You visit offices and houses and businesses and meet a wide variety of people every day. I’m sure everyone has their own special horror stories, but there are a few things, whether with customers or their own company, that most cabling technicians seem to agree to hate.

1. People who can’t make decisions. Nothing is more frustrating than talking over options with a customer, drawing up a plan, and sometimes even starting an install when they decide to change their minds and go with something cheaper, or with a different cable option. Another aggravator are the people who keep looking at you like you’re speaking martian after they asked for a detailed explanation. Seriously, just tell us what you want to happen, and we’ll give you a few options at different prices to make that happen. I don’t understand the stock market and you don’t need to understand an Ethernet tree.

2. The company making you look bad. Sometimes, it’s actually not your fault. When a company has ten technicians and only six trucks, then it makes it very difficult for technicians to arrive on time and complete work in set hours. When you are the one showing up late, or calling for the fourth time to apologize for your tardiness, it is you that the customer is angry with — you are the face of the company.

3. Terrible weather in conjunction with terrible manners. Working in below freezing weather in gusty winds is never fun, but its much worse when a client asks for an update every thirty minutes and talks to you through the cracked open door of her toasty warm house with a mug of steaming coffee in her hand. Oh, no thanks, I prefer icicles in my nostrils and frozen eyelids over a warm drink. On the opposite spectrum, would it kill them to offer a cold drink when you’ve been slaving away in the blistering heat for hours? It adds a special irritation when they drink margaritas and watch you work from the pool.

4. Unsanitary and unsafe conditions. Whether it be a faulty ladder or a disgusting crawl space, just a warning would have been nice. Oh, you forgot to tell me there was a sewer leak until after I crawled around in it? Awesome. Or how about when you move a piece of furniture to access equipment, and find mold and other indecorous things growing there? Working in a filthy environment is never fun, but it’s worse if it can actively affect your health. And the smell is not helping us work any faster. It’s actually making us want to pass out.

5. The assumption that we are there to fix every piece of technology. I am a cabling technician. I have not been called here, generally at a very inconvenient hour, to assemble your computer, put together your surround sound system, see what we can do about your iPad not turning on, or get rid of a virus on your laptop. In addition, if we have come to your house to give you internet, please have some common sense and have a computer for us to test it on. In the same vein, if you have ordered digital cable, make sure your TV actually functions so we can test it out.

As military veterans return from active duty and integrate back into civilian life, they often need a hand finding sustainable employment. While some soldiers join the military after holding jobs or gaining training in a specific career, many join straight out of high school and return home with a lot of options still open to what sort of work they might do next. Sometimes they also return with a bit of confusion as to where to turn and what step to take next towards meaningful employment. The branches of the U.S. Military are excellent at teaching integrity and discipline to its members, and returning veterans are wonderful candidates for job placement programs and vocational training. They already understand how to work hard and respect the authority of their supervisors and teachers and are good matches for many occupations.

There are a wide variety of government sponsored programs that assist veterans in job training and allocation. For example, in New York City there is a program called Helmets to Hardhats that puts veterans in communication with construction training and staffing agencies, as well as provides funding for any certifications that will help vets land jobs. These construction staffing agencies are benefited by such programs as well because they get an injection of integral labor as well as government incentives. The way that construction staffing usually works is through the matching of qualified laborers to the projects that need them. After accepting resumes and interviewing candidates, construction staffing agencies will maintain a pool of workers that they can provide to paying clients seeking labor. In most cases, such companies are payed by the organizations looking for staff, and can also provide training and certifications to construction workers who are looking to gain more education and advantage in the field. In some instances labor is paid by the hiring agencies, and in others the labor is retained by the staffing agency who pays workers directly and is responsible for the quality guarantee of their work.

This system of construction staffing is particularly beneficial to returning veterans who need the consistency of work available through a single relationship with an employer. These staffing agencies often staff more than one type of work, including electrical and energy work as well as office temp and automation jobs. As many returning soldiers have a variety of skill sets, staffing agencies with a wider scope of job staffing services are more capable of placing them in jobs. More and more veterans are turning to construction staffing and the like to find jobs when they return from active duty. Whether or not they have previous training, staffing agencies are a good outlet for returning veterans to gain the professional connections and in-the-field experience they need to be successful. Also, because they can return to the same agency every time they need more work, veterans have a better chance of finding consistency upon their return to home soil. As Americans, there is a desire to thank and support the men and women who protect our liberty at home and abroad, and construction staffing is one example of enterprise serving the troops.