Observation 8

For my eighth and final Observation I choose to see what it was like on an average work day for the CEO Cindy. I asked her over the phone if she would mind if I came in and saw what all she did durring her work day, and she happily replied yes. When I got to he Office of Precision Contracting Services Cindy was patiently waiting for me in her office. Once she was ready we headed over to the back of the building to the warehouse to see what the field workers planned on doing that day. She doesnt really do much at this time except make sure the workers know exactly what is to be done on the job site on this day. Cindy has to sign off on all of the teams plans so that if the city or town's employees stop at the site and they have no authorization, they could be hit with a fine and be set back even further in their job.
Once the field workers were gone we went back inside to her office to check and see what meeting she had today. Luckily for me she said, there was only one meeting planned but it was a conference call from PCS's offices in virginia and tennessee. She took the call and after about five minutes of listening to them talk about numbers and job sites and people she ended the call and said it was time for a break, Finally I will get to asks her some questions.
We went to a sub shop right down the street from the offices and I began to ask her questions about her status at PCS. I asked her what all her job entitled her to do? She just stated, "Ikeep the workers in line and make sure they get their job done on time. I leave all the counting and record keeping to bruce, he's better at that stuff". We both laughed and then I asked a few more questions that were a little off topic but my final question I asked Cindy was, How long have you been working for PCS? and how long do you see yourself working here for? When I asked this I could tell Cindy was gladly going to answer. She replied "Bruce and I started this company from the ground up, we started with nothing but a pen and a piece of paper. Now were one of the leading fiber optic cable contractors in the Southeast. I plan on being with this company until the day I die and I probably wont ever retire. ( She joked)". This just goes to show me how dedicated and serious Cindy is to her company and how she plans on never letting it go. She is very positive in her thinking and I can now see why PCS is so successful and is showing no signs of letting up. This observation was conducted on April 15, 2010

Observation 7

In my seventh Observation of Precision Contracting Services I chose to have a talk with one of the Co- Owners of the company, Bruce. Bruce is a very polite well educated man who is also one of the Co-founders of this company. Bruce and his sister Cindy started this company from scratch and have watched it flourish over the last ten years. When I finally sat down and was able to ask Bruce some questions I found out many differnt things I never knew about the company. Bruce said that he works the longest hours out of anyone on the pay roll. He explained to me that his typical day starts off at about five thirty when he wakes up, gets to work around six. He said he might take but two to three breaks all day and it is almost seven oclock when he finally locks the doors to go home. As amazed as I was to hear that the boss works the hardest and longest days I could tell that Bruce ment Business. He kept referring to the fact that he prides himself and his company on having the most dedicated and hard working employees he could find. He also told me he promisses his employees extra incentives for a job well done. Whether that be a raise in pay, or a day off here and there, or even just a break the rest of the day, he said it all depends on the situation.

Although I wasnt at the offices of PCS very long I learned alot about Bruce and how he runs his company. He seems to be a very hard working, dedicated boss who will do anythign to keep his company flourishing. This is the right attitude to have when running a business I feel. He always seems positive and I'm sure his employees feed of his energy and that will empower them to work hard throughout the day.

Observation 6

For my sixth observation on March 26, 2010 I chose to head down to the Broward County of PCS and sit in with the receptionist/ assistant Lexis. I chose to follow Lexis around and see what she though of the business was because she is the receptionists, she gets to know almost everything that is going on during the day and she gets to talk to all the people the bosses do. Basically she gets to see the company through more than just one perspective. The one that is the receptionists and also the assistant to Cindy, the boss.
When I arrived to the offices she was already there waiting for me. She sat with a coffee in her hand and politely said welcome to PCS lets get started. When she said get started I had no idea what she was talking about but I soon found out. She taught me how to run the phone system and also how to speak to someone calling in on the phone. Next she told me I had to run the phone lines for a little while. It was really different trying to be a receptionist and I cannot lie I was a little nervous talking to theses complete strangers on the phone.
After I got to play around of the phones a little while Lexis took me around the office to the part I had never seen before, the Storage room. The storage room was gigantic and contained anything and everything the company needed to survive. For instance we only went into their to grab some paper and paper towels, but there was everything from cables, to gigantic spools (to wrap the cable around to keep it in order) , to even some work trucks parked in between isles. It was pretty neat to see such a vast amount of tools and utilities all in the same room.
After we visited the storage room we sat down at her desk at the front of the office and I had the opportunity to ask her some questions. The first thing I asked was how do you like it here at PCS? she replied with "well it really is an amazing experience for me, I'm only a junior in college and I'm getting the opportunity a graduated person would and I'm learning the ways of a successful company at such a young age." The next thing I asked her was what do you plan on doing once you graduate college? She replied "I hope to be working here at PCS still," she laughed then said, "I love it here and have had so much fun at this job. My time here as been awesome and I hope that once I graduate I can continue to work here." I could tell that she really liked working there and just by the way she jumped on the question's I asked that she really felt strongly about PCS.

Interview

Durring my interview with Dean Miller from Precision Contracting Services I learned many new things about the business subculture. For instance I learned that as a contractor-Dean's position, it was his duty to draw out the entire city (in this case Boca Raton) and be able to now the coordinates of the fiber optic cables they put along the road. Also I learned that eventhough workers for PCS have to work from 6-3, most of them stay to work after without being asked just so that the job will be done faster. Everyone at PCS seemed to be on the same page with the workload and were dedicated enough to take so e extra time out of ther personal lives to help the company get the job done faster.

http://www.pcsfiber.com/

Third Observation

For my third observation I went back the PCS main building located in Jupiter, Florida. Upon arriving to the offices I was asked if I would like to accompany a few of the workers to their job site just to the west of Boca Raton. I figured it would be a great idea to get a different perspective on the business and see it from the eyes of the hard working laborers so I greatfully aggreed to arttend. I was accompanied by workers name Ralph, Mike, Steven, and Luke and their job for the day was to map out all the previous new cables that were recently placed all over Boca. When we got to the place where we were to start maping out the cable they showed me an instrument that looked a little like a medal detector. the only difference is, is that instead of picking up a signal given off from the metal, it pick up the signal given off from the fiber optic cables. They do this maping as they call it to make sure that the cable is working correctly and there is no damaged or unworking cables. The workers and I wore reflector vests and had to set out safety cones as part of the safety precautions the city of Boca Raton requires. Although it was not an ardious task it was kind of like going on a mineature treasure hunt, just not for gold. The hour and a half I halped them work went without a hitch and we had no problems locationg all the cables we needed to find. This was a good experience for me to be able to see and understand what all the laborers do durring the day instead of just sitting in the nice cool offices all day, eventhough they all laughed and joked with me saying that today was the easiest day they have ever had.

For my second observation I sat in on a metting between PCS own Bruce, Cindy, and Lucy who is the the head of the city of Boca Raton's traffic and saftey board. The meeting was scheduled so that Lucy could give PCS an update as to how far along they are on their job in Boca. The meetign started off with Lucy explaining how good of a job the field workers for PCS have been doing and how far ahead of schedule they are. She stated " your workers have been working very diligently and are almost two months ahead of schedule." Very pleased to hear this Cindy replied with a thank you very much, and we dont expect anything less.

As the meeting went on Lucy began to explain how well the PCS workers were working with the city of Boca's workers and how also their safety procedures are spot on. The safety procedures are things such as using cones to block off a lane of traffic possibly, and wearing reflector vests when on the side of the road and things like that. The particurally short meeting went very well for Bruce and Cindy and afterwards they offered me lunch, and some time for me to ask them some questions.

When we got to quarterdeck I began with the question "How hard is it to run this big of a company? and how can you balance running it with running your families as well?" Cindy was the first to reply and she just simply said, "its easy to run a company when everyone inside it is as trustworthy as the next." I asked her hwat she ment by that and she said she ment that before they hire anyone they do many backround checks in order to see if they will be trustworthy enough to work for them. Bruce followed up the second part of my question by sayin that " my family is the biggest part of my life and like Cindy said, its easy to give the work to my assistant when i know she is just as capable as I am to take care of most of the work. Its tough having to be at work all the time but the time I spend with my family is always going to be more important to me."

First Observation-Percision Contracting Services

-January 21,2010
I chose to do my research on a local business subculture and the company I observed was Precision Contracting Services (PCS). PCS is a local South Florida Business that specializes in the production and distribution of Fiber Optic Cable. The people I encountered there were Bruce Mark , Lexis, Amy, and Lorenzo. Lexis was the first person i encountered as soon as I walked into the door. She was very pleasent and showed me to Bruces office. After meeting with Bruce and he told me what they would be doing that day we began our short trip to the job site. I observed Bruce, Mark, and Lorenzo out on a job site near Boca Raton where they were splicing cable and putting it into the ground. Splicing is what it is called when they put together the acutal cable. The splicer is a little machine that makes a weird humming sound as you push both pieces of the cable, the cable fibers and the rubber casing , through the machine.While I watched them work I noticed some of the dialogue they used was a little bit different, such as when Bruce said to Lorenzo, "Hook it right" meaning that he should lay the cable more to the right. I noticed that they worked great as a team and got the job done without any problems what so ever. I honestly didnt learn anythign spectacular from my research, but i did learn that most of the eastern seaborg of the United States is going to change from the old school telephone wires to the new high-tech fiber optic wires. I hope to learn more and more from this company and experience and gain some insight as to how to fiber optic cables are made, and how they are so much better than the old copper wires we see hanging from telephone poles.