Old work

A former co-worker used to pride himself on staying a couple of steps behind the technology. He said that there was plenty of work because no one was interested in working on the old stuff. That worked pretty until perhaps five or seven years ago when companies started to outsource the old work to India, Russia, or some other low-cost workplace. It's to the point now that many companies, including places where I used to work, have quotas on how much work they will ship overseas.

The pace of change is also present in the consumer market. Today, we tried to have the furnace cleaned at my father's house. It's an old burner, probably not original (more than 50 years old), but certainly more than 20. The guys from one company showed up, took a look at it, and gathered their gear and left. It was too old. They'd never seen one like it and didn't want to take responsibility, should anything go wrong. Fortunately, friend E. knows lots of people. I stopped by his plumbing supply store. We talked about who might have worked on it in the past. One guy was dead; another is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's. E. gave me three additional companies to try. The first wouldn't make a service call because we weren't an oil customer. (We probably would be an oil customer now if they'd been willing to do the work.) The second company was not only willing, but had worked on the system before. They'll clean the furnace on Wednesday.