November 17, 2007
STUPID AT&T!!
This is one of our many telephone equipment closets. Typical of many it has a lead sheathed cable (A) going to the main frame that dates to the early part of the last century. Cable terminates on an equally ancient protector (B) cross connected to the pink boards (C) which connect to the KTS (D) and the floor cables (E-G).
The closet is about 18 inches deep, 12 feet wide, normally behind the sliding doors. This picture was taken during a project where the doors were pulled off. Normally the doors are closed and we simply slide one door aside to access the blocks for a single installation or a repair. Something that happens, on average of once every 2 to 4 months.
It's dark behind those doors, but we do have a pair of overhead lights that are switched on *ONLY* when working on those onesies-twosies -- a total usage of under 4 hours a year. As we are working on small blocks with color coded wires we NEED good lighting -- the bulbs were 120 watt incandescents. Total energy usage -- less than (2 x 120 watts x 4 hours = 960 watt-hours) a single kilo-watt hour. Energy cost of a kilowatt hour is, at most, twenty cents -- that is $0.20 A YEAR to povide me the light I need to work Safely.
Some stupid pencil pushing upper management got a wild hair up his or her ass and decided it would be a good idea to save money by replacing these bulbs with little 40 watt decorator lamps. $4 for the bulbs, $6 for labor to procure bulbs, transport, get the ladder, replace bulbs, dispose of old bulbs. Minimum $10. Minimum pay back in 50 years! A waste of company money to create a safety hazard that I now have to spend more company time and money to get corrected. Multiplied by the thousands of central offices the idiot has cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.