The worst job I've ever had was about 22 years ago. It was a temp job for the local cable company. I would go in after hours and call all these people who were going to lose their service the next day. I hated it so bad! But then I figured out the solution to my terrible situation. I told every single one of them, without them even asking, how to work around it. Let me give you an example of how the conversations played out: Me: hi, this is Jen from the terrible cable company. They want to turn your cable off if you haven't paid tomorrow. Them: I'm sorry we haven't paid yet, but we are only humans who will run into trouble now and again. But I understand that the evil corporate monster wants to take away our cable because my 30$ makes a huge difference when it comes to which yacht they would prefer. Me: well, I'll just go ahead and tell you that when it gets shut off, take the cord running to the back of you box and plug in directly to your tv. You won't have the pay channels if you do that, but you'll have the rest of the channels. Them: thank you for not being mean to us. I want you to know you're still guilty by association, but you have redeemed yourself enough that you will be able to sleep tonight.
I wish Jen was still around; I enjoyed her post about the cable company. One of my first jobs was similar except it was for the electric company. Working for a utility company can be depressing, especially in "customer service." That was a job I was happy to vacate due to maternity leave and never return. It also gave me incentive to finish school and have a career (which also turned out to be stressful but at least it paid very well.)
Cable companies are a royal pain, but a necessary evil I guess if one wants to see decent programming.
We dropped our cable about 2 years ago, hopefully, never to return. Actually, we dropped the cable a year or two before that and went to a satellite dish (DirecTV) when they had a big sale going on through Sam’s Club. Once we finished that contract, we cancelled it, got a nice little antenna from Amazon (which Mr. Bobby installed), and it gets around 30+ channels for free........ more than we ever watch. Since we both have several iPads, we usually watch most things on there, and if we do watch television, it is a smart TV, so we can get things like Amazon Video, YouTube, and Netflix right on the television. We save lots of money, and haven’t missed having subscription TV one little bit !
We only have smart TVs as well. However, our town doesn't permit satellite dishes. Some areas will not even permit Direct TV. The cable companies in NJ are extremely powerful with the politicians.
We get Fox News, Channel 360, and also CNN, Channel 202, in our DirecTV Satellite Package. Since we're Conservatives, we watch Fox. Harold I. Pollner
Some people don't realize that Cable TV Providers get their signals from Sattelites. Therefore, every provider except direct ground-based broadcasters are Satellite Television providers. Hal