Who's in the House??

Communication out in Point Thompson (or anywhere on the North Slope, for that matter) can be a challenge. Especially if you are the little fish in the feeding chain as the caterers usually are. Typically the caterer, Doyon Universal Services (DUS) in my case) is the last to know who is doing what, where, when and don’t even think about asking the whys and the hows. My guess is that the contractors have no idea of what kind of lead times it takes to get food to the camp and what kind of planning it takes to put out a meal for 50 to 120 people. But common wisdom says that they just don’t give a s**t.

Case in point: Yesterday the first drilling crew was to arrive, followed by the second crew and some construction personnel. When? Estimates abounded from a low of 5pm to a high of the next morning. How many? Again, a wild spread of 20 to 36 men, depending on who was talking. The Company Man (Exxon’s company boss and the biggest fish on property) basically said he didn’t have much of a clue. One of Nabor’s roughnecks gave me one number and then gave the Company Man a totally different number 15 minutes later. In his defense, he had the time of arrival pegged to within 30 minutes.

Upon arrival, everyone must get assigned a room. Night workers are paired with day workers so they can each have the room for 12 hours of privacy. Nabors hands are usually put in the same areas as are Exxon hands. Tool pushers (rig bosses) are put by their offices. Drillers (crew chiefs) have the better rooms. Electricians get a singles room as they are on call 24/7. Room assignments can be easy if you have a list of names of who will be there, what position they have and what shifts they work. Chaos if they just show up. Mostly they just show up.

Sub, sub (& sub) contractors get the dregs of the rooms, but they rarely, if ever, give advance notice of their rooming needs. These are frequently electricians, welders or construction subcontractors that will be there for a few days to a week or two. Their attitude is they feel lucky just to get a room with a bed and three square. Frequently they get paired up with people on the same shift from the same company or even from a different company, so there is no privacy at all for these poor guys. If a subcontractor has multiple hitches with Nabors, then they get a better chance at getting preferential room assignments, but certainly no single rooms or rooms with a bathroom.

Then, of course, there are the politics to be contended with. These fine workers get to be bosses by being aggressive, confident and competitive. However, there are a bunch of bosses at these large projects and no real defined pecking order. Each of the bosses is used to being the top dog, too. Put them all together and the pissing contest begins. Details will be omitted here as these gentlemen deserve too much respect to name names and tell stories, but we need a bigger sand box to keep everyone happy. To their credit, it only took about 24 hours for the dust to settle and get everyone in the proper places. Housekeeping was a bit overworked for it because of all the room shuffling and remaking of beds. The most intelligent observation was by one of the Company Men: He said that whoever engineered these camps should make all rooms the same so the opportunity to scramble for the biggest and best won’t happen. Human nature being what it is, though, there will always be some advantage to be had, whether it is a better view, closer to the bathrooms, away from the generator noise or whathaveyou.

Here I sit in my room just outside the dining room at my desk, next to my cherished bathroom and sink, looking out my window at the frozen Beaufort Sea just a few hundred feet away, thankful that I’m above getting involved in camp politics and pissing contests.