Pulling fiber with truck
A large site I was given responsibility for had just been connected at great expense with multimode and single mode fiber to every building. I was given the task of upgrading the data and comms from the old thicknet hubs and Cat3 Nortel phones to gigabit switches and VoIP. No problem, said I, and bought a lot of Cisco kit.
When it came time to connect those new switches, the fiber links were shite. I quickly found the test readings provided by the contractor had no connection to reality. I asked a maintenance buddy who'd been there while the fiber was installed, and he told me the company had pulled the cabling with a truck. They only had three guys for the job and quickly fell behind schedule. After their powered spool went TU, they used their vehicle to pull the fiber. Adding insult to injury, over half of the ends were bad as well.
The company boss had gotten a liking to Bolivian marching powder, so all the profits went up his nose and the company declared bankruptcy right as I found out how we'd been shafted. I got my boss to fork out for a scope, fiber end kit and tester, then spent a month replacing bad ends and testing. We eventually managed to find enough good strands to make things work.
I got a new job after that, as the Big Boss didn't trust contractors any more. Until he retired, I ran a team that put in every wire and fiber we needed.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
