I actually have installs today, instead of trouble calls. It's been about 3 weeks since the last install I've done. I'm still sick, though it's moved out of my head and into my lungs, so instead of a runny nose I get coughing fits.
The first job was an apartment complex I find myself in at least once a week. The couple was just moving here from Venezuela it turns out. I only spoke to the husband the whole time, I don't think the wife knew any English. His though was perfect. I asked him about the recent riots in Caracas, his answers were rather short and to the point so he may have been uncomfortable answering the questions. He works for an oil company. His wife the whole time was watching DVDs of Mexican Soap operas. I was tripped up early by the fact that one of the cable jacks was not working. Otherwise the job went smoothly.
Next was a very large apartment building, the kind one could get lost in very easily. The woman had nothing except her brand new TV and her laptop. Some guys showed up to deliver her bed while I was there. It turned out that she just moved here from South Carolina, because she got a job with an airline company. It was going to cost her $3,000 to move her stuff here, so she just decided to leave that stuff with her parents and buy all new stuff here. The job was very easy.
The next job was in the same vicinity so I went there early. The door was answered by a hispanic couple who then called their sons out to talk to me. I guess they didn't know any English. They wanted four TVs hooked up as well as internet and phone, in this four bedroom apartment. It took me a while to get the levels where they need to be to make this happen, So I ended up there a while. After a while the kids took off and left me with the mother. When I got the TV in her room working I left to work on something else, then she went in there and changed the channel on the TV and not the box. She called me in to say it wasn't working and I had to proceed in trying to explain she needs to leave it on channel 3. I then continued my work. After I was done and putting everything back away in my van, she flagged me down because her telephones were not working. It turns out they were plugged in to switched outlets, which means she turned one of the light switches off and shut the phones off. I had to try and explain this to her as well.
The last job was in a run down apartment building. The black woman who answered the door had no eyebrows. She had two penciled in; a set of black ones and a thinner set of purple ones underneath. She had 10 to 15 different purses hanging on hooks, on the door to her bedroom, which made it quite a feat to get in. Her closet was filled with shoes. She spent the whole time i was there on the phone with a friend of hers, stopping the conversation momentarily if I had a question. They were talking about an upcoming wedding (I don't think she approved of the groom) and her 35th birthday later this week. She had stacks of DVDs surrounding her TV, with the occasional porn mixed in. This was another simple job, so I wasn't there for long.