Way back in 1974 I was drilling morning tour on Parker Drilling Company’s Rig 86. We got a new relief Toolpusher and he was a dick. He professed himself to be a born again Christian and informed me he was offended by the way my crew talked to him. I told him if he had anything to say to my crew to come to me and I would tell them. Two days later he fired me and my crew. The day before being fired I bought a brand new crew car. I later learned that he had been planning to run me off for a month and was only waiting for an old friend of his to become available.
Fast forward to 1984 (10 years later). I am now a Drilling Superintendent for Exxon Co. USA. We are now two years into Reaganism and the oilfield is dying a slow death. The number of active drilling rigs has plunged. In Oklahoma, the count has dropped from over seven hundred rigs to under seventy.
Because of the slowdown, I am without a permanent assignment and my Operations Superintendent has me working vacation relief. so for my upcoming work week, I am being sent up to western Oklahoma on a deep gas well. The contractor drilling the well is Parker Drilling Company. Guess who the Parker Tool Pusher is. You probably guessed right.
I was relieving my brother, an Exxon Senior Superintendent. Knowing me as he did, he’d made up a list of all the infractions that the Rig was out of contract compliance with. These are kind of things for which you can shut down the drilling operations (taking the Rig off the payroll) until the infraction is brought into compliance. It was a long list.
So Nemesis was now in my grip and like Ahab, I was determined to do him in. My brother was barely out of sight when I called out on the intercom for the Toolpusher. “Wadda you want” came a surly reply.
“Who’s speaking”? I asked.
“This is the Driller”.
“I asked for the Toolpusher”.
“He’s up here in the doghouse “.
“Can he hear me”?
“Yes”
“Good………… Tooly I want to talk to you so you need to come to my office and it would behoove you to be most pronto”. As I expected he took his time before entering my office.
“You wanted me”?
“Not exactly. As a Matter of fact, I don’t want you. I want you off this location. I’ve already talked to your supervisor and he said to tell you to be sure to bring all your personal belongings with you”.
Two weeks later I had the added satisfaction of running him off another Exxon location in West Virginia.
The wheels of retribution grind slow…………but they grind fine.