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The homeowner who showed me why I should always mark my own lines
Last Tuesday in Cleveland, I was finishing a drop for a new customer and she came out holding a hand-drawn map of her yard, complete with where the old cable ran 15 years ago. She was right, the locator flags were off by 3 feet and we hit a sprinkler line. Now I always walk the property myself before I dig, has anyone else had a customer save them from a bad hit?
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white.seth26d ago
That story hits home because I remember telling a buddy last spring that trusting the flags was the whole point of calling 811. I figured those guys knew their stuff better than any homeowner ever could. Then I had a job where the flags were two feet off and I clipped a buried dog fence, which cost me a whole afternoon and a pissed off customer. Your client walking out with that hand drawn map is the kind of thing I would have laughed off a year ago, but now I get it. Old cable lines and sprinkler pipes don't show up on every record, and the person who lived there for 15 years knows things the locator never will. I still call for markers, but I walk the yard myself every single time now, and I ask the homeowner to show me anything they remember. It takes ten extra minutes and it has saved my ass twice already.
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