A WEDNESDAY REPRIEVE

I took today off. Work has been going badly for me, recently. Hell, who am I kidding? Ever since I switched to this department, I've been--as Joe Namath would have said--strrrrrugglin'. I have had troubles with attaining my CDL and attaining my Trench Machine Operating qualification, I have been paired with the absolutely worst dude in the department with whom to be paired, I have second-guessed myself (due in large part to the aforementioned dude's abrasive nature) on everything from pipe-connections to fucking digging holes, for God's sake, and I was involved in a 15-second unplanned gas release into a person's home, a situation which could have been avoided had my boss-on-the-job double-checked my neophytic work to ensure that the shut-off had indeed been shut off before he turned the gas on at the curb. I have gotten the crew truck-trailer shebang shamdazzered (stuck) at a tiny dead-end in a ritzy neighborhood--I had to call my capriciously antagonistic co-worker to come help me out. I have often dragged my ass out of bed in the morning, dreading going to work with the fine fellow, dreading just what creative new fuckup I could execute that day. The fine fellow slashed at my fragile (in the new job) self-confidence with his inimitable "humor" from Day One and now he has me believing that I am, in his words, a "motherfucking dumbass." (When I bristled at that unnecessary belittlement, he answered, "It's just a term of endearment, bubba.")

I lack confidence in even the most basic parts of the job.

Word has spread--this place is like a fucking high school--that I am clueless; I have had a co-worker with whom I share a generally amicable relationship tell me that "no one trusts you, Adam." I took that to mean, obviously, that, well, no one believes that I can do the job. I feel that I am an anchor on the jobsites because I am trepidatious about fucking up; I have hamstrung myself with my paralysis by analysis. And now--worse--some people have taken to talking to me like I'm a mentally-slow seventh grader. They don't do it to be mean-spirited; they just don't know how clueless I am--they're appealing to the lowest-common denominator.

"You need to get some thicker skin," my callous colleague informed me. When I responded that, yeah, my skin is a little thin, he said, "Hell, you have no skin." To him, I offer this: my middle finger, jammed straight up his overweight ass.

Here's a thought: when someone is new at something, and trying their best, try not to be a belittling prick-ass. Some people (read: most) don't respond well to acerbic "humor."

Corrosive hilarity works about as well as it looks.

I mentioned to him that, geez, man, you must sure want someone else on your crew with ya, huh? "The only reason you're still with me is that you work your fucking ass off," he said. A compliment, sure, but I will translate for you further. Let's read between the lines: You're still with me because I can get you to do everything and you can bust your ass in the hole and I can sit back and tell you what you're doing wrong. "It's how it was in the old days," he told me. "The lineman would sit in the truck and tell the other guys what to do." Notice that I said guys, plural. The crews used to consist of three people instead of the two we have now. So that could go a long fucking way towards explaining why some linemen, back in the good ole days, were complete and utter lazy pieces of dictatorial shit.

Needless to say, he and I don't click. We are about as far away, personality-wise, as two people can get.

Yesterday, the elephant-train of ineptitude continued. At the start of the day, I went to the counter to get the key to the truck and Bill, the PFL (Principle Field Leader) pulled me aside and told me that, after the morning stretching routine, he needed to see me in his office for a little conference. "Um, all right," I said, scanning my brain for any recent egregious errors that I may have committed. Robin, the union steward, walked past, her face as somber as an Easter Island monolith, and asked if she could talk with me. A feeling of dread began to collect in my stomach. Though I wasn't in fear of losing my job (we're union and it's easier to walk three city blocks on your hands than to get fired from here), I was concerned. "Here's what's going to happen," she began, "you're going to be meeting with Tom and Bill...and Gary (the union president) is here in case you want him in there with you." She gestured in the direction of our union president, who was sitting at the table, chatting with some co-workers, bags like Samsonites under his eyes. "Yeah," I said, thinking litigiously, "I think it'd be good to have him with me."

After the stretching, the three fellas and I walked into the conference to have a little palaver. Tom, the qualifications guy, Bill, Gary and I sat down and started talking. Long story short, they ended up snatching back my qualifications for an indeterminate period. Happy happy, joy joy.

"What can we do," Bill asked, after he informed me of the revocations, "to help you succeed in this department?" I believe Bill to be a good guy, and I knew that he was asking a sincere question. "I don't know what there is for you to do," I said. "This stuff isn't rocket science. I'm just struggling with the most basic things. I know what I need to do, I'm just not executing the procedures properly." "Would more training help you, Adam?" Bill asked. I sighed. "It couldn't hurt, I'll tell you that much. Whatever you guys gotta do, you gotta do. I don't, at this point, know what else to tell you."

I paused. I am not one to crack on other people; I'm not comfortable with talking to management negatively about partners, co-workers. But the main problem, in my eyes, is the dude with whom I am paired up, and I know that he would not hesitate to crack on me to management--in fact, he already had, more than a few times.. Oil and water, man. Ensured that what was said in the room would stay in the room, I said, "I'll tell you what would help: get me the hell away from R___." I felt like a prima donna saying that. In my mind, I was telling myself, Toughen up, ya fuck, and do the job right and there won't be any problems between you and R___. What is this? Third grade? Shut up and do the job. Why do you deserve special treatment? I rationalized it this way: the guy is, much of the time, a prick. He has been a lineman for all of a year and, already, I'm his third partner. People can't stand to work with him because he is a lazy, antagonistic, miserable individual who carries with him his own personal raincloud every-fucking-where he goes. So, fine. Out with it. Much of the reason for my paralysis by analysis was/is having R___ as my work partner. It's the simple truth. It's just the way it is. He sliced through my job-confidence from the beginning and, as the weeks mounted, the unease I had with him deepened exponentially. You can't do an effective job--I don't give a shit what line of work in which you find yourself--going about business as usual with the mindset of doing everything--everything--just right so that you don't get cut down, belittled, fucking cursed at. The dynamic becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the other expects abysmal ineptitude and so you happily--or not-so-happily--provide it; regardless of your effort, there will always be something that you didn't do right.

So, internally, I threw up my hands and put myself at the mercy of the committee. Bill read off a laundry list of the qualifications that had been pulled from me--again, for an indeterminate period of time. Pipe-fusing, mechanical coupling, electro-fusing, butt-fusing...they were all pulled from me and I am not to do them, even, I believe, in the presence of a qualified individual. I'll have to get requalified on all; until then, I will be a third-person anchor on crews, unable to volunteer for on-call (money) or work overtime (more money), able only, as I see it, to dig holes. The ultimate grunt.

To add insult to injury, they even pulled my leak soap investigation qualification. Listen: leak soap is putting soap on pipe junctions to see if it bubbles up. My voice rose: "Are you kidding me? My leak soap qual is pulled, too? Do you honestly think I'm that fucking stupid that I can't even tell if a bubble is...bubbling? Come on." I looked squarely at Tom, the sixty-something qualifications guy, a throwback to the Dinosaur Age. I like Tom--he's a good guy--but I was insulted by this soap shit. I mean, come on, I had been a serviceman for three years; I'd used soap every day. I know how to look for leaks. "When the hell did I screw up with soap?" I asked, my voice dripping with unabashed belligerence. Tom calmly opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, and rumbled, "'Member that job in Bloomfield?" I thought back and, yes, I remembered that job in Bloomfield. That was the day that I got the crew truck stuck at the dead end, got bailed out by the fine fellow, drove his van back to the jobsite and got out of the van, flustered, sans hardhat and safety glasses (I wear both religiously) just in time to see Tommy-boy strolling up the road in his hunched-shoulders-hands-in-pockets saunter. He gigged me for the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), and, apparently, when he stood atop the hole, looking down at me--along with everyone else looking down at me, making me increasingly goldfish-y and self-conscious and nervous about doing things right, damn it--when he asked me if that was "twenty-minute leak soap," he was testing me to see if I had seen the minute fizzing leak on the bottom half of the welded tee. Had I seen it? No. Would I have caught it had I not been so conscious of everyone on top of the hole, looking down on me as I worked? Yes. I would have seen it. Unfortunately, that's the way things go. There is a whole hell of a lot of stand-around time, a whole lot of time for people to watch the guy in the hole who is doing the job. There is no malicious intent--in fact, it is a safety procedure: never leave a man (or woman) alone in the hole--but, for me, struggling with my indecisiveness and self-perceived inadequacies, it is nothing but a recipe for a fuck-up. So, anyway, that obviously went into his report, too, along with the lack of PPE.

So...qualifications revoked, I am now a third wheel. I feel like a fucking loser, my skin shines thin to highlight the blazing incompetence, and...what? I wonder if I'll ever become proficient at this motherfucking job? No. I know I will turn out fine. Like I said: I am far from a moron. Every gosh damned thing that has gone wrong can be tracked back to my second-guessing myself, my wanting to do everything just right. I just need to relax. I need to take a deep breath and bellow to myself, "This is not fucking rocket science! Just do it!"

I do belive that I made my point about working with R___, though. If they want me to succeed--and I know they do, if only for the cost of training me--they'll get me with a different lineman. I'll be the third TMO in just under a year who can't work with the fine fellow. That should tell them something. With every other crew, I'm fine and dandy and I do the job adequately enough. With him? Not so much so. (Understatement of the decade.)

One last thing before I go. I actually fucking dreamt about the job today. I woke up at five-thirty to go to the bathroom and then I lay back down and slept until my alarm went off. In my dream, I was with, like, ten other Consumer Energy employees and we were in this ramshackle house in which a couple of guys resided, We were tracking mud all across the carpet and across the kitchen floor, but the guys seemed not to give two hoots. Apparently, we were all there to turn off their gas service and they were helpful in showing us (for some reason) where the furnace and the water heaters were. I walked through the guy's living room and I saw that he was apparently a Batman fan. Huge posters of the bat sign covered his walls, just above his couch, and, from a distance, a superhero theme song bellowed. It wasn't right, though. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered that the song I heard was not a Batman theme but, instead, the Superman theme. "Can you shut that off?" someone asked me. I told them that I'd try and I began wandering around the house. One room that I looked in seemed to have BDSM equipment, complete with a swing. I closed the door and floated down to the basement. The homeowner was hovering over my shoulder, pointing at the furnace. Apparently, this was where the music/alarm was coming from. "I think it's broke," he mumbled. I pulled off the door to the furnace and the Superman theme song bellowed forth. It seemed to be gaining in volume. "How do you shut this alarm off?!" I shouted. The guy shrugged. I walked back outside and wandered past a gaggle of Consumers employees, looking like ducks in their yellow hardhats.

The Superman theme song grew louder and louder until I finally reached a tree and looked inside. I awoke, then, my alarm clock blaring its insistent message for me to get up. And so I did.

One final thing: to anyone who reads this and thinks, "Hey, Adam, maybe you should consider doing something else. Not necessarily leaving the company, but maybe working in a different department, doing something different," I say this: no fucking way. I say this for a couple of reasons. One, now it's personal. I'll not be seen as an incompetent boob, good only at digging fucking holes. I need to--and I will--prove to everybody that I am perfectly capable of doing something that, back in the day, high school dropouts could do with aplomb. Egotistical much? No. I'm just fed up. With myself, with my partner, with our tension-filled work hours. I will adapt and overcome. And the second reason, of course, is financial. They pay us very well for what we do. In this economy, especially in this Michigan economy, now is not the time to put job-seeking oars into the water. But, basically, it comes down to my ego. I feel fucking humiliated...I'll not have that.

Adapt and overcome, baby.