One of the Worst Days
of my Life Working
For the Scumburger
I was working
at Scumburger, yes I know I said I would move one but this is one job I had to
question just what the heck I was doing at this job. I was breaking in a new engineer
Louie and he was fresh out of college and had maybe 8 weeks of training in Houston
at the Scumburger Institute for unqualified engineers and was granted his blue
Ford Ltd upon completion and sent to Ohio
to bug the hell out of me.
We were on a
job in southern Ohio and we had done maybe two jobs since he started at our shop,
and they went ok as he was still getting the hang of things but still needed
more experience in dealing with customers and also in the technical aspects of
trouble shooting of electronic equipment. We started our first tool down the
hole and everything was going ok when he noticed that there was no signal
coming from the tool in the hole. This could be from a multitude of problems
but most likely it was a leak in the housing that allowed moisture and whatever
mud and slop in the hole, or oil well to get in the tool and shut down the
electronics. Water and electricity just don’t mix well.
The tools are designed so that they are
watertight, and have seals to prevent this from happening but it still happens.
We decided to bring the tool to the surface and check to see if there was
something we could figure out. I suggested right away that it would probably be
best if we went ahead and ordered a new tool from the shop and at least get it
headed our way too save some time. Louie was against the idea, opting instead
to see if we could fix the tool. At this point I had over a couple of years’
experience and knew from the symptoms of the tool that maybe we had a dead one.
Rarely do you lose all your signals down the hole. It was a tool we use almost
daily and sometimes 3 times a day so I pretty well had it figured out.
Well we get back
to the surface and the owner of the drilling rig is wondering why we are done
so quick, and I had half a notion to tell him no oil, a dry hole, we are
packing up to go, but figured the guy would go ballistic as well the engineer
Louie I am sure would frown on it also. I mean after spending close to half a
million to get a well that far, last thing you want to hear is it is a dry
well. I instead told him we ran into some glitches with our tooling as I preceded
to start taking it apart to see what was going on after it was up on the
surface and had it laying on the drilling floor of the rig.
I started taking
the tool apart as it started to rain and it began to pour, not just a little, but
one of those frog choking rains, and here I am in the rain taking this tool
apart while the engineer is screwing around inside the truck, in the dry
worrying about this or that, that could have went wrong and I am getting soaked
and pissed as it is not going to work. I come into our operator cab on the back
of the truck and try to take a break from the rain and suggest after a round of
testing again, that we try and get another tool heading our way as it is
usually the general procedure we take when having trouble, we have plenty of
these same tools back at the shop for spares in cases like this. But again the
engineer who has now wasted 2 hours of time insists on me returning outside in
the pouring rain to play with some electrical equipment capable of knocking me
on my butt if I touch the wrong wire along the way.
The owner of
the drilling rig is getting pissed and braves the rain to tell me so, and I direct
him to the man responsible for his troubles the engineer Louie, and Louie appreciates
it so much he finally calls for another tool but still insists on me standing
in the rain bent over the tool trying to fix it and keep busy doing nothing so
he hopes the customer will be less pissed than he is now. I can remember as if it
was yesterday, there I was in the pouring rain barely able to see as the rain
was soaking every part of my being coming down in buckets and I am standing on
the biggest lightning attractor around. The derrick extends a good 30 feet
above any tree and is lit by lights in the darkness. I can feel the rain running down my back and
across my butt as I am bent over and is dripping off my balls in the pretty
blue work overalls Scumburger had gave me, running down my leg and filling my
boots full of water, and I think to myself there has got to be a better way to
make a living. There was but I still needed to get home and try to find it. So I
mustered up my energy and headed for the control cab of our truck walked in and
sat down and said that is all I am going to do. The other tool will be here in
a couple of hours and if you want someone out there playing lightning rod in
the rain you had better get your skinny ass up and get out there, because I am
this close to quitting as I motioned in a pinching fashion my thumb and index
finger and I will walk home and you can take your truck, tools, and radioactivity
and shove it up your ass if that is what you want and of course I will help
you. But I am not standing out there doing stupid shit no more. Make your choice.
Well he decided
that since he had already had a tool coming and would need an operator to run
the winch he better make sure I was ok with it. I wasn’t and could have cared
less but I sat in the cab in silence with him in there also and tried to dry
myself out, and soon our tool showed up we went down the hole and I finished
the job. But the wheels of change had already entered my mind as I knew I needed
another job. Also a friend of mine had just been recently killed while working for
them and I really didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. Within a month I had
a new job and was gone from the oilfields.
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