The Enigma Factor

Andy showed up in time to sit down for lunch. He claimed it was just like home. As the others sipped iced tea, Andy couldn’t help but relay yet another cable pulling story.

            “One time I got sent over to rig up a new telephone system on a customer’s premises. I ran into this real surly, uppity union cable crew manager. I was there to do the cross connects and needed a vertical cable run down the elevator shaft from the twelfth floor down to the fifth floor. They had this real heavy grade cable on a spool and I was going to help them, but this cable crew manager said to me, ‘we’ll handle it. You’re not Union so you can’t help. Just sit over there out of the way with your non-union helper.’ I said okay.

            “Me and my helper go sit down and wait for the show. They have to feed this heavy cable down the elevator shaft from twelfth floor and fish it out on the fifth floor, and we have to watch. Well, those good ‘ol boys get the cable unrolled from the spool and fed down the shaft seven stories. All that’s holding it in place is this huge staple through the cable into the big wooden spool. My helper started to suggest something helpful like ’Better secure the cable on this end before pulling the staple out,’ but I motioned to him to be quiet.

            “I motioned to my helper two more times ‘cause the uppity union cable manager wasn’t seeing what we knew was going to happen. Sure enough that manager,

with his clip board, ordered the staple to be pulled out. You could hear the cable go ’ZZZZZZZZing’ right down the elevator shaft all the way to the bottom. It sounded like they had hooked a big game Tuna fish with one of them big deep sea fishing rods.”

            Andy made the same ZZZZZZZZing sound again.

            “Naturally the union cable crew manager took it out on the crew once he got over the shock. It put us behind on the project which was okay since me and my helper laughed the rest of the afternoon saying ZZZZZZZZing! Har har!”

            Quip caught himself as he laughed at Andy’s story along with the rest of the team. The guy could tell a story.