Circuit Breaker

Posted by Zel-kun on February 23rd, 2009 filed in Adventures in IT

The news of Circuit City’s collapse hit us hard at my job.  We have a number of kiosks within Circuit City locations, and they would be forced to close along with the Circuit Cities.

I never really shopped at Circuit City… I’m pretty sure the only thing I ever bought there was a Toshiba PocketPC back when I was in college.  It wasn’t any dislike of the store that made me not shop there, it always worked out that Best Buy was more convenient to get to.  When I lived in Merrillville, I could get to Best Buy taking back roads and without crossing Route 30 (a very busy section of road in town), whereas I’d have to get through the mall traffic and drive along Route 30 to get to the Circuit City.  Then, when I moved to Illinois, there was a Best Buy just down the road, and the closest Circuit City was several miles away.  I’m not sure if location killed off the potential patronage, I’m sure inconvenience for me is convenience for someone else, but I’ve never seen a crowded Circuit City.  Whenever I would check up on one of our Kiosks, I would be one of the only people in the store.  I always wondered how it stayed in business.

So I guess thinking about that, it wasn’t too shocking when the news came down the line, but it didn’t hurt any less.  It was time for my department to kick it into gear, because we had some work ahead of us.

It was decided that I would be in charge of breaking down the three Indiana locations that were in our region: Mishawaka, Merrillville, and Shererville.  The premise of the job is simple enough: just get in there and grab the IT equipment.  However, as I’ve learned long ago, there’s a little thing called Murphy’s Law.  Murphy and I?  We’re good friends.

My day started at about 6:30am, as I began to drive to Mishawaka.  I wanted to be ready to grab that equipment as soon as the store opened at 10:00am.  It was about a two hour drive from my apartment, and Mishwaka is an hour ahead, so I had a little breathing room.  My first stop was actually our Mishawaka retail location, to pick up the keys for the kiosk.

The store, I discovered, had its own set of problems.  They were receiving a new register counter (we call it a POD, it holds one register) for the front of the store.  It was a prototype POD that no one had seen before, made wider and shorter to accomodate a handicapped associate.  To place this new POD, the existing POD would be moved to the back of the store, and the new one placed in the front.  This created a number of unforseen troubles.

Someone had moved the existing POD from the front to the back.  Which while it was part of the plan, was very strange being that normally a member of IT is normally present to ensure everything works once it’s moved.  As it turns out, it has not worked since the move.  The reason, I found out, is that there was no power or network cables run to the new location.

I found an available network jack and power outlet in the adjoining PODs, so I threw off my coat and started crawling on the ground.  I had to lift the POD and feed the cable under it, as I saw was done with the others.  Fortunately the carpet still lets the register sit flush on the ground without wobbling.  I plug the power cable in and continue running the network cable to the furthest POD with the available jack.  The cable wasn’t long enough, so I stood up cursing to myself.  I didn’t have anything longer with me, and I kicked myself for it.

“You might want to keep one of those cable extenders,” my co-worker said the day before, “never know when you might need it.”

And I scoffed at him, but kept one in my bag anyway.  At that point, I vowed never to make fun of him again.  I ran to my truck, grabbed the cable extender from my parts bag, and continued to run the cable.  I finally finished running the cable, and reached behind the jack (it was facing away from me) and attempted to plug in the cable.  Try as I might, it wouldn’t go in.  A horrible realization dawned upon me… I took the cover off the jack and confirmed my suspicions.  Of the standard network cable fed into the jack, only two pairs were punched in… it was configured as a phone jack.

I stood up and the little voice in my head shouted so much profanity I’m sure people around me could hear it.  I had to get with our facilities department and get a wiring vendor out there, and until then, the store would be without that register.  I wasn’t looking forward to delivering that news.

At that time, a couple movers entered with the new handicapped POD.  I didn’t pay them much attention, as even though a computer will go in the fixture, I have nothing to do with the fixture itself.   I focused on finding the manager, delivering the news, getting the keys, and getting out of there while I still could.

The movers approached me and said, “We have a problem.”

What problem could you possibly have? I thought to myself.  I was already frustrated at having spent half an hour on the ground running a cable and essentially accomplishing nothing.  It was ninety degrees in the store and I was sweating and irritable.  Of course, I was also mad at myself for just assuming I was looking at a network jack, and not a phone jack.  This guy didn’t pick the best time to come at me with yet another problem.

“We can’t put the counter where it needs to go, what do you want us to do?”  He brought me over and showed my a PVC pipe filled with data cables sticking about an inch and a half out of the floor.  It was dead center of where the old POD was, which wasn’t a problem.  The problem was the new POD (which should be adjoined to the POD next to it) had a support beam right there, so the pipe needed to be cut flush to the floor.

I spent the next twenty minutes hunting down someone in facilities who could get that scheduled.  After all was said and done, I didn’t leave the store until nearly 11:00am, an hour later than I had planned.

When I got to the circuit city, I introduced myself to the manager, who was friendly and accommodating.  My respect goes out to him, it must be difficult to work knowing your company is going out of business.  He provided a flatbed so I could carry the equipment out more easily, I set to work.  I dumped the little bag of keys I got from the store and tried opening the cabinet containing some equipment.  I had nearly a dozen identical keys, and not a single one worked.

I ended up taking a screwdriver and breaking into the cabinets.  I wasn’t worried because we were going to dispose of the cabinets anyway, and after I was done, there would be nothing of value inside anyway.  I loaded up the cart with equipment, and spent some time coiling the dozens of cables each machine has, smashing my thumb in the process.

Despite the delay, it was just after noon when I was finished, which put me only twenty minutes behind the schedule I had set for myself.  I had to stop at the Mishawaka retail location one more time to meet with a user who was having an issue with her laptop.  She was always on the road, and since we would both be in the area, I arranged for me to work on the laptop while I was there.  It was a sound issue, so I had hoped it would be quick.

It was noon, so I suppose Murphy was out to lunch.  After poking around the computer and discovering the sound drivers were properly installed and the sound device was recognized, I went into the advanced sound options and saw that the speakers were muted.  Un-check the mute box and bam.  Sound.

At about 12:30, I was on the road for Merrillville.  I was feeling pretty good, I was on schedule again.  I even had time for a quick lunch at Potbellies in Merrillville before I went to break the kiosk down.

I entered the store and just stared.  The people at Circuit City built a barricade around our kiosk.  Flat screen televisions were stacked all around the kiosk, only the sign stuck out of the very top let me know there was a kiosk there at all.

After twenty minutes of searching for a manager, I found someone who was willing to help me.  He wheeled a few televisions away so I could get to the kiosk.  I asked him for a flatbed, and he said they didn’t have any.  I insisted that there had to be some sort of flatbed they moved large piles of merchandise around on, and he caved.  After a few minutes, an associate wheeled a flatbed over to me.

The rest of the teardown went as expected, with the exception that I hit my forehead against a bolt that was sticking out of the side of a door.  It hurt, and I have a nice little cut on my eyebrow, but I’ve had worse.  I packed up the truck and continued onward to Schererville.

Schererville was the first location I went to without an unforeseen snag.  I spent fifteen minutes finding a manager, but I’ve come to expect that.  The manager, much like his counterpart in Mishawaka, was polite and accommodating, even stopping by once or twice to make sure I had everything I needed.  It would have been a smooth end to a particularly rough day, if not for one thing….

I parked the truck in front of the curb, turned on the hazard lights, and went to work inside.  It was an official loading zone, so I wasn’t afraid of getting ticketed or towed.  I took the first flatbed full of equipment out to the truck.  I stepped off the curb to open the rear hatch, stepped on the curb to grab a piece of equipment, then stepped back.

For those that haven’t seen me in person, I’m a tall man.  Standing behind the vehicle, the hatch is only an inch or so above my head, something I took for granted as I stepped from the curb, which added a few inches to my height.  The top of my head crashed into the sharp corner of the hatch, and I barely avoided dropping the monitor in my hand.  I cursed a bit and put a hand to the top of my head, after a moment, I looked at my hand and saw blood.  It wasn’t a lot, but enough to know I hit it pretty good.  I stood against the car for a few minutes, watching the snow fall, and breathing deeply.  I was trying to determine if I was dizzy or light-headed, I didn’t want to have gotten a concussion and not realized it.  After several minutes, I decided I felt fine…. well, fine besides the sharp pain at the top of my head.

I finished up the rest of the job without incident, periodically checking the top of my head.  It bled for awhile.  Nothing major, but enough to irritate me every time I felt that bit of wetness.  I would have gone to treat it, but the bathrooms were already closed.  I’m alive and well now… so it wasn’t that bad.   Still hurt like hell.

The last kiosk I went to was the next day, in one of the Chicago suburbs.  Fortunately there were no big surprises, just one heck of a suspicious manager.  I introduced myself and told him I was there to reclaim our IT equipment, and he just looked at me skeptically.  He asked me for identification, so I showed him my work ID/Security card.  He looked at the card and claimed I introduced myself with a different name than was on the card.  I told him that wasn’t the case, and that if he wanted, I could leave and tell my boss that I wasn’t allowed to reclaim our equipment.  After that, he let up and walked away.  I asked for a flatbed, and the only thing I could get was a glorified furniture dolly.  It was literally a board of wood with four wheels screwed to it.  It would almost have been more efficient to carry the pieces out one by one.

But finally, the work was done, and the world bids farewell to Circuit City.  I’m sure the economy will take a strong hit from all the job losses.  Hopefully something will fill the gap soon, and the economy will prove to be as resilient as I hope.