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Twenty or so years ago, I represented a woman in a divorce against her husband. Without identifying the couple, he was brilliant, very well educated, very highly paid, and one of the senior executive minds of a very prestigious think tank type organization.They had been married for some time, but she claimed he was becoming abusively controlling, suspicious and paranoid, and that his irrationality was a precipitating cause of the wife’s election to leave. His behavior up to the final hearing was unusual on occasion, but not so far outside the bounds of a man stressed over his marriage dissolving that I took particular issue. This was long before courts had security, but it did have bailiffs and the occasional police officer.As I recall, it was the morning of a hearing regarding temporary possession of the house and temporary spousal support. He was late, but not horrifyingly so. However, when he appeared he was wearing sandals, beach shorts, a straw type hat and an inflatable life vest over a t-shirt. He carried a colored pencil and ink drawing on a rolled 11x17 paper.When our case was called, the judge could see something was off and invited the parties to meet privately prior to being formally heard. He was unrepresented. He, the wife and I went to an antechamber for discussions and the unusual nature of the encounter fortunately had the attention of staff, and a bailiff stood near a partially open door.The husband rolled out the picture on a conference room table and explained that it was a picture of a $2m catamaran he had commissioned that he planned to live aboard and that the wife would never see a dime. He then said that he was late for the hearing because he had taken all of their possessions and put them ablaze in the back yard of their home and as he left, the fire trucks were arriving.He then calmly looked at me and I remember to this day saying “I don’t blame you, Charles. You are just the attorney for my whore of a wife. However, I am going to have to kill your children and drown your wife in their blood as a consequence of your helping her.” He was calm. Very measured. Almost apologetic.I shook his hand, said I understood, and would let the judge know we could proceed…at which time I saw the bailiff had already flagged down officers and informed the court, which took him into custody.I then went home, hugged my wife and children, and engaged the most sophisticated alarm system money could buy. I kept my family under constant protective watch for several weeks, and eventually, everything simply moved on. I still use the alarm.

I have been a field engineer (for two different companies) for the last 4 years. That means I spend most of my time in the workshop or office planning projects, but very frequently go to the rig to run a project for a few weeks. I work in the ultra-deepwater Gulf of Mexico on floating drilling rigs doing subsea oil well control -- basically preventing Deepwater Horizon type accidents. Oil companies are very publicity-shy and I am not authorized to represent my employer to the public, so I'd rather not say who I've worked for.See also by me: What kinds of problems does a subsea hydraulics engineer solve?My experience in the oilfield is not typical:I work on some of the biggest, nicest drilling rigs in the worldI work on some of the biggest, highest-profile energy projects in the worldI am a part-timer on multiple rigs instead of being part of a permanent rig crewI am an engineer (and a Northerner)Most drilling is done on small, old land rigs in fairly well-established fields doing repetitive cookie-cutter wells. Most people who work in the US oilfield are southerners with a high school education. Please don't take that as disparaging them in any way -- most college grads are too prissy about grease and manual labor to survive in that type of job. There are a ton of smart people on drilling rigs who just didn't take the academic route for whatever reason. Of course, there are also a ton of ignorant, racist, sexist dumbasses! But that's the nature of the beast. Anyway... there are a lot of people like me in the oilfield, but we're definitely in the minority.Here's a typical rig for my line of work:http://www.drillingahead.com/photo/drillship-1?context=userhttp://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Discoverer-Spirit-62C16.html?LayoutID=17The cost to lease this rig to drill deepwater wells is around $700k-$1m per day and it takes 150-200 days to drill and complete a deepwater well. Pricey stuff. What do you get for all that money? It's a dynamically-positioned 5th-generation drillship with a dual derrick capable of supporting 2 million lbs of pipe. (That's 3 to 6 miles of vertically-hanging pipe depending on the size.) It uses GPS, sonar beacons, and six enormous 360-degree thrusters to hold position over a subsea well. It is over 800 feet long and can keep the center of the drilling rig stable within a few feet, in any weather short of a hurricane. A couple of my buddies are in the Gulf riding out hurricane Isaac right now, actually. They shut down operations but stayed in the area because they were "only" experiencing 15 foot seas and 40 knot winds.We usually get to and from the rig by helicopter:It's super exciting the first couple times you do it, but all the regulars just go straight to sleep. Hearing protection is mandatory in flight, because helicopters are freakin' loud. The white noise really does lull you to sleep, though.Views from the chopper can be pretty awesome. Here's a storm and rainbow:Landing:Chopper on deck:Once you arrive on the rig for the first time there is a mandatory 1-2 hour safety briefing. You watch a video, fill out medical paperwork, and listen to a speech about rig-specific rules like what to do with laundry. Then you're free to go meet with coworkers, find your bed, grab a snack, get to work, or whatever.Most deepwater rigs can hold around 180-200 people at a time. Most of the people on board are employed by the rig contractor. Wikipedia has a decent list of standard rig positions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roughneck A few of the people on the rig (5-15) are employed by the oil company to supervise, direct operations, and make sure everything is done safely & in compliance with the law. There are also quite a few catering/cleaning staff, as well as various 3rd-party contractors that come and go to do specialized tasks.In my current job, I'm one of the oil company representatives. I show up when a particular phase of the well construction process requires subsea expertise. We try to be friendly and develop positive relationships with everyone on the rig, but to be honest the logo on my company shirt pretty much guarantees everyone treats me with respect whether I deserve it or not. I can remember a couple times when I really put my foot in my mouth and the rig crew just dropped it. In contrast, in my previous job as one of the 3rd-party contractors, the rig crew was quite happy to tell me where to stick it, and then kick me off the rig floor.These days, I'm in an advisory/supervisory role for very complex equipment. I walk around and look at stuff to make sure it's being operated correctly. I assist with writing & reviewing procedures. I suggest what to do when things break. I write a lot of reports. I do risk-assessments and look for possible failure modes. It's usually fairly low-key, but you remember how I said operating an oil rig costs about a million dollars per day? Well, unfortunately for me, the subsea equipment is what breaks the most often and when the rig goes on downtime there is a huge amount of pressure to do my job right. When something goes wrong we work around the clock and we work hard. It's pretty nerve-wracking when you're new (every minute of delay literally costs $700) but after a while you get used to the pressure. I love it now. The high stakes environment and satisfaction of saving millions of dollars is quite addictive.For legal reasons I can't distribute most of the pictures I take offshore, but here's a few that should be pretty harmless.Pipe conveyor and knuckle-boom crane:Many parts of the rig are terrifying to people who have issues with heights. It's the outboard walkways that bug me -- falling overboard at night means near-certain death. They'll never even find a body. Even in summer in the Gulf, with average water temperature of 80F, hypothermia still sets in within a couple hours. You get used to heights pretty quickly or you stop working offshore.Me as a trainee in front of a 60 ft gas flare during a gas well flow test. Sweet coveralls, right?Some random subsea equipment (that's not worth explaining) being run into the well:

Yes, some idgit threatened to have me arrested for something which wasn't a crime. That didn't go well.At the time I was a contractor running a smallish service and repair company for commercial and residential properties.We were licensed for Plumbing, Electrical, Carpentry, Tile, and General Building up to $1M. This was circa 1990 so a $1M cap was pretty substantial and I had decided that I didn't trust our economy or our government and wanted to focus the business on something nearly recession proof.. commercial property service calls. I was also the only guy in 100 mile radius area certified by the local Historical Society to build or rebuild the old Craftsman style casement windows to Historical Registry Standards. It's not particularly technically challenging work, but its VERY fussy and details oriented. If your spreaders, frame, or partition bars are off even 1/16″ the window WILL seize up intermittently.The residential work came about because my commercial clients literally ganged up on me and demanded it…So here we are running 4 two person crews of Lead and Laborer doing service call work at 50 to 60 hours a week and averaging $50 a man hour gross, while billing $70 (any service company would adore this. Typically you grossed 50% of the billable rate). We weren't cheap. We were very good. It was a great business.I didn't advertise at all. No phone book ads (which REALLY pissed off Ma Bell) no newspaper ads. Nothing but a box of rate sheets with a brief Mission Statement from me and our terms, and a box of business cards (as needed) for each Lead and Laborer team.My rule for workmanship issues was simple: I don't particularly care how you get there, but you MUST make it look like We did it on purpose. This freed up my crew from the fiddly and hidebound rules everyone else used, and allowed them to be deeply creative in their work.. which has a value to both the clients and the crew. My competitors often tried to hire my folks away from me and just couldn't figure out why they wouldn't even interview. That making space for creativity and a taste of autonomy was part of why. It may have been a big part. The “Intangibles” do matter regardless of the lies Wall Street tells us. My folks never had the Monday Blahs, or the Friday Fuckits.Even though I didn't advertise I'd get 2 to 4 new client calls on referral and per week at a minimum, plus we had our regulars, and all of this was strictly word of mouth referrals from existing clients.I had recently come to the decision that I didn't want to do any more work for Doctors or Attorneys unless they were an existing client in good standing or had been directly referred (the existing client called me to introduce the new person and vouch for them) by an existing client in good standing because I was fed up with people trying to “renegotiate” a bill after the work and price had been approved, and the work completed. The two groups who seemed to pull that stunt most often were Attorneys and Doctors.. especially Surgeons. I suspect its tied to hubris.The all referral thing worked because of a couple of factors I'd put in place.First the referring client got a discount on their next job equal to 15% of the new clients first job. The referring client could (if they asked) take that discount as a cash bonus too, but it was a one off deal per referral.Second my policy on bid work was to try and be fair with everyone involved. When I bid a job I ran the numbers as if it were me (the most expensive guy in the shop) and an experienced Laborer doing the work.Next, my bids were rock solid and I included a percentage to cover most of the predictable “unforeseens.” (and most of them absolutely are predictable despite what some folks tell you)I was exceptionally good at this. I was also not shy about being the highest or second highest bid because I KNEW how the other guys played and it was dishonest. They would low ball or mid range a bid and then EVERY minor change generated a Change Order at Rack Rates (the highest labor rate a shop charges). Thus even if I was the high bid by 20% or 30%, by the time the client got the final bill from my competitor it was often above even my high bid. Often by a substantial amount. You want to see a seriously pissed client? Let them realize that they could have hired “the more expensive guy" for less. My competition was one of my best advertising campaigns ever! Sleaze NOT for I will eat your lunch and dinner.;}I very rarely closed a job over bid, by even a dime, and about 20% of the time we were one to five hundred under bid. This was a Very Good Thing. Sometimes, even if there was a legit cause for a Change Order and it was small enough, I'd make a point of NOT billing it, to give it back to the client as a Thank You For Your Business gesture. What's interesting about this dynamic is that on a $10k job I had enough room to give back a few hundred and still be in a very comfortable margin by standard accounting practices because I didn't waste anything on advertising. What's also interesting is the reaction of a client when they make the final payment and get even a lousy $100 check in the mail a few days later with a “thank you for your business” letter from the owner. Talk about those dream Ride Or Die clients? I had them.And this leads me to a core principle that the vast majority of Wall Street has actively strangled.. when you treat folks square in EVERY metric they will stand for you. If you miss even one detail in this, you lose them. Fast. There is no amount of money you can throw at an advertising agency to counter this. You can not purchase loyalty. You can't even rent it. You can only EARN it the hard way.Last.. and this is the kicker: On the rare occasion we came in substantially under bid (more than $1k), the overage got split three ways.. 1/3 to the company, 1/3 to the crew, and 1/3 to the client. Everyone Wins is how I tried to run my show, because that's how I expected to be treated.Now you know why my clients were so loyal. My crew was the same.Ride Or Die loyal.So.. one fine afternoon this guy calls me up wanting me to come bid a job.. and I didn't know him.Hmmm…. :~\This was a scam the State often used (which was another reason for my refusal to advertise) in order to get a legitimate contractor to the site, and then wheedle them into bidding work they weren't licensed for, and then slap them with a $2k to $10k fine.The State inspectors didn't like me much because I'm an Aspie and I made no bones about billing them for wasting my time with these fine scams. I also (because of the Aspie thing) had zero compunctions about telling them to GFY elsewhere if I happened to recognize the voice of a state inspector making one of these sham bid requests. They also didn't like me because my crew had told a union recruiter to GFY and run him off a job site with framing hammers and 36″ pry bars after he'd pestered them once too often that day. That's another shaggy dog court case story for another day. For the nonce, let's just say I wasn't *cough* known for compliance with idiocy. I'm still not.Anywho.. this guy calls me and wants a bid. I tell him *point blank* (as only an Aspie can) “Sorry bud, I don't know you. Who'd y'all say you got my name and number from?”He asked me what it mattered and I replied that my policy was to only consider taking on a new client if they had been referred to me by an existing client who was in good standing with me… and I hadn't gotten any calls with his name.Dude puffs up a bit over the phone (y'all know how those stuffed silk shirts can be.. I think we call them Karen or Chad now) and I started laughing light and happy.Apparently he was some high dollar attorney from The Big City and he was real impressed with his money. That I wasn't impressed At All seemed to annoy him a bit. I only know this because he told me, at length, what a hot shot litigator he (thought) he was.So I tell him that I won't be coming out to look at anything unless he can get an existing client to vouch for him, and that I don't generally work for Attorneys any way because, except for a very few like my clients, they're thieves who try to renegotiate previously approved charges after the work is completed, and I absolutely HATED ripping out good work because some Jack Ass refused to be square with me.He took offense at that and started quoting one of my absolute favorite laws at me.. the 1964 Civil Rights Act!If you're an attorney, you know what's coming..Specifically he talked about the Section on Public Accommodations.*Chortle!!* *Guffaw!!*At that point my Aspergers kicked in HARD an I started calling him “Jack" but I think his name was actually HaroldY'all can go anywhere you like with the “Jack" bit.. Readers choose:Jack AssJack SchitJack OffJack WadJack MeSo here I am, having formally studied, for entertainment, the very law Jack (nè Harrold) is quoting at me* in a High Dudgeon no less.*Yea, I'm weird. We know this. It’s nothing new. My tastes and interests are *cough* eclectic. It's a Good Thing.!and the fool claimed that he was going to have me arrested for discrimination.Um.. OOPS!At this point I got laughing mad.For all y'all that don't know, I'm a real live, borned and bred, Tennessee Hill Country boy. Laughing Mad is when you're so pissed that if you quit laughing something IS gonna die immediately.. and all you fellow country folk know what The Three S's are.So I laughed; long and loud. My secretary, Jan was around the corner outside having herself a smoke break, heard it, came back in, tapped on the door, peeked in, went pale (she'd seen it once before with a State Inspector) and left for the day.. she told me later that she left because she didn't want to see or hear anything that she might later be called on to testify about.Now, I'm not a huge guy by any stretch, at 6′ and a buck eighty, and I'm certainly not a bad ass of any sort, but would be bullies set my hackles up.. fast and hard. I do have a resting Bitchface and I've been told that when angry I have a very convincing Psycho Killer look about me.I'm a Navy Veteran and at various times in my life I've had a WO1 and an E6 Company Commander tell me that I “have a nice Full Rolling Bellow” with a bit of envy and just the barest hint of affection.I've also traveled a bit and can cuss colorfully in at least 3 languages.*cue Tommy Lee*So I gave Jack a warning shot across the bow.. “Alright MISTER JACK (nè Harrold) if y'all seriously want to play it that way, I caint stop ya, but you ought to know that I've studied that bit of law y'all just quoted at me some and I'm fairly goT damn sure that neither thieves, nor Attorneys, are actually any kind of Protected Class.. *deep breath* and I'm also fairly damn sure that no damnyankee stuffed shirt liar can convince a judge and jury that I qualify as any sort of Public Accommodation; but you already know that, don’t ya, PUNK?Jack puffed up again and started talking defense costs to which I replied that I'd be handling any such case Pro Se.. and he shut up a second.Then it was MY turn to cut loose.At something around Volume 11 I told him in no uncertain terms, and at length, precisely what I thought of his intimidation tactics and that I was completely unimpressed by him, his supposed law degree, and his money. Somewhere in that diatribe I may have use the phrase Puté dé Cucarach (Portuguese for Cockroach Hooker) and Babba chi Babba (Crazy old woman from the Japanese). I may have also mentioned something about the best part of who he was as a human dribbling down a leg.. but I wouldn't swear to it.Then I quit laughing.The last thing I told him *in a dead calm and stone cold tone at volume 2* was that while he might file such a suit, he might be very unpleasantly surprised at the outcome of such a foolish and pig headed action.Then I hung up.Chatting with a client (Mike) a few months later, who was an attorney and knew “Jack," I found out that my good buddy Jack had been “advertising” for me at a few dinner parties around town by trying to tell anyone who would listen what an asshole I was and how poorly I'd treated His Highness. Apparently Jack had even relayed some few of the epithets I'd used to make his point that I was a complete Asshole and no one should ever hire me for anything ever. Mike found this fairly entertaining and asked me for the full storySo I told Mike all about my conversation with Jack Off in all its gory details. Mike was fairly shocked that the guy had called me without a reference because it was fairly well known in the community that this was a requirement of mine, as I didn't wish to waste my time bidding for state inspectors running a sting operation. He was even more shocked that Harry had even dared to pull the 1964 Civil Rights Act crap on me as my study of law and my ability to talk intelligently about Constitutional Law while doing high end construction work was also fairly well known.By the end poor Mike had tipped over laughing and was rolling around on the floor begging me to Please STOP because his belly hurt.Oddly enough, old Harry never did have me served. Even more oddly, there *very suddenly* weren't ANY contractors in the area who were willing to take his calls… I was a bit of a bar hound in those days, and we held all our Safety Meetings at one particular Blues club in town as did several other contractors. It's a very small community in the trade, and everyone knows everyone else.Once the story got around a bit, it sort of grew wings of it's own.. and holding forth with a good shaggy dog story is a time honored entertainment in Hill Country which will get your drinks bought for so long as folks are giggling.I drank off that one for a month or more.Poor Jack.;}Don't be trouble, won't see Trouble!Loki IS a country boy.Signed: Asswhole Man