This post was published at, and has been shared by the APHA Blog.
It is provided so you can find it in a search here at myAPHA.org, but you’ll need to link to the original post to read it in its entirety.
Find the link to the entire post at the end of this excerpt.
You Can’t Do Life, or Business, Without Plan B
You know Plan B. Plan B is your go-to option when what you thought would work, didn’t. It’s the answer to the question, “What will you do when life gets in the way?” I was reminded of Plan B last week when, after days of internet problems due to some new construction in the area, the internet was finally stable, and I had taken a very relieved deep breath and settled into a nice big project online…. …When BAM! Down went the internet again! Only this time the outage was caused by some workers next door digging up the edge of the neighbor’s garden, and slicing our underground internet wiring in two. Poof! And it wasn’t like they could fix it! Of course not! (Not to mention how rude they were about the whole thing – another story for another day…. ) You can imagine what came next. Since the outage was caused by a crew that was digging, who had not gotten permission to dig (which I’ve since learned is against the law!), there was absolutely no hurry on the part of our internet service provider to fix it. It wasn’t their fault, and we were only one customer. They had other bigger outages affecting many more customers to attend to. When I phoned, they said they would put us on the schedule for next Wednesday…. WHAT? OMG! So… what next? When you work from home, and when 90 percent of your work, including use of your business phone, is internet-access-dependent you MUST have a Plan B! And I did. This isn’t my first internet-outage rodeo. I fired up the Mobile Hotspot on my cell phone, my computer connected to it, and we were off and running…. except that my mobile data plan is somewhat limited, so it could be only a temporary fix. Eventually my husband (the saint!) went off to the hardware store, brought home a “Cat-5” cable and connected the outside boxes – and it worked perfectly. Since then, my service provider came by, fixed the whole thing, and now they are taking it up with…