I’d like your thoughts/opinions on crew relations, the degree of drama, localism, back-stabbing, companies not keeping there promises (be it re-imbursement for training, or scheduling), etc.on board vessels in the GOM.
Clearly any workplace be it a vessel or shore based will have some of that negative stuff goin on. The union deep draft vessels I’ve been working on have some of it but it is very minimal and not much of a problem IMO.
The reason I’m asking is I might want to get an AB job on an OSV so I contacted a previous shipmate that has sailed quite a bit in the oil patch. I recall when I sailed with him a couple of years ago that he had a bad experience in his 3 years with ECO. He spoke with almost disgust about it. Now he just quit after 8 months with a another large company and strongly gave me the advice to stay away and be careful, trust no one. Because this guy is a very experienced AB, very talented and a nice guy that was well liked by all of us on the ship I value his opinion. Add to that I started reading thread after thread on the various OSV companies to prepare for my door knocking campaign. It became apparent that something along the lines of what he cautioned me about is present. I’m just tryin to determine the degree of this negative stuff.
In the end, no matter what I learn I’ll have to check it out for myself. Only then can I measure the ratio of negative stuff against the benefits. That said, I would still like your thoughts.
To me your third paragraph, second, third and fourth sentences say it all. Think about it.
Excise that from your post. it would look like this: [I][B]“I recall when I sailed with him a couple of years ago that he had a bad experience in his 3 years with ECO. He spoke with almost disgust about it. Now he just quit after 8 months with a another large company and strongly gave me the advice to stay away and be careful, trust no one”[/B][/I] Would you consider this a good person to ask advice? Now for the real thought. NOTHING this guy has done is any good? NO company is even tolerable? Hmmm I doubt it.
[QUOTE=cappy208;80790]To me your third paragraph, second, third and fourth sentences say it all. Think about it.
Would you consider this a good person to ask advice? [/QUOTE]
I totally understand your thinkin this guy that gave me the advice to have a problem. In fact I hope that proves true. Hopefully, after several years down here I’ll be able to scratch my head and wonder what was up with this guy. I intentionally put in my post about how good an AB and how well liked he was in the hopes I wouldn’t get a ton of posts just discarding his comments at face value based on the opinion he’s all messed up. That said, I guess it is very possible that he can be both a competent AB and have some attitude problems towards his employers.
I would have a hard time blaming something like that on one particular company, or the GOM, it would probably be more of an individual boat. You may have 2 boats in the same fleet that are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Any time you get a group of people from one area together and throw someone from outside that area in the mix, you have the chance for some friction. If you have 10 guys from Louisana then throw one guy from Boston in the mix, you don’t need a college degree to figure out what is going to happen. The GOM companies are hiring from all over the country, so depends on what boat you get put on as to how much of this you will see.
I know there is one boat in our fleet that I will quit before I work on it, because of the crew, but my boat is pretty stress and drama free. I think that is the case any where you go though, I would not hold it strictly to the GOM.
One thing to remember is most of the guys running boats in the oilfield have done it their whole working lives. There is no leadership training whatsoever so what your friend has seen and you are going to run into a crap shoot. You will run into everything from megalomaniacs to inspiring new forms of vessel leadership you have not seen before.
In addition, some crews and people thrive on drama with the job being secondary because they don’t care, they just want feel like they are in charge by manipulating people. I always let my actions speak for me and when I am not in charge, be a team player.
This has worked for me because I went from AB to Master in 3 years and have a waiting list of people trying to get on my boat. When things go right, it is the crew’s fault. When things go wrong, it is my fault. My crew does the job safely and my boss is happy, two important factors.
That being said, I am not sure if the crew gets along but I told them they don’t have to swap spit, they need to do the job safely and keep things running smooth becuz if I get involved I am going to do what is the best for the boat and me. This has worked for two years.
It’s not a GOM or Company specific problem it’s a individual problem I seen boats with lots of drama and back-stabbing and you can usually picked out the one or two guys responsible for it. I am sure we all know that that shit its like cancer spreads real easy. You just have to catch it early and cut it out!
[QUOTE=Navy SWO;80788]I’d like your thoughts/opinions on crew relations, the degree of drama, localism, back-stabbing, companies not keeping there promises (be it re-imbursement for training, or scheduling), etc.on board vessels in the GOM.
Clearly any workplace be it a vessel or shore based will have some of that negative stuff goin on. The union deep draft vessels I’ve been working on have some of it but it is very minimal and not much of a problem IMO.
The reason I’m asking is I might want to get an AB job on an OSV so I contacted a previous shipmate that has sailed quite a bit in the oil patch. I recall when I sailed with him a couple of years ago that he had a bad experience in his 3 years with ECO. He spoke with almost disgust about it. Now he just quit after 8 months with a another large company and strongly gave me the advice to stay away and be careful, trust no one. Because this guy is a very experienced AB, very talented and a nice guy that was well liked by all of us on the ship I value his opinion. Add to that I started reading thread after thread on the various OSV companies to prepare for my door knocking campaign. It became apparent that something along the lines of what he cautioned me about is present. I’m just tryin to determine the degree of this negative stuff.
In the end, no matter what I learn I’ll have to check it out for myself. Only then can I measure the ratio of negative stuff against the benefits. That said, I would still like your thoughts.
Thanks.[/QUOTE]
I can tell you I have seen it many times. I almost got run off a time or two because of it. Once I was the only guy on the boat that was not doing drugs or stealing from the company. You can imagine how that turned out and almost did. Thankfully I was the Captain on this crewboat. I wrote the guy up for sleeping on the floor of the bridge with the deckhand driving through the rabbit field at night with the radars off and both spotlights on doing 22kts. I came up on the bridge and saw the mate asleep and the deckhand driving. I asked the deckhand why the radars weren’t on. He said he didn’t need them because he had his “headlights” on. Did they fire the guy, hell no. He ran aground multiple times, did multiple lift damage to the backdeck. Fire him??? Nope. Stole cleaning supplies, torque wrenches, binoculars, you name it. Did they fire him? Nope. I needed this job and could not afford to lose it. I spoke directly to the guy man to man. Told him to cut the shit out. If he was going to stay on this boat with me he was going to have to cut out the drugs, stop stealing everything onboard and fly straight from here on out. I come back to work from my days off and my coordinators tells me that there are some problems on the boat. I was thinking finally they are going to get rid of this piece of…We get to the boat and they all have issues with me!!! The deckhand driving through the rabbit field with his headlights on states that I made him feel uncomfortable saying he had a big butt. It came up about all the trash talk him and everyone onboard was all having. Then the unlicensed engineer stated that I had once said that I had stated that if I could get a couple of honduran deckhands onboard that everything would be so much better. He said that made him feel like he was not a hard worker. I said you are not a hard worker, if you could lay off the coke and dope that you might be one day. Well this enraged the mate when he saw that the trap was not going as well as planned. The boat coordinator was not buying any of it. He started yelling (we are all in the bridge of a crewboat…a small area for 5 men to all be in at once) I want Lee wrote up. I hate you. I effing hate you. Well this gets the coordinators attention now and he finally catches a glimpse of the living hell that I have been in for the past few months. He tells the mate to calm down that he is very close to losing his job. Does he get fired??? Nope. At the end of all this the guy is shaking my hand saying we can work this out. I was thinking I am not going to let this douche bag get me fired. I like the vessel and if anyone is going to go it is not going to be me. I sit back, do my job to the best of my ability and wait for this guy to hang himself. It finally happend in Vencie, LA. He left the boat and came back zooted up on pills. It was time for this guy to come on watch. He was in no condition to be walking much less driving a boat. I called the office and told them I was taking this run, but after I got back something had to be done. I could not continue to live my life this way. Did they fire him? Well, finally they did. I could not believe it took all this just to get rid of an employee that was that screwed up. When the guy was escorted off, he came to the bridge and I am thinking…here we go. Get ready to defend myself. He tells me God bless you Lee. I can’t believe you did this to me. Then he leaves, goes downstairs and tells the engineer that someone needs to kill me. Make me disappear. Well this guy lives within driving distance to my home at the time and I was a little worried. Thankfully that part was an empty threat, but I was nervous about it for a while. The rest of the crew finally weeded themselves out over time and I ended up having the best crew I ever worked with.
Do your job well and in the end you will come out on top. Even if it isn’t with the same company.
[QUOTE=Capt. Lee;81025] I come back to work from my days off and my coordinators tells me that there are some problems on the boat. I was thinking finally they are going to get rid of this piece of…We get to the boat and they all have issues with me!!! [/QUOTE]
Good post - When you fire or run off some PoS you might not give it another though thinking you’re just keeping things shipshape but they often run to the office and give them some line. Over the years the list of people that doesn’t like a particular captain can start to add up, it’s unavoidable if you’re running a tight ship, still I’ve been caught by surprise a couple of times as well. Not much you can do. Keep the company informed, document violations, stick to the script when you fire someone.