Service Utilityman
Marci is the one person at TMWA who reads all 90,000 meters in the TMWA service area. She spends 20 days a month reading for 20 different billing cycles. Her smallest route has only 52 meters, but the longest one is nearly 10,000 meters.
"I spend my days driving around town reading meters for billing," she said. "But I'm the only one, so if I get sick, they scramble." However, TMWA has been training other employees in Marci's expertise, so she won't be the only one much longer.
To read the meters, an electronic transmitter sends signals from a computer in her car to the meters and back again, so she can read the most meters in the shortest amount of time. Before going out into the field, a map of the area to be read is input into a small computer that sits in the passenger seat of a TMWA vehicle. As Marci drives though the neighborhood, meters are instantly read and data is simultaneously recorded.
"I rarely need to get out of the car to change the equipment, but if need be I do," she said.
After working as a bookkeeper in retail for 17 years, Marci felt she needed a change, so five years ago she began working at TMWA's front desk, and then went on to reading meters when the position opened up. Change was definitely in store for her.
"I'm outside all day, which is nice," she said. "It gives me a different perspective, getting to drive around the community, as opposed to sitting at a desk."
While she loves her job at TMWA, Marci's real dream is to study at The French Pastry School in Chicago and to one day own her own bakery, where she could highlight her specialty: pies.
"The women here love my coconut cream pie," she said, her face lighting up as soon as she gets on the topic of baking.
Aside from baking, Marci likes to spend time with her husband and two daughters who are nine and 13 years old, and double as friends in addition to daughters.
"She's always texting me from her cell phone," Marci said of her teen.
While she is dreaming of a lifetime of pastries and pies, she is happy at TMWA because she feels she is doing a good thing for the community reading meters since "paying for the amount of water you actually use is the right thing to do," she said.
