Running head: HUMANS OR BABOONS

Are Field Technicians humans or blubbering baboons? Katelynn M. Carter Eastern Michigan University

HUMANS OR BABOONS Are Field Technicians humans or blubbering baboons? Introduction When you think of meter readers, what exactly is it that you think of? I bet you

are just like myself, you think of creepy men and women who sneak into your backyards and use a tiny handheld machine to take down a number which you believe has no real importance, and who have had no real educational experience, probably high school drop outs just trying to get by, right? Interestingly enough, that is exactly the opposite of what they actually and whom they really are. Imagine this: it is around seven in the morning, the sky is that optimistic mix of light pink and baby blue that makes you want to actually get out of bed. The air is crisp and each blade of grass is engulfed in glossy droplets of morning dew that gleams the sun into your eyes and makes you squint, crinkling the edges of your eyes. The trees are in full color change, proudly displaying leaves of rich gold, fiery red and sunny yellow. As you take each step a new leaf crunches under your weight sending delightful sound waves to your ears. Where is this heavenly place you ask? Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn is home to just over ninety-six thousand citizens and a rather large water department. (www.suburbanstats.org). The water department as a whole employs thirteen men and women (the outside crew) and the meters department employs two men, forcing them to borrow three other employees from the outside crew Monday Friday. Two is not a very large number is it? This makes my father part of an elite crew, the crew that I would come to know. My father was my golden ticket, my way into the water-world.

HUMANS OR BABOONS I suppose I could be called an outside-insider, by that I mean I had met the crew before and learned a bit about what they do even before this research. I was by no means a full insider when I started, but I do believe they welcomed me with open arms, explaining any and all of my questions along with giving me my very own reflective safety vest labeled Farter 2, their very own way of saying I was now one of them. You see, my dad (John Carter) has a vest too, labeled Carter, years ago they took a sharpie and changed the c to an f, making it Farter. Since I am his daughter they thought it would be funny to call me Farter 2. By the end of my experiences, I was definitely considered an insider. Day in and day out I would hear my dad talking about work and all of the large feats he accomplished every day. Some days were a little happier than others, but I have always been interested in what he does: there is just something about water that

makes me stop and listen. Maybe it is the complexity that is involved with it, or maybe it is just that water is simply fun. I think it was the constant exposure to the work stories that intrigued me enough to want to spend a whole month researching what it is field technicians do, what they need to know to do their jobs, and how they interact with one another and the community as a whole. Starting out I thought it would be a piece of cake, and then I started to actually get into the complexity that is the Dearborn Water Department. It was a whole nother experience that I will never forget. Its going to take everything shes got capn!1 According to Henry Ford (1945), Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. This quote gave me a rather delicate inside look at education, allowing me to realize that if you continue to strive for knowledge, you will stay young

HUMANS OR BABOONS forever. As it was said earlier, a typical stereotype of a Field Technician is that they do not have much knowledge or educational experience. Once again I will tell you this is completely false. Becoming a Field Technician in the water department (specifically Dearborns) requires continuous education and various types of licenses. For the City of Dearborn the water department is required to have at least one S4 licensed operator, and at least one S1 licensed operator within shop, however you do not need a degree to become a field technician. The way these licenses work is simple: S4 is the minimal license you are required to have by MDEQ (Michigan Department of Environmental Quality), however,

you can hold anywhere from S4 to S1 (S1 being the highest level of license held). Each year the workers are required to take at least two and a half CECs or Continuing Education Credits. The classes they take to satisfy those credits range from safety training to learning how to set-up and manage a water work zone. The classes are paid for by the department and are held all over the state of Michigan. My dad travels between Livonia, Higgins Lake, Novi and Lansing about three times a year. Classes are usually about two weeks long and held for a few hours Monday-Friday after work. It just goes to show, a book cannot always be judged by its cover.

HUMANS OR BABOONS Dirt, Dust and Water

As soon as I put a foot through the chestnut brown door labeled number 13 the smell of work boots and dust tickled my nose. As I took in the unique scent my eyes wandered over to the giant yellow work trucks that let me know I was in the Dearborn Water Departments shop building. As I began to walk I could not help but notice the soft *sft sft* of my shoes on the gray concrete and the tool crate directly in front of me. When my feet drag across the ground it would kick up small amounts of dust that I could taste. It was kind of a thick and smoky taste, disgusting at best. If I did not automatically turn tail and run out, I could hear the men laughing and talking about anything from the jobs they will be doing that day to sports and money. This is where the shop all comes together, continuous running in and out the door along with sporadic interactions throughout the day. I would say it would be the hubbub of the division. Shortly after I walk in the door I find another door, pitch black, with a little window hollowed into the middle. That is where my dads division can be found. In this room is where all their equipment is held and where they receive their job list for the day. Most days the men just do the normal rounds, but lately they have been getting a lot more installations and tear outs do to the city switching to AMR or automated meter reading devices. The NYC Environmental Protection agency (2013) states, The Automated Meter Reading (AMR) system consists of small, low-power radio transmitters connected to individual water meters that send daily readings to a network of rooftop receivers throughout the city. (para. 2) This means that the meters can be read from a computer instead of having to manually walk around the city and hook up a rather large device to a meter and wait for a reading. The increase in installations and tear outs lead me to the

HUMANS OR BABOONS outskirts of Dearborn where I witnessed my first tear out and re-installation of a new meter. Out with the Old, in with the New It was in the heart of Dearborn, and elderly womans home: classic red brick, towering oak tree and lawn gnome home. It was not an extremely large home, but I would not classify it as a small home either. It had an old OSD (Outside Reading Device) called the Neptune ARB (Automated Read Box) which was replaced with a newer automated reading device called the Neptune R900. If you are not familiar with what these look like, refer to the images. To tear out the ARB I first have to unscrew the two screws on the top and bottom of device, then proceed to disconnect the three different colored wires (red, green and black). Next take the R900 and connect the same wires to the same color, i.e. red to red, green to green, and black to black. Once they are connected secure each with a red plastic piece called a button. Make sure to take a magnet and stroke the left side of the new device to help it zone in on its new location. Now screw the new device on to the wall New Meter

and take a new read by using the CE5320X handheld scanner. The nifty part about the new reader, is that it can

Old Meter

HUMANS OR BABOONS be read from the city truck: before the workers had to use a reader that was required to physically connect to the device, making it a little more difficult.

< Old reader New reader > Another neat fact: Dearborn is one of the few cities in Michigan who are adopting these new radios which means that makes them unique and gives them a more modern identity. Morey (2005) describes the devices that Dearborn is switching to, These devices vary in both type and cost; some are wireless devices that track utility usage on 15 increments and some are actually separate meters. Because the tracked data are not significant or large, from a technology standpoint they aren't overly difficult to store or maintain. (prg. 3) His description puts me on board with the entire idea of Dearborn switching all 32,000 meters in the city to ARB because it shows how much simpler the devices are to use and how easy it is to store all the information afterwards. I am willing to bet that you can understand that people can be a little suspicious and aggressive or even timid when they see a random stranger walking around their home de-hooking and re-hooking up devices, leading me to a brand new view on the people of a culturally different community.

HUMANS OR BABOONS Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh my! Imagine this: a loud BANG at the door sounds your attention, it was a knock. Grumbling because you are being taken away from your newest Netflix marathon, you reluctantly head towards the door. You see a giant yellow van in your driveway and a man wearing a blue shirt that says City of Dearborn on the right hand side. You open the door and smile as you wonder why hes even there. He calmly and kindly brings to your attention that he will be working on your house for no longer than ten minutes as a

sign of respect to you and your home, what do you do? I know what a frail, elderly woman in Dearborn did: she automatically became worried and frightened. As my father and I stood on her stoop and explained why we were there, she looked as if she had just seen a ghost. I had never seen anyone more nervous about their life than she. I now understand that she had just been watching a news story on how people in Detroit are impersonating DTE workers and forcing their ways inside the homes, which would also give me a panic attack. I am still quite shocked at the reactions I received. I never thought that people would be afraid of a field technician.

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Most of the population of Dearborn is of the Middle Eastern descent. As I walked the routes with my dad I took the time to notice that the people do not really bother to learn English, and have even kept the rules of their cultures and religions. As I understand it, the Middle Eastern cultures are defensive as it is: women are not allowed to speak to men who are not family members or their husbands. It can be very frustrating for the men in the water department to have to deal with this, because sometimes the meters are in the home, and you need permission to get inside, but how do you get permission if they cannot speak to you, both physically and because of the language barrier? The answer is simple: they then contact their husbands or family members and you are allowed in the home. Sometimes they even call the cops, which makes a big mess and essentially wastes the workers time. When the cops are called on a field technician because people are scared that he is someone about to rob the homes of an old, serene neighborhood, the cops make a huge show of it: they call you over to their car, make you show two means of identification and question what you are doing, even when they know you! If you can believe it, this happens more often than not. The people of the Dearborn community (based on the few encounters I had with them) are an easily frightened population. To me, that says that the local area they live in is corrupted, no one should have to live in fear of their neighborhood or the people working in it.

Brave, Dedicated and Educated The people of the Dearborn Water Department are a completely different story. Every man within the department is his own character. The community as a whole I

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would have to say is brave, because in the society we live in anything can happen and to walk around unprotected is very courageous of them. I have heard, but never seen, that in some cases field technicians have had guns pulled on them. Can you even begin to imagine dealing with a situation like that? I cannot, but then again I have not been trained or educated in the same things they have; which is why they take the CECs and training courses each year, to keep them safe and teach them how to handle those extreme situations, if they ever happen. McMahon, a writer of a blog at www.wisegeek.com, (2013) claims that, Working as a meter reader requires a high degree of self-discipline, because people in this position work alone in the field, without supervision. It is easy to say this is true. The workers could sit around all day flapping their gums if they really wanted, but they do not. It is genuinely important to the men in the water department in Dearborn to do their jobs and get accurate reads because they care about the people they are helping. The self-discipline they have requires a great deal of dedication as well. Each man there is dedicated to the job, accepting over -time hours every week, sometimes in the middle of the night, just so they can feel that they are a part of something more within their community. Whatd you say to me? R. L. Stevenson (n.d.) once said, All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. Surprisingly enough, this applies to any place at any time. If no one listens to you, then you are not speaking. At first, it was like the crew was speaking a whole new language every time they opened their mouths, but when I really started paying attention it was easy to pick up on some of their unique lingo. Let me make it easy on you and start with some of the easy stuff first:

HUMANS OR BABOONS ARB, CEC, handheld, probe and final reads. Those were pretty easy to guess, right? ARB means automated read box, CEC stands for continuing education credits, handheld is what they call the radio that reads the meter from the truck, probe is the

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device that physically hooks up to the meter and a final read is exactly that, the last read before the water is completely shut off. Farther down the road the lingo got harder to understand. At one point I remember asking if they were even speaking English. The only way I knew what they were saying was to either ask or google it later. Swipe, inlet valve, outlet valve and curb stop are just a few examples of the gibberish they speak. Im just going to go out on a limb and say you read those a few times trying to guess what they would be, well, I am here to tell you, you are probably wrong. A swipe is a brass fitting inside of lead most commonly found in old homes. Inlet and outlet valves are valves that allow water to flow in your home, and the valve that stops the water from flowing into your home (by in to your home I mean through your pipes not on your floor). Lastly, the valve outside your home in your front yard is a curb stop. Half of the ideals formerly mentioned are not terms you would typically use in day to day life, however, for a water technician in Dearborn it is an everyday occurrence. Progression of Hygiene Think outhouse for a second, they smell like decomposing animals, are muggy and almost never have toilet paper left by the time you get to them. That was almost one hundred years ago, today we have clean, fresh scented, fully stocked bathrooms with toilets that flush themselves. How did those get there? Through a water technician. Water technicians have changed the way society views hygiene. Once upon a time we were completely happy sending our waste down the sides of streets to the local storm

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drain, now we have cleansing plants that breakdown and cleanse the waste we send to the sewers. If we did not have water technicians the way we classify our needs would completely change. Society now expects toilet paper, clean water, and a sanitary toilet seat. One hundred years ago they would have been tickled pink to have a big enough leaf and some soap. America is completely dependent on water technicians to make sure they can be as sanitary as possible. Next time you see your local water tech. dont be afraid to say thank you, it is not always that you meet someone who will do more for your hygiene than you will.

HUMANS OR BABOONS References About Automated Meter Reading (AMR). (n.d.). Retrieved October 11, 2013, from http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/customer_services/amr_about.shtml McMahon, M. (2013, October 15). What Does a Meter Reader Do? (with picture). Retrieved October 27, 2013, from http://www.wisegeek.org/what-does-a-meterreaderdo.htm Morey, S. (2005). Meter Readers. Journal of Property Management, 70(3), 16. Retrieved October 13, 2013, from the Proquest Business Collection database.

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(n.d.). Retrieved from website: http://suburbanstats.org/population/michigan/how-manypeoplelive-in-dearborn