Employee Hall of Fame

I’ve gotten inquiries wanting to know where I’ve worked with BellSouth.  I’ll give you a short history with a few names I’ve worked with.  If you recognize one, it will give you the time period.   The following order isn’t exactly correct but it’s close.  I went to the Test Center on three different occasions from surpluses or being bumped, so I’m listing only one to keep from sounding redundant.

I started as an Engineering Clerk in Decatur, Alabama.  I remember Stewart, Williams, Stanley, Fory, Pittman, Joe, Reba, and Alice.

I left there and went to Jacksonville, Alabama as a Service Technician and worked with; Hammett, Cheyne, Biggs, Coogler, Martin, Pope, Norton, Hopper, Wheeler, Winkler, Dempsey, Smith,

Stayed in Jacksonville until divestiture and went to the test center as a Maintenance Administrator.  There I worked with Pattie, Dot, Sharon, Oscar, BJ, Jane, Phyllis, Rick, Neil, Jack, Roy, Faye, May,

I enjoyed a short stay in Centralized Repair Service Attendant Bureau in Birmingham, Alabama.  I met Toni, Renae, Judi, Cynthia, Carol, Helen, and a host of others.

I worked as a Service Technician in the Homewood – Vestavia area of Birmingham for about a year before managing to get back to Gadsden.  Worked with a large number of guys but mostly Jim, Howard, and Hubert.

Back to Construction in Gadsden and worked with Whitehead, Jones, Alexander, Whiteside, Lance, Jeff, and Richard.

Another short trip from a surplus to Birmingham at the AOC as an Engineering Clerk again.  For some reason, Mr. Ferguson is the only name I can remember there.

I was able to get back to Gadsden as a Service Technician and worked with Lake, Daugherty, Wood, Payne, Moon, Maples, Powell, Smith, Walker, Brothers,Kilgo, and Correll.

I Volunteered to transfer to Albertville, Alabama to keep another technician from being force adjusted there and met… all the Chaffins.  All of them worked there and most were Baptist preachers.  I especially liked Ken!  I do remember you Gary, Neil, George, Stacy, Jim, Roger, and the other George.

From Albertville, Mr. Hopper talked me into bidding on a Cable Splicing job, in the construction department in Gadsden.  Surprisingly, I won the position.  I  worked in construction covering a five county area in North Alabama.  The longer I stayed, the less challenging it became, so I bid on and won an Electronic Technician job in downtown Gadsden.  I enjoyed the Central office work.  It was varied and pretty technical, especially dealing with a 5ESS switch.   There I worked with Richard, Don, Tim, Jami, Rick, Michael, Phyllis, Nancy, Ben, Janice, Johnny, Dixon, and Brenda.

After seven years as an ET,  MSOC came in and I could see the handwriting on the wall.  Needing to get out of the cage, I transferred to Hoover, Alabama as a Facility Technician.  We are getting into modern history now, so I’ll drop listing names.  That was only about seven years ago.  I stayed in Hoover for five years and I’ve been in Chelsea for two years.

Somewhere in that timeline there was also a short stint as a coin collector and I was loaned to the Assignment office in Decatur for a while.

You might think that with all those transfers, I must have been an unhappy employee.  That wasn’t the case at all.  The company really went through a period of turmoil after divestiture, and I was glad to be still working.  At one time, I was the most surplused/bumped in the State of Alabama.  They even wrote an article about it in one of the company publications.  The movement between jobs was tough on my family but it has allowed me to have a great overall view of how the various departments function to provide good service. I’ve worked with some awesome technicians over the years and I appreciate all that each taught me.

Thanks for taking the trip down memory lane.

Originally published Feb. 26, 2012 at Thechestnutburr.com

Remembering a Better Company!

     I was torn today between blogging topics.  I spent most of my career working for BellSouth.  They were bought out by Texas based SBC under the guise of mega conglomerate AT&T.  Since that purchase (probably for the wireless side of the house) my company spirit has hit rock bottom.  So, I wanted to come down really hard on the evil empire and their draconian methods of management.  Therefore, this is definitely not the right time to talk about it.  I'll reserve that for later.

     I will talk about BellSouth.  In my mind, they were a quality company who provided good customer service.  I worked in many departments having been an Engineering Clerk(2x), Maintenance Administrator(2x) Coin Collector, Lineman, Centralized Repair Service Attendant, Service Technician(3x), Cable Splicer, Facility Technician, and Electronic Technician.  I held so many titles due to only having three years service when Judge Green broke up the Bell System.  It created havoc in the industry and for several years I took any title to hold on to a job.

     BellSouth management could be difficult to deal with at times but disputes were generally settled quickly.  There was always the opportunity for dialog - up as far as you wished to go.  Management still saw employees as human.  It was more of a family type atmosphere.  I'll have to say that in my twenty-eight years with them, I only had one bad manager.  He had problems with just about everybody, eventually getting into a fight with a contractor on the side of a major highway!  Then, he was gone, and everything was better.

     BellSouth always took care of the outside plant.  If there was a bad section of cable, it was replaced - customer service came first!  I didn't know an employee who would leave someone out of service.  The work was often hard.  I worked in Calhoun, Etowah, Marshall, Morgan, and St. Clair counties of north Alabama.  Those areas are very rural in places with difficult terrain.  I remember almost passing out in Piedmont on a 105 degree summer day while placing "C" rural wire across a mountain.  I remember working twenty-four hour days in cable maintenance getting folks telephones back on.  We had to break ice off the poles in Ft. Payne so our hooks would go in after a winter storm.  And I remember the difficulties of driving a bucket truck on Sand Mountain during the blizzard of 93'.

     But times are different today, we've got our "numbers" to keep up...  Sometimes you never know what you've got till it's gone!  Remembering the old days and a good company...