My trip to Scabland

Yesterday I took a little field trip with a couple coworkers to the Hemlock Central Office kitty-corner to my office. A central office in telco terms is where the cables from the homes and streets would all come together for a region of the city. These cables will give you Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) and/or ADSL. It's pretty wacky in there with soo many cables running around on racks. If I were trained on this job I would probably be really fit because I would need to jump cables up to the ceiling by ladder and crawl down on the ground to reach some low lying racks. Don't get the wrong idea, I don't even want to start working there! It's just something new that I learned today and wanted to share my knowledge. I went to the CO long time ago before but not to the same depth that I learned today. Today was more practical in that we went through a real order that we assigned, and followed what was on paper to the cables that should be connected physically. It's not really that hard. If you know how to count, then you can do this job...really!!

So now to my subject. Prior to going to the CO, we had to exit the building, wait to cross the street, cross it, and wait to be let in the CO. A guy followed us when we left the main office and kept mouthing at us "Scabs", "stop taking jobs away from our kids", "go back to your real jobs" etc. We ignored him while we waited for the light. Did they think that they had "fake" jobs?? When we went to the door of the CO, another guy followed us around the back where we tried to get. The crowd there was definitely more mellow and we didn't have any nasty things said to us. We went in with no problems. When we came back out, our tour guide apparently knew everyone who was picketing (I wonder how long he has been in the company) and all the guy (who previously yelled at us) said was "so young"! I guess he saw me, another girl my age and Juanita walk by.

I noticed on the sidewalk, they had chalked in "Bonny Taxi is scabby" or something like that. I guess they're thinking that since they drop off managers at work, that the taxi company is against the union too.