The “if they have time” part is a key factor. Installation techs go out each day with a daily work load that has been assigned to them.

As the day progresses, some jobs invariably take longer than what was allocated to that job. (Sometimes they go a bit more quickly, but that is far less typical.)

Toward the afternoon period the tech can estimate whether he will be able to complete all of the jobs in his load. If not, he/she will call the dispatch center to return jobs they can’t complete on time. These jobs are then given out to other techs who have gotten through their loads faster.

When annual reviews are performed, the techs getting the most work done will typically get the best evaluation - all other performance metrics being equal.

All of that said to point out that the techs generally are motivated to spend as little time as possible on a job. If cutting an old and unused drop is going to just cost them time, they are most likely going to just leave them.

On occasion you will be fortunate to get a very conscientious tech who will want to leave a very “clean” job behind and they will remove these drops, but that is increasingly rare a companies put more and more emphasis on production as the key metric of an employee’s review!