These stories have nothing to do with welding-I am a contract field operator for a large Canadian oil & gas production company here out here past where the cows go to die... The plant I work at is small-two guys working across from each other on a 9-and-5 rotation. I have worked with my current cross-shift for just over a year-a very interesting year. For a man with a 3rd class steam ticket, he has very interesting ideas.....don't want to bore anyone with geology stuff, but the oil wells in our part of the world rely on gas pressure in the formation to push the oil to the wellbore. On buddy's 1st day here, he wanted to install a choke on the casing gas side to "force the oil to go to the pump". No amount of patient explanation from me seemed to suffice-only reason it never happened was that he couldn't work up the ambition to book a crew to do it. Also has a penchant for cleaning running, loaded engines with Brakleen -after I pointed out to him the turbocharger on the sales engine as a likely ignition point, he informed me he would switch to Varsol because it is way less flammable.....yeah, spraying it out of a garden sprayer creates way less of a vapor cloud. After he had been here 6 months or so (keep in mind he has lived 3 miles from the plant for 13 years or so), I got a message on my phone one weekend off after midnight from him-the power co. had dropped a phase in a storm. His message informed me he had called the power co. and they had no record of an outage-unfortunately the one he called does not operate within 100 miles of us. Not only has he paid his power bill to one company for 13 years, he bought a surplus truck from them less than a month before this! Can you see a pattern developing here?

None of this should surprise me I guess-before he transferred here, at a safety meeting where the company rolled out its alcohol and drug policy, he basically informed everyone that it was BS and unfair that we couldn't get drunk on the weekends when we were working and on call---I don't care what your thought process is, maybe don't state it to the safety guy? I can't get out of here fast enough.....

Jason