Over the weekend, DVD helped me remember some "not so hot" memories from my first month at work for a telephone cooperative back in 1982 in eastern Montana. The first incident I can chalk up either to my poor listening skills or my boss who spoke with a Boston accent. Anyway, what I heard was "Go through this stack of expense reports and pull out any that deal with dancing cabbage."
Now remember, this is January of 1982 and Cabbage Patch dolls are all the rage. Being a bachelor with no kids and no interest in dolls, I have no clue what the rage was all about, but it might have included dancing cabbages. So I spent hours looking through expense reports and found none that mentioned dancing cabbages. At last, I gave my report...not to my boss, but to the auditor who I was assisting. The auditor looked sternly and said, "No, not dancing cabbages, I want expense reports for our former employee, Dan Sincavage." And so I got to go through the stack of expense reports one more time.
Well, that story pales in comparison to the next one. I had moved from Baker to Glendive as I transitioned from being a newspaper editor to being a public relations representative. I had selected my apartment partly because I had planned to grow a garden when summer arrived.
Well, lo and behold, it seemed like the gods were smiling on me. The co-op asked me to drive a four-wheel drive pickup to a farm southeast of Baker and interview an elderly couple, whom I already knew. I figured the couple would be generous and give me some free manure that I could haul to Glendive for my garden, then I could clean up the truck and no one would be the wiser.
Well, it wasn't only the gods but also a Mr. Murphy who had a hand in this one. First off, the farmer was generous with his manure, very generous. I drove back to Glendive with a heaping load, but the sky darkened and it began to rain. Now anyone who has seen a January rain knows that it often turns to January ice.
My trip to Baker occurred on a Thursday and on Friday I was asked to drive up to Circle where the co-op was headquartered. I hadn't cleaned out the manure because it was frozen solid, but I drove the pickup and parked it at the edge of town hoping no one would spot it. Now Circle is a small town, so even at the far edge the truck was only about two blocks from where I worked...and yet no one seemed to notice the pickup. Maybe I would get away with it.
No such luck.
It was getting on into the afternoon when my boss called me and said that he needed me to drive the pickup around to haul some mail to the Post Office. I told him that probably wasn't a good idea and explained about the frozen cargo I was carrying.
He told me that by Monday he wanted me to bring the pickup back to Circle and it had better be clean of any foreign material or I would be in deep doo-doo.
After work, I left the pickup at my apartment in Glendive and drove my car to Roundup for the weekend. Dad sent me back a pick that he used go rock hunting and said it might come in handy.
So on Sunday night, I threw a trouble light over a tree limb and began chipping out the hardened and ice encrusted manure. After digging down aways, I found the manure was warmer and I could eventually use a shovel to remove the big chunks.
Anyway, come Monday the pickup was returned...but probably not as clean as my boss would have liked it. Yet, I got to keep my job and another word was never spoken about it.
Still there's a moral to the story. When our kids or a young person whom we work with does something that's absolutely stupid, let's remember that we were young once, too.
Recipe - Aunt May's Famous Wheatcakes
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Now Playing - Forever Young by Alphaville RECIPE: MAY PARKER'S FAMOUS
WHEATCAKES Originally made by my pal Pete's Aunt May, these wheatcakes are
a great...
10 years ago
10 comments:
Oh my what a funny post! If I may be so bold with Mr. Random's blog, fellow commentors, let's see what you have to say for, "The most interesting things that have happened to me at work stories."
I'll start with the day a wonderful young man, the person who would become my brother-in-law, was training me how to filter the oil fryers at the original Mandan McDonalds on Main. You opened a valve at the bottom and the hot oil (350-450+ degrees) would drain into the filtration machine. Once the fryer was empty the clean oil was pumped up through a hose and back into the fryer after the valve was closed.
The job seemed easy enough. I wheeled the machine under the oil drain pipe and opened the valve. The pump motor sat on a platform on top of the filtration machine. Unfortunately, this platform was under the pipe. You are supposed to rotate the machine so the platform is away from the pipe so the oil flows into the tub.
In my case the oil hit the platform and spilled all over the floor and onto my right foot. Immediately, my shoe, sock, and foot were saturated with scalding oil. I have never before experienced such pain.
On another, slightly less dramatic occasion, I was carrying two full-to-the-brim, 5-gallon buckets of used hamburger grease and grill scrapings to the waste barrels. It was the middle of Winter and the parking lot was a sheet of ice. I slipped, fell and was covered with warm, disgusting grease. After a week of showers I still couldn't get rid of the smell. But at least it wasn't 450 degree oil.
Both the post and the comments gave me a much needed laugh on a gloomy Wednesday afternoon. One of my first jobs was at the Dairy Queen in a small town. This was shortly after the advent of the blizzard, a tasty treat made in a malt machine-like contraption. I was a trainee and it was a hot 4th of July. I was making a blizzard and someone was yelling an order to me. I loosened my grip on the blizzard cup and the ice cream went flying everywhere. The DQ was enclosed in floor to ceiling windows and we had half mixed blizzard everywhere. It took me hours to clean up that mess.
I could tell stories all day about welding in the oilfields.One story as bad as the next, without embellishment.Once I was called out to the field for a repair on the I beam of the pumping unit.That would be the"out-fit" with the horses head that goes up and down.I had to cut a groove in the cracked I beam to get enough weld on it to make the repair.I proceeded unaware that the ground/location was covered in a layer of invisable flamable gas.When the first sparks hit the ground the entire area that is cleared off for the pump-unit was on fire.That was about a 75 yard diameter area of gravel burning under me.My first thought was I hope it blows me up because I can't afford to buy this oil-well.In a short time the ground quit burning but the well-head was still on fire where the gas was being vented.I grabbed a plastic bucket to smother the flame and it melted.I covered it with a foot of dirt but it continued to burn.I then remembered there was a valve somewhere under ground so I then started digging where I had just covered.Now I'm hoping it doesn't blow me up.After digging fantically thru a foot of hardend gravel I found what they call the backside valve,turn it off and the fire went out.Wonder why I'm a little thin on top? There is nothing like having an oil-well on fire that does belong to you.
Excuse me,I met DOES NOT belong to you!
Meant was what I meant.It's late in the ISS room!
Ar Vee - I'm starting to think my manure episode was nothing. Anyone else...they say confession is good for the soul.
My encounters with certain roughnecks(drilling rig hands)never ceased to amaze me.I was called to a rig on another occasion and asked to weld leaking flues in a boiler.It had been cooling for hours but inside was quite warm as I squeezed through the firebox door.Inside, the boiler was roughly 7 feet long and 3 and a half feet diameter.As I welded,perspiration dripped from my forehead and I became quite damp under my clothing.A roughneck placed an electric light in the only way out and a water hose directly above it to refill the boiler.I was unaware of the running water until it began to overfill and run onto the light,which broke when the cold water hit it.It's slightly dark now but I can see the water running on the live element and splashing into the boiler with me.I'm wet,surrounded by metal and very afraid of the electricity in the exitway.I thought,this is IT.This is how I die:Right here, right now, at this rig.Relief had just reached location and men were changing cloths so it was another,and I might add the longest,15 or 20 minutes I have seen to now before someone showed up to help.He reached for the now broken light and I said rather loudly,NO unplug it first. Steve I like the Dancing Cabbage story.I'm just lucky to be here to enjoy it.You know what they say,"If you never do anything,you will never do anything wrong".
Ar Vee, you make my "hot oil on the foot" story sound like a warm bath. Where was OSHA when you needed them? Did they even exist back then?
Osha had come into the area and closed down the coal mines. They must have left before the widow makers showed up.An oil exploration rig would have been OSHA's night-mare.. I once poured a big red drink container over myself while lifting it up for some cuties at Dairy Queen when I worked there.Nothing hurt but my pride and 3 or 4 gallons of red liquid and a white shirt.I was the cook and understand that hot grease.OUCH !!
I love all the comments. It's like a world of guilt has been lifted from me. I thought for years that I was the only person who had bad things happen to them at work. I have one other memory of my days at Mid-Rivers Telephone Co-op. When I went to work for them, they asked me what I need for a salary. I think I asked them for about $4,000 more than what I was making as a newspaper reporter. They didn't quibble, just gave me the money. Then after I started making more money than I ever had before plus getting health insurance and other benefits, I began to think, "I'm not making enough." I've often looked back at that and thought, how petty I was. When I went through my yearly reviews, I found Mid-Rivers to be generous with their raises also, but still, I thought I was never making enough money....but that's probably because I never knew what other people were making. Having lost my job in 2001 and knowing what occupations make, I'm now so very grateful to be well paid compared to others with a journalism degree.
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