Back off man, I work for a telecom

My career path has been an odd one.

I started with a B.S. in Physics and moved on to graduate school, planning to get my Master's and a Ph.D. in short order. That plan was quickly derailed. I then moved into industry, starting out at a small solar cell manufacturer connected to my (now former) graduate school.

After a year and a half of this, I returned to Northeastern Pennsylvania and began working for a record, cassette, VHS, LaserDisk, and compact disc manufacturer. Starting out as a CD plater, making the stampers from which compact discs were pressed, this turned into a long and lucrative series of positions: a Statistical Process Control Coordinator in the CD Pre-production department, a data analyst for all of CD manufacturing, and at the turn of the century, the Asset Manager for the newly-created DVD Compression, Encoding, and Authoring department. Even after this all began to fall apart in 2007, I still stayed on for several more years as a DVD Mold/Bond operator.

As that job became increasingly unreliable, I moved into a totally different industry: travel. This was a bit of an adjustment after over twenty years in the manufacturing industry. But, after six years in the travel business, I finally felt completely comfortable in the role - which was a signal to the universe to pull the rug out from under me, again. Within a few months our office shut down, and I was looking to start over, again.

And now, I work for...well, most people think of it as a cable company, which would be a terrible industry to stake one's future on. But in fact it is a cable, phone, and internet provider, so there is a level of robustness. Many of the people I am working with have been with the company twenty years or more, which I find surprising and reassuring.

There is a rub, however.

The "phone" part makes us a telecom, a telecommunications provider. This makes us an essential service, part of the communications infrastructure that keeps the country informed in good times and in bad. The practical upshot of this is: we never close due to weather. In extremely inclement weather like we are expected to experience in the coming days - snow followed by ice followed by days of subfreezing temperatures - we are expected to be at work, on time and ready to save the day. Even if the state declares an emergency and closes the highways, we are authorized to be on them, by virtue of the fact that we work for a telecom. If we get pulled over, we are to show our badges and advise that, as telecom workers, we are an essential service. Which is simultaneously cool and crappy.

We'll see if I have to use this awesome power on Monday.