Wednesday, Oct 22, 7:15pm
Finally, I’m turning into the hotel in Ottumwa, Iowa! I check in and start
dragging my stuff into my new temporary home. It isn’t long before I spot a
friend of mine from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I flag him down
and we chat. As he’s giving me the low down on the crew, a woman walks by with
what can only be interpreted as a “don’t even try to talk to me” face. Devin
explains that she’s a crew chief…and not a very friendly one. Great. Glad I’m being
thrown into such a happy environment.
But my crew chief is a different person anyway. I’ll be
meeting him tomorrow morning at seven. Then we’ll all load up in trucks that
should be four wheel drive but aren’t and go look for signs of past occupation
in the woods and farms of small-town Iowa.
Thursday, Oct 23, 7:15am
Rapping on my door rouses me from a deep, comfortable sleep.
I stumble my way out of bed and see my friend from UALR through the peep hole.
I open the door, thinking it must be the middle of the night.
“Hey,” he says. “It’s time to go.”
“What?” At first I assume that he’s kidding, but I look back
at the clock and realize that I’m already fifteen minutes late. “Oh no! Are
they waiting for me? Are the mad?”
“No, it’s fine…just get ready and get out there asap.”
7:30am
I power walk through the parking lot with a stack of new
hire paperwork in my hand. I head striaght to my friend’s crew, which I had been
told would also be mine. Self-conscious and flustered, I hand my paperwork to a
man with an authoritative-looking clip board before making sure he’s the man I
had been instructed to report to.
He isn’t.
However, as he tells me with a smirk under his
grizzly beard, the other guy quit and he’s the replacement. BUT….I won’t be on
his crew anyway. They’re crew seven and they’ve decided to put myself and
another new guy on crew six. With the dagger-eyes lady from yesterday.
Well, what a great start.
5:00 pm
After work, my friend invites me to join him and some of his
crew mates at a local grill and bar. I know how important workmate bonding is,
and I want to be received well among those who are already established in this
group, so I join.
Grizzly beard is there, and makes a few playful pokes at my
sleeping in, but overall is friendly and really doesn't seem to care about my
blunder. And after we get to the hotel I’m even invited to hang out and have a
beer at the fire pit out back.
So I guess I had a shabby start….but overall, it wasn't a
bad day. This project and the potential friends in it at least seem promising…
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