Reach out and gyp someone.

"Telephone repair time irks clients," was the headline on a recent story by The Charleston Gazette. The Gazette story attributed the problem to Verizon's overtime policy. But it did not get at the reason for Verizon's reliance on overtime, which is that a few years ago, the company downsized its repair force in an effort to improve profits. The truth is that the breakup of AT&T left everyone with a great gain--much cheaper long distance rates--but with much poorer and more expensive local service. I'll never forget my shock when this magazine moved in the late 1980s after the breakup to find that it cost $1,000 to reconnect our phones, while the cost under the AT&T monopoly was so negligible that it did not impress itself on my memory.