[QUOTE=Fraqrat;174214]I’ve been a QMED before sitting in the hall talking about engines, boilers, distillers, turbines and reduction gears. That’s how you learn things from the old timers. Maybe you’ve never heard it because no one wants to talk to you. Which from what you say is how you prefer it. You act like you’re the only person posting on here who has ever worked on a ship for a union.[/QUOTE]
Obviously your experience has been different than mine. I have heard people talk about equipment in a general sense. But never about make and model is what on what ship to what ship like they talk about cars. Most of the time people talked about the ports, contract, and about the permanent crew (senior officers) and how they did things. Maybe things were different back then, or in your experience. But in my experience that was how it was. And yes I did talk to people, there is nothing else to do at the hall. And even if you are not talking to people and you are reading a book or something, you still overhear conversations, and I can assure you, I never heard a conversation about that. Maybe the old timers from SIU that were around more than 10 years ago when I started were just better and more attentive, never went out to port and just focused on being 100% specialists in and out on ever piece of equipment, make model and origin of every engine of every vessel they were on even though their daily or weekly job functions brought them nowhere near that equipment. Unless, back then qmed’s were more involved in engine maintenance and parts ordering and give more responsibility. I am just talking about in my experience, I have never heard qmeds, abs, bosuns discuss make and model of engines as a matter of small talk when they get together, not ones from the union
[QUOTE=captaint76;174222]I’m a captain and I can even tell you the make and model of engines on the cruise ships that I have sailed on as a passenger.[/QUOTE]
You are a person from boats not ships, so that’s been in your culture to care about those things