back in camp...again.

My two week eventful stint out of camp finished on the 26th of February. During the time out the Mrs and I engaged in quite a few Chinese New Years dinners, saw a few movies, had our two babies declawed (with some strange attitude changes in them..not as spry or energetic as they used to be) cause they were shredding the Mrs' legs and arms and had our immigration interview (which was a total success..I know, I mentioned it before but just so happy to be done that paperwork rat race and waiting waiting and more waiting game). Now it is back to the old grind...

Life in camp really has not changed much at all. I have been back for nearly 2 and a half days and already there is a guy here who wins the 'twit of the year' award. The guy is the safety officer and I swear everyone thinks he is a moron. In the kitchen we have been given strict orders not to say anything, or at least answer all questions as quick and curt as possible, about anything in the kitchen but direct him to talk to the main supervisor. This is because if we just happen to off-handedly mention that the pump in the room is going all the time then he brings in a handy-man and sets up safety equipment in the room that is not needed and everyone in the kitchen has to take safety courses in the pump equipment just in case it explodes and we are the only ones around and we can fix it and know the dangers. The guy is a complete fanatic.

He is such a fanatic that he doesn't seem to alter to the people but instead expects the people to alter to the regulations. Not saying it is like we are expecting him to rewrite the safety manual so that we can work a band saw without wearing eye protection cause the eye protection scratches our foreheads when we work but on simplier things. The other day a group of people came in later to lunch than normal (around 12:50). The safety guy walks in, sees them eating and goes 'meeting at 1'. The guys at the table go 'but we just got in from working' and the twit stands there with a coffee and an authorative voice and goes 'we have all been working. these are regulations. you knew about the meeting. be there'. After he had gone the table just looked at each other and one said to the other 'f%^* him, we have worked enough today' and they finished eating at their own pace.

This is the same safety guy that I fell asleep in his Occupational Health and Safety meeting back in September or August. They needed two people from our company to go and Henry was one and I was the other. He seemed to want to participate and I didn't. I fell asleep after having listened to the twit talk for about 10 minutes about the proper way to kill a mosquito if you are driving in your truck and one of the little insects is flying around the inside. He also refered to helicopter pilots as 'over glorified taxi drivers' and the passenger has the right to tell a helicopter pilot how many bags the passenger can have and where they are to be put in the helicopter. Yeah my respect for him kind of sunk to a low after that one.

However, even though my respect for him has reached rock bottom after yesterday it has started to dig even lower into the bedrock. One of our cooks accidentally cut his hand on 'the stainless steel' in the kitchen. I had no idea where he did it at the time but the result of the injury to him was 3 stitches in the cut which was on the top part of his hand near the fleshy part between his thumb and first finger. The result to the kitchen was to have the dishwasher walk around all the metal parts of the kitchen with his finger to test for sharp points (kind of like asking someone to drop a match in a gas tank to test if there is any left, if you ask me) and then the handyman, under the orders of the safety officer, was to come into the kitchen with an electric grinder and grind down all those sharp edges. The guys were at it for about an hour to get all the points in the front ground down.

Later that day at lunch I was taking the dishes out front when the twit stopped me and the conversation went like this:

(T)wit - did you ever notice that the metal there was sharp? *waved towards the kitchen*

(M)e - Nope, never knew *no clue as to exactly where he was talking but since I didn't really run my fingers on all the metal points at any time I felt safe in answering honestly*

T - *smug look on his face* you mean, in all your time you had no clue that the metal there was sharp?

M - nope, not a clue. I make a habit of not walking into walls or other solid objects around the kitchen.

*at this point the guy that was at the table with him started to smile and laugh but then it was like he realized who he was sitting with and he fought back his smile*

T - it was a fair question to ask *stony look to his face*

M - yep, it was *walking away*

However, in my mind that last answer of mine should have been 'it was a fair question to ask once and listen to the answer given. It is a stupid question to ask twice and expect a different answer'.

So yeah, looks like the people in camp really have not changed on my time out. My job has though. I have been put back in as the 2nd cook. What I will be doing for the next 3 and a half weeks I am not sure since I have heard something about going to nights for one week later and then back to days to cover for someone here or there. They seem to have things all up in the air and dangling that ever present carrot of the baker position in front of my face but never really putting me in that area. Perhaps I have made the fatal mistake in a job and didn't listen to the sage advice of "don't make yourself irreplaceable or else they won't be able to promote you".