Calgary Jeep Association
4x4 Related Groups => General Talk => Topic started by: Rubi03 jef on January 10, 2011, 11:54:59 PM
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frig im just fed up of work being so F ing slow
everyweek is the same " works coming its just ganna be another week " itrs been 9 fricken months and im tired of it
cant companys get there crap together so i can start making money
on top of lack of work / hours
we arnt getting our over time paid out anymore ( if we ever make over time )
the safety rules there inforceing are crazy and useless . i think the worse accident we have had in the past 2 years was a pinched finger
cameras have been installed in the shop .. lots of trust in this company
bosses hate hearing about how we are all starving but they love to show off the new toys and motor cycles they just got them selfs for xmas (35,000 $ harley)
bitch that we dont look motavated to be there i wonder why
anyways i just feel like throwing something so i figured i would write some of it down
and im sure ill hear mix comments about this how i should peace out and get a better job or shut up and put up with it
but its all good im ready to read anything anyone has to say
and on top of all this does anyone know of places hiring thats over 20 a hour .
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Where do you work again Jeff?
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You poor bastard Jeff :(
I've known you for a while now (back when you were on the rigs), and you've never struck me as a lazy person(even with that gut) or a stupid individual. The city is rife with companys looking for a hardworking and dependable guy. You just need to network some more and start shopping your resume out. Have you considered going back to school? Pick up a trade or relocate if needed. You're young, don't have a wife or any kids, mortgage, disease or physical ailments. I've been down this road before in the oil and gas sector. Cuts, wage negotiations, benefit decreases etc. I wasn't happy where I was and I had enough faith in myself and my abilities to bail and find work elsewhere.
You live once Jeff. Don't waste anymore time with a company that doesn't make you happy. GTFO before you build a cage for yourself and your options become limited.
Bonne chance !
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I guess I should count my blessings that I'm working, though we haven't had raises in years, bonuses in ab0ut a year and we are working hard, granted doing software development so there's no income yet, just signed PO's etc.
Sucks that the bosses do that, mine are similar, the new Volvo, the Mercedes (granted, not new), the house renovations with fancy stuff, "oh we did a bad investment and have no money", but we'll take "business" trips to Paris and Germany and take the family with (yes there was a business component, but the family has nothing to do with the business).
I know there are those that will say "own your own company and don't b*tch", but there's a moral factor here. If the bosses/owners are going to dish out the "poor poor, pitiful me" story, then prove otherwise, why should they *expect* anyone to believe them, never mind respect them or obey them when they are being blatantly lied to? Sure, I understand tough times and could live with it, but act like it's tough times on your behalf too!
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Noel is right. The solution to your problem is 100% in your control, Jeff...it's just not easy.
Oil and gas is cut-throat. It's a commodity, prices go up and down at random...which means that there are only two ways to make a steady, reliable living doing it.
#1. Get hired on by one of the actual oil companies as an actual employee. Be an operator, an IT guy, a seismic guru, a safety guy...whatever. These companies really only hire for long-term relatively stable psotions. The problem is that lots of qualified people wnat these positions. There are people who have spent a decade or two chasing this and never gotten there.
#2. Carve yourself a niche with a frickin' machete within a service firm (rigs, fraccing, safety, wireline, whatever) This will take a minimum of three to five years of your time just to get into a position where this is possible. You need to identify where there is the potential for a stable position, kick every ther contender for the position in the junk, and jump in with both feet. Once you're there, you can't ever relax or coast...because you're only ever as good as your last success...or your last failure. There are always three guys who think they're the next great thing that are gunning for your job. Just be aware that your job security is determined by your performance.
I chose option #2 - but it's not for everyone. Also, you need to get into a position where you can see where that niche is going to be, and then position yourself to act on it.
Noel made some very good points. Getting a trade can make a big difference for you - and while you might see a small wage cut on the front end, the increase in job options, long term wage, and stability is worth it . Once you're a journeyman, you've got far more options.
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Rigs are hiring like crazy again Jeff. Let me know if you want me to make a few calls. I can have you out when ever you want.
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I agree, and that's what I'm doing. Took a huge pay cut but I'm earning a trade. That way you'll always have something to fall back on. Plus journeyman rate is journeyman rate.
Also get married. My wife works directly for pennwest. And we're dinks so that helps A LOT. Now if I could just sell my house in red deer and not pay rent AND mortgage.... Dare to dream.
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At least you're working! I've been with my company for 5 years, foreman for 2. We worked a month straight right until the 17th and had to turn our work trucks in by the 18th. The best part was getting a call from the office at 2:30pm while we were running around on site in the -18* weather tearing down light plants and doing equipment checks saying we had to hand deliver all of our paperwork and layoffs by 3:30pm so they could go to their xmas party at 4:00. The one that we weren't invited to.
No xmas party, no bonus, no present, no card, no letter, not even a card saying thanks. Just turn all your crap in, you're laid off. (all of the on site employees got the same deal).
Granted we are "seasonal, full time" so we always expect a layoff for at least part of the winter but it seems every year we get treated a little worse.
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thanks guys ..
its shity to know that there are others out there in the same boat
ive just been trying to hold off so when it does get busy ill have a job but in the end it hasnt been good for me at all
tired of it .. and probably the worse thing is im friends with the boss and well i felt like i owe him something but i think he owes us MORE work
i will be looking around today and tmorrow i need to find something ill like or something that i dont like but pays crazy good cuz i just need to work and catch up on some payments since its been tight for so long
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The one thing that I will say is htat the boss wants you to work more just as much as you want to work more. The company isn't making any money if you aren't working. ;)
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Ohh ya I know that. But they should be out finding work and not buying
Toys and rubbing it in
Go on there business meetings and get that work
Or bring us in to do training. Get us hours spend a bit now and they'll have happy
Employees
But if they keep sending us home after 3 hours there's a good chance that were all
Going to be looking else where for our hours
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Maybe that's what they are counting on.
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Hey Jeff,
If you are an experienced hand I am pretty sure you could be on a rig tomorrow. I know we are short and so is everyone else.
If you want to know more drop me a PM and we can talk..........maybe not what you want but you could make a pocket full of cash between here and breakup.
There are some signs that things are picking up in Alberta as well, maybe not rampant like a few years ago but that is ok it wasn't sustainable anyway.
Anywho, we are always looking for good hands and they are hard to find these days.......
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i read an interesting article the other day, some stats on how the middle class is being wiped out. taken with a grain of salt for sure and just passing along, not saying i believe it. in my experience, life is what a person makes it, not how much hard work they do. all about investment and I don't necessarily mean money. time and effort spent doing all the right things. anyhoo if what people are saying is true, find a better career.
22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America (http://www.businessinsider.com/22-statistics-that-prove-the-middle-class-is-being-systematically-wiped-out-of-existence-in-america-2010-7?slop=1#slideshow-start)
83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
Source: ACS, Lending Report via Financemymoney.com
61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
Source: Careerbuilder.com poll via CNBC
66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
Source: Harvard Magazine
36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
Source: Careerbuilder.com poll via CNBC
A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
Source: Employment Benefit Research Institute via CNN
24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
Source: Employment Benefit Research Institute via CNN
Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
Source: mybudget360.com
Note: 2005 spike preceded tougher bankruptcy filing laws
Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
Source: Dailyfinance.com
For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
Source: Federal Reserve Board via endoftheamericandream.com
In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
Source: Smirkingchimp.com
As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
Source: Dailyfinance.com
Source: Institute for Policy Studies
The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
Source: UN via informationclearinghouse.info
Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
Source: Washington Times
In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
Source: USA Today
The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
Source: CBO via MSN
In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
Source: Telegraph
More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
Source: CNN
For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
Source: Boston Globe
This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
Source: World Socialist Web Site via axisoflogic.com
Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
Source: Reuters
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thanks guys ..
its shity to know that there are others out there in the same boat
ive just been trying to hold off so when it does get busy ill have a job but in the end it hasnt been good for me at all
tired of it .. and probably the worse thing is im friends with the boss and well i felt like i owe him something but i think he owes us MORE work
i will be looking around today and tmorrow i need to find something ill like or something that i dont like but pays crazy good cuz i just need to work and catch up on some payments since its been tight for so long
it never hurts too look whats out there for work. always options. but if the guy that runs the show is your friend, then you should be pretty safe to tell him how you and the other emlpoyees feel. if you guys arent makeing money then tell them why. sometimes they get blinded by the fact that they still get a paycheque. maybe you and/or others have some ideas on how to help the company.
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Not the greatest job, but go get your class 3 or 1 drivers license. Guy I work with pulled 400 hours last month. I don't know about Calgary but down in Rocky about half the jobs advertised are for truckers, starting wage anywhere from $22-26 an hour.
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it never hurts too look whats out there for work. always options. but if the guy that runs the show is your friend, then you should be pretty safe to tell him how you and the other emlpoyees feel. if you guys arent makeing money then tell them why. sometimes they get blinded by the fact that they still get a paycheque. maybe you and/or others have some ideas on how to help the company.
oh trust me i have sat down with him many times to try to figure out whats going on and he knows where all on the in danger list of starving
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Not the greatest job, but go get your class 3 or 1 drivers license. Guy I work with pulled 400 hours last month. I don't know about Calgary but down in Rocky about half the jobs advertised are for truckers, starting wage anywhere from $22-26 an hour.
ive thought about that as welll
i just got to dish out the 1000 bucks for it
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I think we are about to boom again. Every machine shop in Calgary has more work than they can handle, every oil and gas company has every rig out, price of oil is suppost to go to record highs again. It's an employee's market out there.
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I don't htink that we're going to see the sort of boom that we did in '06 through '08...but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like silverfox said, that wasn't sustainable.
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I don't htink that we're going to see the sort of boom that we did in '06 through '08...but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like silverfox said, that wasn't sustainable.
Yeah, on the business side of things there is much much more activity, it just takes a little while to trickle down to actually putting equipment in the field. There was no way he 2006-2008 boom was remotely sustainable, the new level of activity that we will see will be much more realistic with oil $85-$95/bbl. Unconventional natural gas will also start to be a driving factor in the new reality I think.
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Unconventional natural gas will also start to be a driving factor in the new reality I think.
We're already seeing HUGE activity with the Horn River basin and other shale gas plays. Lots of money getting spent there in a hurry. That said, it's common knowledge within the industry that 2011 conventional well licenses are WAY up.
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I don't htink that we're going to see the sort of boom that we did in '06 through '08...but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like silverfox said, that wasn't sustainable.
hope your wrong Todd; i could use a good 150% increase in the value of my house over the next 2 years. sustainable what? isn't that normal growth? you mean 40 yr mortgages with 0% down raise viable risk concerns? not with 150% growth!!!!
i wouldn't worry about 150$ oil. eventually economics will slap Bay/Wall street in the face and prices will level out. even the oil industry (outside of Alberta, go figure) predict prices to stay current because the global recovery is ever-dependant on oil prices, like Pook will be reliant on a towstrap in PC ;) not to mention stockpiles continue to grow, and last time i checked, continued production of natural gas doesn't increase price when demands level. i'd worry about a bubble more than anything.......
what were we talking about?
OH Jeff, heard a commercial on X92.9 this morning that Trinidad Drilling (or Titan) are hiring everybody. might be worth checking out. even i'm considering. screw office work ;)
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The value of your house is still inflated, Johnny. Unless it's priced over $450K or so, the market in Calgary never really softened all that much. Then again, according to the city, my place picked up $44K in value over the past 12 months. Whatever!
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We're already seeing HUGE activity with the Horn River basin and other shale gas plays. Lots of money getting spent there in a hurry. That said, it's common knowledge within the industry that 2011 conventional well licenses are WAY up.
Yeah, on the business side of things there is much much more activity, it just takes a little while to trickle down to actually putting equipment in the field. There was no way he 2006-2008 boom was remotely sustainable, the new level of activity that we will see will be much more realistic with oil $85-$95/bbl. Unconventional natural gas will also start to be a driving factor in the new reality I think.
Thats backwards. The activity starts in the field, then trickles down to us. Grand prairie is in full boom state.
You guy think 2006 was unsustainable, you are all wrong. The only reason we arent still there is because the artificial deflation of the world economy due to the yanks.
Because of other countries growth and demand for oil, the world say its all time record comsumtion last year(80 million barrels a day). That means no matter how screwed the yanks are, we are headed right back to where we were whether the yanks have their crap together or not.
At least, thats where things are headed.
We are already having a major personel shortage in the field. I am shutting down rigs because they dont have the men to supply me with relief. I am waiting upwards of 2 months to get frac crews because they are all booked up.
Right now, I am waiting 3 days just to get a hot oiler in slave lake.
The field is already booming. We just havnt seen it yet.
As for housing, calgary is still below ontario and vancouver, and Alberta has a better economy. Our realestate is not over inflated, it just feels that way because everything here was under valued for so long.
Since the crash our ogden house lost 55k last year, and picked up 30k this year. I would argue thats a reasonable estimate considering the year that is ahead of us.
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^Makes sense, explains why I'm pulling my hair out wondering why no one is hiring in the non-technical side. Don't graduate before breakup either >:(
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One big thing to keep in mind though, and I know not everyone will agree, but money isn't everything (it's nice, but not everything).
I have my journeyman welding ticket, which I got when I was 20, I got laid off from the company I was with 10 years ago and chose not to go back to it because I wasn't happy. After being off for a bit I got a job at Future Shop working in the warehouse for $7.50/hr (after being paid $20/hr with a crap load of OT it was a big kick in the pants). It ended up being a great path for me to take, though the money wasn't/isn't as good as I would like, I have enjoyed working for the company and with the people, I met my wife at work and now have a steady 40hr work week that is flexible and I can bank on.
There have been many times I have thought about going back to welding since I could make a LOT more money, but I just remind myself that I just wasn't happy doing that as a job. Now that being said, if I get into wheeling I might take up welding again for fab projects for myself and others, but it will be for fun and a few extra bucks, not a full time gig.
If it comes down to catching up on payments etc. then maybe take one of these guys up on a rig job, go work as many hours as you can for a few months, get caught up and then figure out where you want to go from there. But staying at a place that is stressing you out just isn't healthy and the sooner you cut ties the less stressed you will be about it.
That's just my $0.02.
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thanks for all the options / views
i will be doing alot of consideration and see where it brings me
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Thats backwards. The activity starts in the field, then trickles down to us. Grand prairie is in full boom state.
You guy think 2006 was unsustainable, you are all wrong. The only reason we arent still there is because the artificial deflation of the world economy due to the yanks.
Because of other countries growth and demand for oil, the world say its all time record comsumtion last year(80 million barrels a day). That means no matter how screwed the yanks are, we are headed right back to where we were whether the yanks have their crap together or not.
At least, thats where things are headed.
We are already having a major personel shortage in the field. I am shutting down rigs because they dont have the men to supply me with relief. I am waiting upwards of 2 months to get frac crews because they are all booked up.
Right now, I am waiting 3 days just to get a hot oiler in slave lake.
The field is already booming. We just havnt seen it yet.
As for housing, calgary is still below ontario and vancouver, and Alberta has a better economy. Our realestate is not over inflated, it just feels that way because everything here was under valued for so long.
Since the crash our ogden house lost 55k last year, and picked up 30k this year. I would argue thats a reasonable estimate considering the year that is ahead of us.
This is 100% consistent with what we are experiencing as well. We had to move hell and earth to hire a swing shift to get out and relieve our guys. Our rigs are working 24/7 and our only downtime is arising out of waiting for Frac Crews (no hands) or waiting for pumping rigs to come available (no hands) etc. Last I heard the qualifications for some companies out there from a hand perspective is well A PULSE. I think we have had 2 wage adjustments in the last 4 months and this is just so we don't lose our hands to others never mind the hiring issues.
On the real estate side.........I somewhat agree but some portions of the market are/were overflated (mostly the 500k+ stuff) there has been some leveling in the market but overall our cost of living is still lower than most of the major centers............it will go up more I would suspect.........in the near term there is Oil in them thar hills and everyone wants it, China alone could take everything that we could produce.
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Instead of working on the rigs ever considered building them or other oilfield equipment? Apply at Stewart & Stevenson they pay well over $20hr, are based in Calgary, are booming and the shop is nice, warm and clean.
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further to what Bnine and Silver fox say..... the architectural business is stupid busy at least few offices i know of. we could use a few technologist. PM me if your interested.
so if we are busy ya know what that means.... construction has a busy future.
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i now work in sales at a hydraulic shop that sells to most of the oem oil field equipment builders in calgary, and we are really busy as well. our shop can bearly keep up to the work.
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damn .i guess i really need to look around this weekend and get my resume all prettied up
thanks everyone