Nope, that’s the word the dispatcher herself emphasized. As in, my time with the Government division of MMP counted for not a damn thing. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, that nobody’s obligated to give me a job. I was just trying to find out how I could get into line for the process of getting one, which was what was told to me when I joined the government division. That it could be converted to regular hiring-hall MMP. You seem to just be doing apologetics for MMP, and trying to make it seem as if my actions were unreasonable. You related to the dispatcher, by any chance? Definitely a ‘company man,’ though.
I had sent numerous e-mails through the bridgedeck messaging do-hicky, trying to get information on how to go from government division to regular hiring-hall MMP. Crickets. That’s when I called the San Francisco hiring hall. To say that the dispatcher was rude and dismissive would be an understatement. She was openly mocking of me for wanting to try to sail out of there. Basically told me I didn’t have a chance in hell of doing that. And Richard Plant did call me telling me that my dues were in arrears. I was kind of surprised, because for a couple of decades I had two of his study books. This did in fact happen to me, and I have no idea why you’re surprised about it. At the point I’d stopped paying dues, I had been paying them for about 15 years, all in the hopes that one day this would allow me to sail regular commercial MMP. In the end, that was money wasted, because I didn’t need to pay dues in order to sail for MSC.