Strike Duty Day 1 - Deflated

Saturday night at midnight, the dreaded E-mail arrived in my inbox. "The union has called a strike. Report to your assignment Monday morning at 7:00 AM." I stared at my computer moniter in disbelief. I fully expected the E-mail to tell me the union has decided to work without a contract and to cancel all reservations. Imagine my disappointment!
My trip to New York was uneventful. The first thing I did when I got to my hotel room was check the list I had of other management employees assigned to Brooklyn. I noticed one of them was staying in my hotel. I called her and we agreed to meet in the loby and take a taxi together. Three of us took a taxi from downtown Manhattan. Fifty minutes and $40 later, we arrived. I told the taxi driver to let us out a block early so he wouldn't have to travel through the picket line. We got out and immediately noticed a great ruccus in the direction we needed to go. He heard bull horns, sirens, whistles and shouting. As we approached the garage, the noise got louder. The strikers easily picked us out as "scabs", so their attention was directed toward us. We had to actually walk through the middle of the crowd of red shirts and red faces. We were called names, we had air horns go off right in our ears, we heard bull horns blaring at us. Scabs, go home was the predominant chant. Police were present, but didn't do much. Their only concern was our physical safety and that we had access to the garage. As we arrived in the garage, we were quickly ushered into a room, filled with other wide eyed managers. After several hours of orientation and organizing, we loaded up Verizon trucks and out we went. The supervisor decided to pair us all up. For the first day, we were also paired up by trucks. Two trucks with two occupants each went out to fix our customer problems. I was paired with what they call a field manager. She supervises Installation and Maintenance technitions during her normal job. Because she has never worked in the field, she doesn't know much more than I do about fixing customer problems. She was considered the lead of our two trucks (what does that tell you). Because my partner wanted some on-the-job training, she followed another lead. I'll stop right here and help with math. My partner, plus me plus two managers in a truck following us is following a lead truck which was followed by another truck. Two times four equals 8. I'm not done. Another lead also didn't have field experience and wanted some on-the-job training. Add 4 more managers to 8 and you have 12 people going to our first appointment. Keep in mind we are in Brooklyn. Our first field visit was to the "projects". We all found a parking place, which wasn't easy. We headed for our first appointment. We had 4 apartment units to visit. Hopefully, you have formed a good mental image. One eployee who knows what he is doing followed by 11 who don't. We affectionately referred to ourselves as "the network", referring to a verizon comercial. When the lead manager finished his work, he, plus the network, went out to our respective vehicles. Our travel partner was unable to continue on due to a slashed tire. My partner and I waited with them while the tire was fixed. Four hours later, we were out there visiting Verizon customers. To say our first day was unproductive is a major understatement.