&T.