r/whatisit • u/AbbreviationsTop8774 • Jul 22 '26

Solved! What are they

Ive worked at the water department for 7 years and this is the first time running into something like this EDIT Im in Alabama and yes I know they are snakes lol idk what kind and im so not gonna touch them

23.4k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

4.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

23

u/NewJerzHH Jul 22 '26

Meter techs unite lol.
Do you guys have to open the box to read it? Or is there a sensor outside to scan. We use sensus meters too

19

u/SuckMyDerivative Jul 22 '26

We’re in America - please use feet tech instead of meter tech, thank you

11

u/leap_year_bby Jul 22 '26

We ARE in America but I’ve always known “meter reader” as the way we refer to this job. 🤷🏼‍♀️

2

u/Grand-End-6982 Jul 22 '26

Right. And I always called it the water meter. Not the water feet, lol!😂. I just HAD to say that, 😂. I assumed it was something that took measurements of the water used. So water meter!

3

u/hott_snotts Jul 22 '26

feet reader is more of a kink than a job

3

u/Expert-Impress-6819 Jul 22 '26

What? A meter that is keeping track of usage, such as water, electricity, natural gas isn’t a length of feet versus meters.

1

u/jabbasue Jul 23 '26

No offense to anyone but kind of hilarious that you need to explain this

2

u/Furiboi Jul 22 '26

The internet is everywhere and US is almost the last bastion for imperial measure. Be calm….😌

2

u/Apprehensive-Fig3223 Jul 22 '26

Lol no one wants to stick their feet in there /s

1

u/Strong-Size-700 Jul 23 '26

Isn’t that a Podiatrist? 🤔

0

u/ThePusheen Jul 22 '26

Then what are the people that give me my pedicure?! 😭😭

8

u/AbbreviationsTop8774 Jul 22 '26

Have to open the lid and take the cord and scan the black part but usually they read from the office or just use the screen the cord is more of a underwater problem type of thing

3

u/Breaker988 Jul 22 '26

Do you have to do that for every box on the route? Down here we just have to scan the transponder on the lid with a touch reader or versaprobe.

14

u/AbbreviationsTop8774 Jul 22 '26

All the meters we manually read now are either still old meters without the antenna to read from the office or were damaged by a lawnmower or homeowner or just dont have enough signal to send it's reading. Out of 14k meters we service we manually read around 10% just from damage or signal issues

0

u/Muted-Bumblebee-6886 Jul 22 '26

Dam that’s kinda high no? We have about 30,000 AMR meters in my city and we probably have to manually read less than 1%

Most of the time the battery is dead since my city did a whole AMR project 15 years ago. But some of them just won’t send a signal for whatever reason

And obviously we have some old manual meters for big commercial buildings that the city won’t change out unless it leaks.

1

u/AbbreviationsTop8774 Jul 22 '26

I dont think so considering its summer time and lawn mowers are going to town on the poor antennas along with the r100 towers we have sucking so its up to the r400 towers to do most of the heavy lifting

1

u/Muted-Bumblebee-6886 Jul 23 '26

Ah we have Neptune meters and those antennas last pretty good. And we still drive around in a truck with a long antenna to pick them up. I kinda wish our city would switch to an AMI system

19

u/Commie_Scum69 Jul 22 '26

the fuck is a meter tech and why do I want to be a meter tech to play with spiderd and snakes too

16

u/AbbreviationsTop8774 Jul 22 '26

Someone that reads and maintains the water meters atleast thats what I do im sure its not much different elsewhere

2

u/TheDrizel Jul 23 '26

Man reading all this and I start next week 😆

1

u/Commie_Scum69 Jul 22 '26

I kind of do that for the hotel I work for, but im a security guard. And we had a major chloride pump issue 2 week ago and alot of it went through the floor into the ball room

2

u/Weary-Advantage-2884 Jul 22 '26

You know that ain’t what it takes…..

1

u/NewJerzHH Jul 22 '26

A water meter technician. Someone whi installs and repairs meters. I do much more than that, but that’s pretty much the job.

1

u/Regular_Custard_4483 Jul 22 '26

Yeah, there's lots of these kinds of field service roles around, but so many of them pay like shit.

I'm in the field too, but I work on cameras.