I know of at least two guys who have been on my crew in the past three years who've been convicted of knife-related crimes. I was riding with the foreman in his pickup truck with a fellow oiler yesterday, discussing one of them. I had a hard time believing the rapsheet they were attributing to him since in my opinion, he's a perfectly normal, nice guy. I told them they were full of poo. The guy in question just happened to be ahead of us in his haultruck, and he gave us the signal that it was okay to pass, so foreman zoomed around him directly into the path of an oncoming haultruck. Narrowly escaping death by ascrushxiation, we swerved back in line to our own lane. "See?" Charlie crowed, triumphantly, "He just tried to off all three of us at once!"
The labour shortage in Alberta has meant there has been a lot of turnover at the mine, and we joke that the company has a recruiter stationed at the jail to offer jobs to new releasees. But even aside from the criminal element, the constant influx of new employees means that the minesite is crawling with rookie operators doing their best to keep 500 tons of rock and steel on the road. It can be a gongshow out there.
Mere minutes after the incident I described above, we were waiting at a stop sign when we saw 34 truck come sliding down the mud directly towards us. Charlie screamed that it was Kyle, a new driver who had no idea what he was doing and that we better get out of there. Foreman's face had a funny expression of concern mingled with concentration as he managed once more to get us out of harm's way.
I shook my head and said, "I love that we're terrified of our coworkers."