Coming Out/In

Today I came out as trans to some of the guys I've worked with for years and grown to think of as good friends. It was far harder than coming out to my workshop counterparts - I haven't known them or loved them for long at all and therefore can take or leave whether they like me or care at all. The guys today, though... I've known them for longer and don't want to lose them.

Typically I put myself through hell before telling them. I was nervous as hell. I was trying to escape my own ultimatum to do it today, before I take my second shot, before I go too far into my changes to be being polite about it and more like treating them as an afterthought. But... it's one thing to think Well if they can't handle it they're obviously not friends and completely another to face the thought of losing them as friends but still having to face them at work.

Also typically, it appears I put myself through hell for nothing. Everyone was great - no stars and banners, no shock, no turning away. Just a calm response of Whatever makes you happy. You're still Vic. I love this industry. What a great bunch of guys.

Helmet Hair

I used to love caps. I still do. But now.... I have to be able to commit to wearing them all day. There is just no room for off and on with them any more. The hair does not put up with it.

The hair misbehaves. It is already protesting that I don't like it's cowlicks being wild and awkward. I try to tame them with product. I chop them. They fight grimly and mock my attempts. Introduce a cap into the equation and they are stirred up to new heights of disobedience. If the cap is coming along, it is to stay all day and lock the disobedience away from public viewing.

Enter the worst of all into the equation: the necessary hat. The work helmet. Where all element of choice is removed. Must wear helmet.... most definately will come out with bad hair.

Safety Plus

An emergency stop button on a drilling machine...

Sun Non-Sense

Some days you have to take your cues from Lawrence of Arabia...

Tickled

Yesterday I worked with just one bloke all day. We got paired up to do menial shit. It's boring as hell, but it's menial shit that has to be done none the less. My method is to just hook in and make it go away as quick as possible.

Today will be the same story, because we're not finished that pile of work yet.

The problem is not the work. It's the guy I'm with to do it.

See, normally I can work pretty well with people I don't like. Sometimes the case is that I don't like their personality but they're a hell of a worker. Sometimes it's the opposite - they can't organise their work at all but it's compensated by the fact that the conversation has you smiling all day. I try to find some aspect that is at least tolerable about them, if not truly likeable.

But this guy... Well, he's just tickled me with the dislike feather all over. Depressed conversation that is constant, not much knowledge of the work even though he says constantly how good he is at it, thick as a fucking plank, and top it all off he's plainly trying to assert his alpha maleness over me. Bahaha.

Boring. Fucking. Idiot.

Today I will snap the dislike feather into pieces.

Back to Real Work

I've recently had a brief interlude in my working life to try out the world of surveying. It wasn't a bad job.... it was just boring. Also, it seemed more than a little pointless.

Through a some very serious connection forging over the years I've now landed myself a job that pays twice as much as the old one - back in the mining industry. All that time of learning names and talking to anyone and everyone, doing everything I was asked without arguing has paid off.

I'm climbing all over machines again and I love it! For the first time since moving to Planet Newy I am truly happy to go to work.

Darwin at Work

Stacker: A remotely operated conglomeration of metal structure and conveyors, mounted on rails. Controlled from a central location, the stacker moves without warning to pour out coal into different stockpiles as it is recieved by train at the dump station. As the ships arrive, the coal is reclaimed by another machine and moved by a series of conveyors over the road to the ship loader.




Plover: Candidate for natural selection.

Archaeology...

Here is just one of the reasons I am not so much a fan of being a surveyor's assistant. One of the rail companies will eventually put a train refuelling station on this lovely patch, so that even more coal trains can run their loads more frequently.

Currently, though, there are significant items of "Aboriginal and European heritage" littered all over the site. They'll have to document these and then piss them off anyway, rather than leave them there, and that's where we came into the picture.



Three hundred and fifteen pegs. In a ten metre square grid. Never mind that the site has already been bulldozed some time ago, and that there are smashed old bits of stuff littered everywhere, really of not cultural significance any more at all. And guess who hammered those pegs in?

I'm going back to mining.

What the F... Will I Do With My Weekend?

Thank fuck it's Friday. There is no question about being happy to put the last week of uninspiring work behind me. The questions are about the future. I know it will be an ice-breaker with whoever I get paired up to work with today. Standard Friday conversation is always started around what you plan for the weekend.

WHAT THE FUCK WILL I DO WITH MY WEEKEND?

The people around me are not understanding my drive to fill every weekend with activities. They don't get why I want to spend all day outside. They don't share the same constant dreaming for things I could do on the weekend. I think they are somewhat bewildered by it all.

Well. For three years I worked for a pack of wankers who would abuse you if you missed a phone call on the weekend to go to work at the drop of a hat. You were on call twenty-four hours a day and never paid an on-call rate. When you actually did score two consecutive days off your were exhausted and spent most of your awake time on the lounge snoozing anyway.

So weekends barely existed. Now that I'm in a job where I have them I feel like I'm trying to make up for three years of missing out. I'm living in a city that I've barely explored. I now live right near the beach and I've barely taken any photos.

So.

WHAT THE FUCK WILL I DO WITH MY WEEKEND?

Will I walk the couple of kilometres to Glenrock Lagoon because the start of the track is only a few blocks away?

Will I finally go looking for geocaches at night with MisterSham?

Oh yeah, how about I duck into the messed up treasure trove that is the old Jolly Roger site and take pictures of the graffiti in there before they knock it all down? I know last time I wished to get inside and messed up building I wished for far too long and next time I turned around it was gone.

How about sitiing on the beach playing classical guitar? Or even just the backyard?

I could go up to the University to that section we surveyed last week and take photos of the weird fungi I came across while I was kicking around being bored.

Too many things to do, too little time!

Early Morning Wash Job

For work yesterday the Roster Gods granted me the pleasure of having to do a 4am Excavator wash. It's been ages since I've been rostered on to do one of those – I tend to get stuck elsewhere doing other things and miss out on all the fun.

And it is fun.

Alright, you get shit all over you. It's freezing at this time of year and you're pressure blasting with water – which means that you will be standing outside in a long sleeved shirt with two jackets over the top, two bright white sperm suits over that, both of their little white hoods up over your beanie adorned head and a hardhat on top. Looking like a slow moving marshmallow. And you will still be freezing. After three hours solid of pressure blasting, you will also be saturated even through all those layers.

But...

You're using a gun with 4000psi behind it. They're easy to hold when you're used to them, but there's still a kick that will send a beginner backwards. You get up there in the dark and carve away at the grease and mud covering this huge machine and work your way toward the dawn.

I had chunks of mud an inch thick and the size of a man's shoe blasting off the top of this machine in the path of my water gun. All around me there was destruction caused by me, and only me. Oh, therapy. It was brilliant. After the destruction and debris is blasted off the side and into the dark the machine emerges as clean, shiny, and - of course – overwhelmingly orange.

Somewhere near the end of all this comes the other bonus of the shift... Dawn. I love seeing the sky change shade by shade as I'm working. It comes as a surprise every time. I look up from my destructive path for a second and realise There's a tinge of blue to go with those stars now and it makes me smile. It carries with it this indescribable burst of energy and wonderment mixed together. It's exciting. It gives me this wonderful feeling of awe at the way the world works.

It also means I can see any bits I've missed before we hand the machine back to the service crew.

It's crap, it's dirty, it's freezing, and it has the remarkable property of reminding me that it's great to be alive.

To My Co-Workers:

On Morning Time

It's early. I have twenty minutes in which to drink a cup of tea, put my shoes on, panic about the whereabouts of my keys and cigarettes and then I'll still be at work before I'm meant to.

Jonah the Mostly Black Cat is rustling away beside me tearing up the latest box that has pissed him off. The fridge is humming away to itself, the pay TV box has joined in with it's own somewhat possessed hum and yet still, above all the household running sounds I can hear the crickets carrying on outside.

This time of morning is pretty relaxing when I'm not rushing to find clothes, shake off a hangover or just beat the consequences of too many hits on the snooze button. There's stuff all traffic out and about. All the drunken idiots that tend to walk by have either got into a fight and been hospitalised or arrested or they've passed out somewhere by now. It's just me and the crickets.

It's times like now - kicking back, relaxing before the start of the hectic day - that I try to resolve that I will get up well before I'm required to every day. I know somehow that it's not going to happen. Things will get in the way. Jonah will destroy my bedroom all night leaving me with the five minute gaps the snooze button affords me to catch up. I'll get hit by the drunk stick before bed, rendering any form of organisation completely useless. I'll forget to put the washing on early enough and have to fight my way through the stress of ironing still wet clothes while saying shitgoddamnhell just dry. I'll decide to make muffins for sixty people at the drop of a hat.

There will usually be something to keep me from kicking back relaxing in the mornings.

But.... I really do love this time.

Heading off to work to:

Well, to install some insulation...

But my real aim for the day is to keep a tally of how many lame Hey Vic, haven't seen you since last year! comments I can get.

Go Fish

Scumbagland yielded a whole lot of hours of boring waiting around today.

It had rained, typically, for the entire Christmas break, making the mine we were going to impassable. At least until the dozers had knocked a few layers off the existing roads to expose a bit of dry dirt. What does that mean? Five hours of waiting around with people you don't know much about.

I've been in this situation before, you see. Plenty. One amazing guy broke the awkward silences by bringing in riddles for us all to do. I've played music games. We've all spent hours playing target practice with the plentiful stones. I have a collection of fossil leaves and other interesting stones from trawling around where the truck has been parked for hours.

And I also have a pack of cards.

That's where that interesting cross-section of people becomes far more of a hinderance. We're constrained to what everybody knows how to play. The lowest common denominator. Sometimes you can jag some really good card players and set up a tournament of sorts... Other days, like today, it's junior style cards in the form of Go Fish!

There's something campfire-ish about tucking a bag of rags under your butt and dealing out the cards while you're sitting out there in the nothing of a mine. People open up to slagging each other off a bit, letting out their sometimes guarded senses of humour, relaxing a bit around people they normally don't talk to. Face it, it's better than ignoring each other and trying to sleep on a wonky bench seat in the back of a truck [ie sauna]. Sometimes a decent person will emerge through the chance to be sociable.

Go Fish stumped me today. That's a pretty basic card game. Should we hold Scumbag interviews with a mandatory gaming skills test?

Should I be campaigning for a card game rules book to be part of the daily equipment?

Dear Scumbag Boss Peoples,

I am writing in order to place a request for a copy of certain card game rule books to be placed in the glove boxes of all working vehicles (and possibly those that aren't, for later). We lower Scumbags feel that it is in the best interest of crew dynamics and sociability that group activities such as the participation in card gaming are an asset to crew dynamics and staff satisfaction. This, in turn, leads to a greater sense of camaraderie amongst employees and therefore a more positive approach to the safety of others within the crew.

Yours Sincerely,
The Scumbags in Scumbagland.

Can we have some staff training days too?

Scumbag Phraseology

There are a few main phrases to be aware of as a Scumbag.

That’s What She Said - This can be used at any time as an interjection to a conversation. A show-stopping statement.

Vic (talking about a grease buildup) : Holy shit it’s hard.
Anonymous Scumbag: Yeah, that’s what she said.

I Fucked Me Back Ay - Often accompanied with hobbling actions, this is based on a worker who did not last very long at all in Scumbag Industries. A Dead Set Unit, who spent a night shift playing on some over-exaggerated injuries. Basically the guy got the site safety officer at the time involved and sent my stress levels through the roof in a few short seconds. The other guys picked up on this phrase and started using it to make me laugh about the entire episode.

From there it became a way of breaking the silence. The guy has long since been shuffled off, and I’m not sure whether half the workers really know the origin of the phrase. It’s just something we say to break the tension now.

Wanna hat? - [Why? ‘Cause you’re a cock]. There are lens cleaner wipes out where we Scumbags go, that are in little individual packets with the brand Uvex upon them. Somewhere along the lines a bored imagination took hold of this and ran, twisting them into a brand of condom. Usually the phrase Wanna hat? is accompanied with the action of reaching into the top pocket to fish one of these out and attempting to hand it to the person receiving the comment. Why? ‘Cause you’re a cock is most often implied in the statement and not needed to be said. Unless the person is a Dead Set Unit.

Watch this fuckin’ idiot - One from the self-proclaimed King Scumbag, this must be stated with rising volume and pitch. Out of respect one of his phrases has been appropriated into general usage. Originally to warn of an approaching idiot driver, the usage has broadened to include general workplace hazards as well.

What have you done for me lately? - This is what happens when a bunch of Scumbags get together socially. Out comes Eddie Murphy doing stand-up comedy with Raw, and we all have a new phrase to play with. This one is so new it’s guaranteed to almost make me wet myself laughing, or at least reduce me to tears.

Scumbag Lingo

It’s about time I introduced the world to some of the Scumbag lingo. We have our own way of speaking, derived by spending far too many hours together in sometimes extreme, other times extremely boring, and most often isolated conditions.

Scumbag - One who has earned the title through being a good worker and good person. This title is not just bestowed upon any old person who rocks up for a shift. You can depend upon a scumbag, you can have a laugh and you will look after each other no matter what.

Deadset, or, for more emphasis, Dead Set - Serious, absolutely true. For example: Dead Set, I fell over a rock with every bastard watching me. Another example can be displayed in the following conversation:
Vic: Deadset mate, he’s a fuckin’ idiot.
Anonymous Scumbag: Deadset?
Vic: Dead Set.

Translation:
Vic: Seriously, he’s an idiot.
Anonymous Scumbag: You’re serious?
Vic: Absolutely.

Unit - A worker who is most definitely not a Scumbag. This may apply for a small period of time, in humour, to a Scumbag who has done something idiotic. This may be phrased Dead Set you’re a fuckin’ unit, mate. A deadset unit.

Most often the term unit is used to describe those with little to no aptitude. They could be dumb, oblivious, dangerous or just downright lazy.

Festy Cheese Beanie - The worst of the worst. This term applies only to the opposition. It literally translates to “foreskin” and this translation has been described in great detail within earshot of the offending crew members, without their knowledge that this is actually how we refer to them. The Festy Cheese Beanies are inferior workers, with inferior knowledge and equipment. They have amazing amount of distaste bestowed upon them by the Scumbags.

Mad - Excellent, amazing, deadset awesome. Example: I found this Mad new way do the job.

Goggle Box - The fluttering of the eyelids upon a woman’s clitoris. This is a hypothetical sexual manoeuvre invented on a boring day, laughing at this term inscripted on a wash pad storage box. ”Check out her eyelashes! Vic, I bet she could give you a mad goggle box!”

Scumbag Muffins

A while back, the Scumbags were working 24/7 on a machine. This doesn’t normally happen, unless one is getting pulled apart for repair – a shutdown. Usually an engineering company gets pulled in to run the repairs and it goes full stick for about a month, maybe more. You get to know the people from the other companies because you’re all there day after day, night after night.

I was on night shift supervision the entire time. Four nights on, one off. As it happened, one night I was working away on a particularly tough job, right in front of the engineering foreman’s office. It’s never a place you want to have to work, because that area also houses the site safety supervisor and all other sorts of demons. This particular night, though, the engineering foreman wandered over near me, fiddled about with a tool and some air lines for a while and then came right over.

He’d hooked up something to make my job ten times easier. It was an air chisel – a cylindrical vibrating barrel that he told me with a grin not to get too excited about.

I handed it back at the end of the shift and thanked him. You owe me one he said, with a grin.

Shit. That was a priority job that I never would have finished before morning if it wasn’t for that tool. I think this means I’ll have to get in the kitchen. By the time I get home from this site I’ll get four hours sleep, get up and bake and come back to work. It has to be something quick and easy. Muffins!!.

It was a winner. I pulled the Scumbag crew up for a break around 11pm and the engineering foreman came over to tell me he’d already had four breaks just to have a muffin. They became a hit where I brought in trays (actually cooked by my flatmate instead) for pretty much the entire work site to get into.

Since then I’ve laid pretty low on the muffins. Last week, though, I decided to bake a whole bunch in my new sexy kitchen. I was up at three in the morning and baked enough for pretty much every worker in my company to get one. Plus a few left over to butter up the foremen at the site I’m working on currently.

Later that morning I clocked on at the work site and scuttled off to fill my travel mug with the first coffee of the day. While sipping away, I walked past the safety supervisor’s office. He’s a lovely, generous, loud guy who happens to be able to see a lot of the indoor activity from his office. Vic! he yells out. You shouldn’t need a coffee this early! You haven’t even started yet! I pulled up a section of his doorway and explained the muffin project. Turns out he fancies himself a bit of a cook, and has spent more on his kitchen than it cost to build the house. We challenged each other to a bake-off. Specifically muffins.

Two days later, doing the same travel mug filling run, he spotted me. The corridors are a hive of activity at that time of morning. There’s blokes everywhere getting work orders and paperwork signed, getting coffee and getting ready for a day in the field. Mr. Safety Man yells out to me through all this:

Oy VIC! When are we going to have our Muff-Off?

Quote of the Day

...goes to Scumbag worker The Mole.

”It’s more useful than a cucumber in a women’s prison.”

How to Clean Up Minor Grease & Oil Spills

Preparation time: 10 minutes, and two cigarettes.
Serves: At least six hours of continual work in various areas around a machine.

Ingredients:
2 cheap plastic buckets (1 without handle)
1 plastic bag
1 bag rags
1 scraper
1 pair incredibly cheap crappy leather gloves
1 pair degreasing gloves
1 sperm suit
degreaser

Method
1. While smoking first cigarette, prepare buckets. Insert plastic bag into bucket without handle and roll the edges under, so that the bag acts as a liner for the bucket. Put degreasing gloves and scraper in this prepared bucket. Pour degreaser into the other bucket with handle.

2. Finish cigarette, put on sperm suit and incredibly cheap crappy leather gloves. Stand, have conversation, and light second cigarette. Walk to machine.

3. Finish second cigarette and locate nearest spill within machine. Scrape excess spill with scraper and place bulk in lined bucket. Once excess is removed, take off incredibly cheap crappy leather gloves and replace with degreasing gloves.

4. Take one small rag, dunk it in degreaser and wring out the excess. Make sure this is done over the bucket so as to not make any more mess and conserve degreaser. Wipe over the spill area.
*Do not place used degreasing rag back in degreaser bucket. You can use this rag multiple times before it loses effectiveness on spills, at which point it should be discarded. A common mistake is to place the rag back into the degreaser and reuse it. This will only turn nice, clean degreaser into oily black slop.

5. Replace degreasing gloves with incredibly cheap leather gloves and dry area with clean, dry rag, leaving no streaks.

6. Take cigarette breaks as required.

7. Repeat degreasing/drying process if necessary, before moving on to find more spills.

IT’S NOT THAT HARD.

Vic's Red Marker Pen

Ah, the local train station. An outpost on the edge of swampland and industrial area. It's about a two kilometre bike ride from home, downhill most of the way. At 4:11am there is nobody there. Except possibly me. It's a place to relax and have a quiet cigarette in the early hours before hitting the beginning of the work day. It's cold, dark and contemplative.



It's also home to some of the most idiotic graffiti tryhards.