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Heard a homeowner say 'the wire went behind the drywall by itself' and it made me laugh
I was finishing up a system install at a house in Arlington yesterday and the homeowner walks into the basement while I'm fishing wires. He looks at my fish tape and says 'oh, I thought that wire just went behind the drywall by itself, like magic.' I had to stop and laugh because I bet he thinks we just wave a wand and everything works. It reminded me how much people don't see the work behind the scenes. I spent 45 minutes just getting a single line from the panel to the back door sensor because of a weird stud bay and old insulation. Made me appreciate how we bust our tails every day and most folks have zero clue. Has anyone else gotten a funny comment from a customer that made you realize how invisible our work really is?
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hugo8251mo ago
Gotta correct you on one thing real quick - it's actually worse than you think. Most homeowners don't even realize we spend that time fishing, they just assume the wires were always there behind the drywall from when the house was built.
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tarag281mo ago
Thing is most homeowners don't even think about how that wire got there in the first place. They see a hole in the drywall and assume the wire was just hiding behind there from day one. But really we're the ones crawling through attics and cutting holes in closets to snake it through. And half the time we're working with whatever weird leftover wire the last guy left behind, not some pristine install from the 90s.
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elizabethtaylor1mo ago
The wire just magically went there by itself, sure, and I bet @hugo825's customers think the same thing about their panel being pre-wired by construction fairies. I had a guy watch me drill through a triple stud plate and go 'why don't you just push it through the wall?' Like sir, physics doesn't work that way. Another lady asked if I could 'beam the signal' to her sensors so I wouldn't have to run any wire at all. Magic is great and all but my insurance doesn't cover that.
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