AT&T guy visits our house to check our T1

AT&T hates poor neighborhoods. They come up with some wacky excuses not to go if they can. We were waiting for a few months on the install of a T1 line and while the Covad guys were totally cool, the AT&T guys did everything they could not to service the deal.

Running out of excuses for missing calls, they decided to claim there was “toxic waste at the site.” We ended up in a big pissing match between Covad and AT&T with Covad finally offering to chaperon the AT&T guys through the process. They couldn’t really refuse that, so they came in their toxic waste suits. We missed them the first time through, but we had some line errors and they had to come back. Having foolishly called it toxic waste, they had to come in the suit. I wish we had a picture of the Covad guy and maybe Isabella with the AT&T guy all bundled up, but no such luck.

This is basically the technology world’s version of “redlining” where certain neighborhoods are denied access to technology. Pretty funny though, in this case the excuses, once made, ended up being a nice extra measure of discomfort.