“Georgia Power is an egregiously substandard provider. They refuse to update their outdated infrastructure, make shoddy repairs whenever storms take the east side offline, and generally don't seem to care about customers. They also have a monopoly in much of Athens, giving them no incentive to improve their terrible service.”

this is exactly the correct perspective and it is a nationwide problem, indeed, but it is exactly what should be kept in mind for the next time when someone post some mawkish, karma-farming words about “thanking the linemen.“ I’m not saying dump on them, but this whole idea of fetishizing the linemen as some sort of worker hero obscures what the real problem is as to why they have to keep fucking working so hard to put everything back up as soon as a cloud passes over the sun. It’s because Georgia power doesn’t invest in infrastructure like buried power lines and instead keeps profits for shitty service and oh shareholders.