TENNESSEE PROJECT 2001

Finley Engineering Company, Inc. I wrote this article on Monday (1/20/2003). I started on the Tennessee project on 1/8/2001. It is this point in time that I was loaned out to assist Lamar's ITD department to work on a project that was originated by the Slayton, MN. office. A project of size was started for Fail Engineering & we headquartered in Trenton, Tennessee. John Moran was hired to be chief of the project. I believe he was a Louisiana native. Larry Fausett of Lamar's ITD was the lead man handling the project with the assistance of Kim Little. Kim was Larry's boss at the time. John Moran and some of the guys, (including myself), stayed at the Carrie Bell motel. Room rates for us were (myself at least, $26.42/night. It was a special rate. Jan. 21st we had rate change to $37/night, which later became $38/night. We had close to a dozen guys to begin with. Myself, Terry Anderson, were from the Lamar office. Now while I'm thinking of it Terry Anderson was from the ITD dept. Kim was his boss. Terry, I had known for years and worked with on & off. Terry was very easy going and a likeable fellow. Never had any trouble out of Terry and he tried to do what he was asked to do. John seemed to not like Terry and was picking on him unneccessarily. Terry had one great quality and that was that no one ever did neater notes than Terry. He had a gift with a writing utensil in his hand. I admired how great his notes always looked. Now great looking notes are not enough---for they must be accurate and contain the right info. Rich Nitche and Gene Lehman arrived also from the Slayton office. The rest of the crew had been supplied by Finley Field Services. Harvey Simpson was manager of FFS at the time. People within the Finley Co. had already for some time been having lots of problems with people Simpson was hiring. FFS would hire people on a contract basis. On this project there were 7 or 8 FFS people. Terry Anderson had 4 of them on a project in Kansas City, Mo., and had trouble with them not being knowledgable. Norm Jensen had exposure to 3 FFS people in '99 & had the same problem. They were all a pretty good fellows but they didn't have the abilities for this project. I was allowed to know that the FFS people came onto the project drawing $15/hr., $75/day per diem for food and motel expenses, being paid mileage for the use of their vehicles which amounts to a nice sum in itself. I was on full expenses at the time at $14/hr. It was a project that resulted in a # of firings as time passed & new replacements arrived, & a # of the replacements were fired. A lot of hiring and firing went on. The chief, John Moran, was not as knowledgable as he should have been for the position. We learned that about him early on. The first big mistake was really from the start. The town of Friendly, Tennessee was the first exchange we were to work on. We were adding fiber & remote terminals to the exchange. I was not familiar with this design in regards to the ITD's standard way of drawing the sheet up. John Moran instructed us to begin our notes at the central office in Friendly & draw all the way out to the remote. We sat about working & early on John asked us to turn in what we had. I had been teamed up with a guy named Ted. Ted and I didn't finish up as fast as a lot of the other guys on what was a sort of test segment of the job. John was at my room one evening to pick up what we had. I inquired about where Ted & I stood in relation to the others. He said a # of the guys had already completed & handed in theirs. I looked at John & I said "Well that doesn't bother me much John." "I've been doing this at least 20 years & I will bet a lot of those guys will be going back to the field to add the rest of what they have failed to draw up on this first trial. I knew some of it was handed in to fast. It turned out I was exactly right. I have been accused of spending too much time on some notes. Lonnie McFadden indicated this in the interview tape. I hope he pays particular attention to the above if he should ever read this. I may not be the fastest field surveyor out there but I rarely ever have to go back and get information. Carl Finley instilled that in us at an early time to be sure you have what you need. He was frustrated when field people had to go back to a project because they didn't have this or that on their notes. Mr. McFadden has never, to my knowledge, done what I do, so he really doesn't have much of a feel for what is involved.
A sad & frustrating day came about 2-3 weeks into the job when John called us together to give us the bad news & ofer his apology. He let all of us know that all the sheets we'd drawn within the area of the remotes would have to be flip flopped. This required drawing a number of sheets all over again. To tell us to draw from the central office to the remote was not correct. He admitted he knew that wasn't right but he'd "sort of forgotten." Needless to say we wanted to hang this guy, but we sorta liked him. We realized he wasn't maybe really qualified for this position, but he had conned somebody.
John & I were out together looking at plant, going over juys notes & I realized as John and I visited that he was not as versed as he should have been. I had not been there to long when I asked where the highway plans were for the state highways that we were to parallel their rights of way. Larry Fausett who was the overall manager of the project from the Lamar office, had come down & he was there. They told me they had been to the state & were unable to get prints. The state told them all highways were 60 feet rights of way. It wasn't long till we found R/W markers on the highways showing something different. To draw field notes it is customary that you know your rights of way distances. I noticed that I was one of the very few who seemed concerned or even thought it was important. I realized as we continued forward that this was a wrong move to not give importance to these highway rights of way and knowing what we had to deal with. It is this simple, the highway has a space they designate in the highway rights of way that they call the utility corridor. It stated for our project that we were to place our cables within 5 feet of the rights of way line. If you don't know what the rights of way are on a highway, how can you draw that correctly and what happens when the poor contractor comes out there and the notes have him totally confused, because the notes have incorrect information on them. I had looked at enough highway & found enough indicators in the field to realize these highways had varying rights of way. One rainy day I was frustrated that we didn't have solid information about rights of way in our hands, so I took it upon myself to go to a state highway office & see what I could do. I called John before I left to do this to ask his permission. He was reluctant and tried to talk me out of it, but finally allowed me permission to go. He said I wouldn't do any good.
I ended up with some highway plans that John & Larry Fausett swore they couldn't get. In my years working with Ron Arft for SWB projects it was usually my job to go to highway departments & get highway plans. When I did this on the Tennessee project, I realized I was overstepping John, the chief, and doing this on my own. That evening when I showed up with plans he was amazed, but bothered. I could understand that. When I went that day, I didn't feel I was doing anything out of place. I was just doing what I'd been used to doing. Kim Little informed me later I was nicknamed "The Mole". I am a naive person sometimes and at first I thought he was saying that because of being able to get these notes. I also know that there is another type of mole when it comes to business. I hope he wasn't meaning it in that sense. I really don't know but a friend of mine pointed that out to me. After I looked over the highway plans I visited with John & tried to show him an example of one of the highway rights of way & why it was so important that we have that information when we are drawing up notes. The example was a stretch of highway where the R/W was 40 feet from the center line of the highway, then farther down the road it changed. It went at an angle from a point on the 40 foot line to 80 foot. It went for a time at 80 foot and then at a point on the 80 foot line it began an angle out to 115 foot from center line of highway. After a ways it repeated this back to 40 foot again. By John's guidlines he was asking us to pretend that this was all a 60 foot R/W. Had we done that and drawn notes to reflect that we would have had the state down on us big time. After he looked at the plans and listened to me I think it scared him. I think it's interesting to note something at this point that I caught before John ousted me. I noticed on our map that we were to follow, that instructed us where to stake new buried cable, this section of highway I used as an example above, was scheduled to be buried cable. On the final finished notes through that area, I noticed the new cable to place had been changed from buried to aerial. There was a power line paralleling the highway so he chose to attach to those power poles. As soon as he got past this rugged R/W area & the poles and R/W were consistent, he went buried.
The first month was a disaster. It was by this time John realized how inexperienced a lot of the guys were. We had generated a lot of GARBAGE. Not bragging, but I was about the only one that wasn't required to go back to the field & correct, redraw, or add to my notes and I am proud of that. I started becoming bothered by the fact that I was finding John handing us notes that had been done by someone that had finally been fired. He had unfortunately drawn up quite a bit before being fired. John says, "I hate to do this to you guys, but these notes need to be gone over and redone so they are more like what they should have been to begin with. I thought to myself, this is not right. I have over 20 years experience & I am sent here to work at a dollar less an hour than these FFS guys, & they refuse to take me off full expenses & pay me per diem, (because I asked Kim Little) and I am out here doing not only my work, but doing their work over on top of it. I felt very unfairly treated. I complained to Charlie, (my boss) and he did raise me to $15/hr but he couldn't do anything about per diem. I felt the per diem would have helped give me more incentive to be there. It was really good meeting these guys & John, because what I learned was, for the type of work we were attempting to do we were all underpayed. Had the guys been experienced and had we produced well we should have all been $18-20/hr. guys. This has been driven home by more people I have met since this project. It was after the question about where were the highway plans that I asked Larry Fausett & John about telephone records. We didn't have any telephone records showing existing plant in the field and that is nearly as important as R/W on highways. We had basically been drawing sort of blind. These things should have all been gathered and made available at the start of the job. Larry Fausett finally got the records for us.
Terry Anderson was a friend of mine on the project. John was not happy with Terry's attendance. One of Terry's time off periods to go home, it just happened that John gave me some of Terry's notes to field check. Terry has, as I've said, about the best penmanship of any field person I have seen, however, I found some things that needed fixing. I hated it that John gave me Terry's notes. When Terry got back I called him to the room & explained that I'd been required to look over his notes. "I don't want to have you getting upset at me Terry." "John gave me your notes to check & I just did my job, and I found a few items that need correcting." He didn't seem mad. He took his notes & left. A few days later I realized Terry wasn't on the job anymore. John had sent him home. I worried for a long time that I was the reason. Terry never said a word----just left. I ran into him recently & he isn't mad at me. John was complaining about Terry's work & I didn't say it to John, but John was saying his notes were really bad, but that wasn't true. He had some errors but he could produce good useable prints.
Larry Fausett at one point came & spent time overseeing and being a field person drawing also. I met Larry when he was a young man just out of high school. Close to 4/29/91. I started on a project in Kentucky. We were working for GTE. Larry's father was an engineer for GTE & so Larry was brouight in to learn & assist. I liked Larry & his dad. He was around 30 years old by now in Tennessee & he'd gone to college & gotten his P.E. degree. After the Kentucky project I never saw Larry again until one day around 2000 , or maybe 1999, I noticed him in the Lamar office & realized he worked now for us. My experience with Larry in Tennessee was ok. We had a few things that I became perturbed about & between those minor things & the frustration of the project (which we all felt), I ended up one night making a tape. I will later make this tape available on this blogsite if possible. It helped calm me & it was able to vent my thought to Larry. I never gave him the tape, I just kept it, but I let Kim Little listen to it and he probably shared it with Larry. I may have given Larry a copy later, I really don't remember.
Ed Little was brought in along the way. Ed is Kim Little's brother from Illinois. Ed was handicapped in that he lost a leg in an accident on a motorcycle. This was my first meeting with Ed. Kim Little was a person that at this point in time, I barely knew him. He was Larry Fausett's boss but I did not realize that at the time. I just knew he was involved with the project. I had heard Kim's name mentioned some when occassion would have it that I happened to run into someone that had been involved with Kim jobwise. The comments were ALWAYS negative. It was when Gene Lehman came to the project that it helped to form a growing picture of Kim. Gene had a very strong dislike for Kim. It was not that they had even met face to face. It was that by phone & per conversations & decisions that Kim made, and by tones and attitudes, he had turned Gene completely off. Gene told of others that disliked & hated Kim. To this point the only dealings I'd had with him was the refusal to allow me to draw per diem on the project.
John praised my work a lot to the guys. He told my boss at the time (Charles Orrell), that if he had 10 of William, he could sit back & relax. Charlie told me that. A few of the exchanges we worked had new cable placed within the previous year. We were forced to use a numbering system to # the poles & peds and the numbers are arrived at through the actual cable feet in the ground from the central office. Telephone cables have a sequential # on it that denotes that footage at that point from the cables beginning when its manufactured new. They are usually at 2 foot intervals. We were being forced to do a lot of guesswork because a lot of peds had existing cable to be retained. The existing cable is already buried and so without locating it you don't really know where it is. You could not even depend on the telephone records for location as there were places where the phone records showed the cable on public road right of way and it might really be back on private property. On the telephone records that I pushed Larry Fausett & John to get for us, some of the records showed the existing pedestals with the sequentials included of when that cable was actually placed new. That was valuable info for us on renumbering. A lot of old records did not however have this info. In the exchanges where newer cable had been placed I found I was able to see sequentials on a lot of the cable ends inside the peds. Peds are green metal boxes where cable ends are brought up into for splicing together. I knew tht info was excellent if I was lucky enough to gather a lot of it. John Moran noticed I was coming up with these sequentials on my field notes & at one of our Monday breakfast get togethers he made an announcement. "Fellows, William here-----I don't know how he is doing it, but he is coming up with these sequentials on the cables in some of the pedestals." I then explained to everyone this was almost new plant that had been placed recently. John remarked, "If you fellows would look in these peds as William is, it could be of real use for us to make these #s more accuarate." The phone records usually showed whether the cable was on private property or highway R/W. This was good except every once in a while you would find a record showing on private & by use of a locator, discover it was on public. My superiors really didn't want me taking the time to use a locator but through the years, experience has taught me there are times it is wise to do it and this turned out to be one of them. When people think I'm being slow----that's called being thorough. "Haste makes waste", remember. There are sensible answers to why this exists. If the cable is on private then there is another problem. The records just show a line on private. You don't know how the route goes & that can be a night mare sometimes. If you don't know where the cable is then you really have no way to give good footage info. for numbering. I discussed this with my boss Charlie and he was sorry to hear of this system. He explained phone companies have tried this in the past & it's really a worthless system. He explained the theory behind it & supposed purpose. In areas of question I wanted to & did use my locator to spot check cable in the field. I discussed doing this with John and he was against doing that much. I said, "Well if you don't you are lost really." Toward the end of my time there, people were taking other people's notes to the field to check for errors or missing info. I had turned in Four Points remote and when I got it back I checked it over. I found a # of things that had been changed. I field checked this info that had been put on my notes & found it to be not accurate as well as some info which was erased & should not have been. I asked John Moran if he knew who went over my notes on Four Points and to my shock he informed me, he did. That's all I needed to hear. I discussed with him what I found and he wasn't too happy with what I had to say. I recall earlier that I got jumped by John about some notes I drew on aerial work in the town of Friendly. I had staked some aerial notes thru town. John & our client (Pete Terry), were looking over the notes. John claimed that I did not show where on the poles, to place the new cable. I said, "It's on there John." He insisted it wasn't. I took the notes from him & standing there with him I pointed to my information at each pole. He was shocked. "Well, how in the hell did Pete Terry & I both miss that?" That was the only complaint they had and it turned out ok as well.
We had a lot of trouble in defining an RUS unit. One day John told u he had talked with Pete Terry of Fail Engineering (our client), & he'd gotten the bottom line on this unit & what it was. After John's description there were still lproblems with it. I later called Pete Terry. I'd not ever called him. I told him I just wanted to clarify one last time on the unit as we were still struggling with it. That phone call caused John to send me home. End of my job there. I left May 16th, 2001. John later was ousted as well.
Special note: Kim's brother, Ed Little, was an easy going sort. He was easy to visit with. I had some experience with aerial engineering and a lot of the guys didn't. Ed hadn't and I told him I'd be happy to share what I knew and give him pointers. In the end I gave up on Ed because he really never paid much attention or took an interest to learn. Ed seemed not to really care that much about the rightness or accuracy of his drawings. He mooched from me whenever he could get me to do something for him. By the time I was ousted I wasn't interested in wasting anymore time on Ed Little.
LETTER TO CHARLES ORRELL
Charlie,
This got me up at 4:24 a.m. and so I jotted it down. I've watched people come here and get paid mileage for use of their vehicles, $75/day per diem, $15/hr. I've heard the arguement that FFS people don't get benefits. The 401k has lost me a ton of money thru the last year, medical insurance is $500 deductible. I came down here and watched people stumble all over themselves. I watched people leave and get dismissed. I am the only one out of a dozen guys that hasn't had to go back to the field to redo or add to my notes. These other people who you blow money on and they end up with me having to go out and redo what they did all wrong or not near complete---some things are very wrong here. I don't know what the problem is with me drawing a per diem just as these guys get paid. The company pays out good money to people that turn around and give you the shaft. I am trying to do a deceant job and it feels like I'm getting the shaft. As far as I'm concerned per diem would make it feel as though the effort, frustration, and sacrifice were at least worth it. I draw $14/hr and they draw $15. I have 22 years experience and these guys act like a bunch of green horns. Right now I almost feel like saying to heck with the whole mess. 22 years ought to account for something. Being the right kind of person should also account for something. If I had not of taken matters into my own hands, we would still be in the dark on all these state highways as far as having any plans to show R/W. I am pushing now to get telephone records because they are so important.
I seem to be the only one that realizes the importance of these things.
What basically happened her was that a # of people arrived here to participate in a job. All were strangers. John Moran, whom I really liked, sort of closed his eyes and prayed that they were able to do the work. The way to run a business is not to turn your back on a situation and just hope for the best! One person should have been taking field notes drawn, to the field right away at the start, and find out who can and who can't. You may not be very pleased with what I'm saying, but I'm not at all pleased with this calamity I have watched.