Friday, May 16, 2014

How to do nothing and get paid for it.

In my job, we’re the main attraction. But there’s still the opening act. And what does the main attraction do waiting for the opening act? If we’re talking rock stars it’s sex and drugs. We’re less glamorous on the rig. We mostly watch movies and eat. Boredom sets in pretty quickly. Some people might think they get bored at work. I understand. I get bored at work too. But for most people, it ends and they go home at the end of the day. Here we don’t get to go home until the job is done. And if the job hasn’t even started then going home is a long ways off.

Take for example, my past week at Juspi 1006. Oh Juspi…

I was slightly upset to be put on this job at first. After a week and a half of ‘Katie, you’re going to work in the US’ ‘Katie, the US doesn’t have space for you, you’re going to South America now’ and finally ‘Katie, we’re just waiting to hear back from Argentina or Bolivia’ I wasn’t as pleased to hear, ‘Katie, no place for you in South America. You’re going to Juspi’.  Juspi and I got off to a bad start. Juspi is not Argentina.

Friday, my coworker and I arrive and spend the first 4 hours directing the installation of our camper and work trailer and the generators that go with them. And by that I mean, I point and say, put it here, then go and sleep in the van. After that, we rig up our desktop computers and discover that neither of them is working. This actually works in our favor. It means we can go to bed. No computers, no working all night checking all the sensors and tools. 
Katie: 1 Juspi: 0

Saturday, I wanted to sleep in except my throat is on fire when I wake up so sleeping isn’t easy. Instead I get up and do a few things on my computer, make phone calls, and then go back to bed after the aspirin kicks in. Finally the computers arrive along with a second DD. We check the sensors. Good. We assemble the tool and check that. Good. 
Katie: 2 Juspi: 0

Sunday, we don’t do much. We present the drill string design to the engineer and discuss it with him. He orders two missing crossover connection. Then we have a lovely beef stroganoff for dinner. I call my mom. Start watching Suits. Go to the 1am meeting. And then sleep. 
Katie: 3 Juspi:0

Monday, I wake up. At this point I’m no longer feeling like death. I go for a run. It’s great, just me and the cows and a nice road. I see one person the whole time. I get back and the engineer tells me the community nearby is violent and I shouldn’t run outside the rig. But if I run on the neighboring pad, the rig crew will stand and watch me creepily. 
Katie:3 Juspi: 1

Tuesday, I wake up late. I’m now in my favorite part of my job, slowly switching to night shift… this entails staying up as late as I can reading and watching TV and then sleeping in as long as I can. Pretty much my dream as a teenager. A new project engineer arrives. He tries to bully me into giving him the wireless password. I say no. He says he’ll talk to my boss about it which pisses me off. He tries to teach me Mexican tongue twisters. Then invites me to vacation with him somewhere. 
Katie: 3 Juspi: 2

Wednesday, I wake up even later! It’s raining. I find an email from the engineer asking me to do his report of our drill string design. Not my job, it’s a Pemex internal report. He comes and asks for it. I tell him it’s not my job and I’m busy. He tells me we’re a team here. I tell him, great, I have a few reports for you then. He leaves. I watch season 2 of Suits and contemplate quitting to go to Harvard Law School.  Katie: 3 Juspi: 3

Thursday, the air conditioner breaks at 3am. More disturbing, my coworkers wake up in a cloud of smoke. I sleep through the whole thing. By now word of me talking back to the engineer has reached the other contractors. They think I’m awesome. Someone tells me I have more balls than the rest of them. I’ve run out of episodes of Suits. Starting Modern Family. 
Katie: 4 Juspi: 3

Friday, they fixed the AC so sleep is tolerable. This is lucky, because it’s game time! Finally time to pick up tools. I’m officially earning my paycheck. My crew wakes me at 7am. By 10:30 we’re actually starting to work. Progress is… slow. We’re pushing the Pemex crew a little to get it done fast. It starts to rain and the crew runs inside. I follow them and ask if they’re all women and tell them to go keep working. Their shift ends in an hour and with the rain they think it’s okay to stop now. Finally they go back outside with rain suits on. My coworkers and I are there in just our coveralls soaked through. It’s wet and a little cold but we get a successful shallow hole test and we’re ready to run in hole. I finish reports while my DD makes food. None of us have eaten all day and it’s 5pm. I eat and then crash out. I slept about 4 hours the night before and sleep is sweet.
Katie: 5 Juspi: 3


And that’s what a week with nothing to do looks like. We had our moments of excitement. Laughter and tears. But most of that was from the various TV shows we consumed in a week.  In D&M we have a motto to live by: sleep when you can because you never know when you’ll get to sleep again. We had our week of rest and relaxation. It was boring, sure, but who knows if the job is going to hell tomorrow. If it does, we’ll deal with it in the same way we dealt with this week; laughter and tears. Probably less TV though. 

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