BOHICA

 If you know what BOHICA means, you know what's coming. 

           So, when last I checked in, I had lost Big E, the World's Nicest Man, for the week here on the HQ. The guy they sent, call him Great Value Big E, was pleasant company and while it's not fair to judge someone new to bunkering based on my shipmates (big E being the least experienced here on the HQ,  with 15 years under his belt, and he's one of the bunker Old Guys like me. I guess I'm at 25 years as a tankerman PIC (Person In Charge), a fancy way of saying Certified Less Retarded Than Usual now. lol. Our talent pool on the HQ is DEEP). 

     So, yeah, Great Value Big E got ganked this morning. Ironically, he's been ganked away from me to work with Big E on the unit where he's been stuck.

   So I've gone from Certified Angus Big E, to Great Value Big E, and now I have a Brand New, still smells like the dining room at MITAGS (the big east coast training school for people who are too weird to have land jobs (I have been going there for almost 30 years) Dollar Tree Big E. 

    Dollar Tree Big E seems nice himself, but he has a grand total of I think 3 weeks experience as an East Coast bunker tankerman. 

    It's truly not fair to call him Dollar Tree Big E, either. He might be as good or better than me, who knows? I got Shit On from A Great Height  when I joined this company 15 years ago, because I was promoted after I think 3-4 weeks, having never worked on barges before prior to that. My past experience was far more complex than my first job here. The same might be true of the new guy. I just don't know, as we don't have any jobs this weekend. 

     At any rate, the new new guy seems nice too. I'm sure I made an AWESOME first impression with the poor guy, too. 

    I haven't slept much since I came aboard. Prudence dictates that I not say more than that.  With Great Value Big E, yesterday, I was up and down, as he has not yet cemented in all the policies and procedures that dictate our actions and decisions here. So every time the pump throttle changed, I woke up. So when an East Indian Pump Jockey (an engineer that micromanages our cargo pumping rate, calling for minute rate changes into his ship and preventing us from doing anything but masturbating the pump throttles) is causing us to be distracted from managing the workflow on our end, Great Value Big E doesn't yet know enough to firmly tell a Pump Jockey that we will be pumping at the lowest rate he calls out for, as we are not able to safely monitor the transfer exclusively from the vicinity of the cargo pumps... and this is not to suggest that rudeness or brusqueness is a job requirement. Diplomacy is something I am coming to value as anno domini sinks its' teeth in my ass.  It simply takes time and experience to know when to speak up and use a restraining means to rebalance the decision cycle. 

      So... yeah, I slept 6 hours this morning. I am switching watches, so I want to be able to sleep the night through tonight, which means not sleeping to my heart's content. When I woke up, about 30 seconds away from losing control of my bladder (I swear I could have half-filled one of those blue office water cooler jugs), blind from the daylight in the galley, staggering from an asleep foot, and in my drawers to boot, I think I said "sup, man" and then I started coughing for some reason, which made me fart and sounded like a shotgun went off, and then I was in the head, where I have a change of clothes I put on, after which I could go out in the galley and greet Dollar Tree Big E like a Christian. 

    Anyhow, by the time I woke up, he had been aboard for a while, and Great Value Big E had started his crew orientation for me (we have to do a walkthrough, safety briefing and familiarization training when new crew come aboard), so once I was appropriately caffeinated, we did the do, and the new guy went to nap in preparation for the night watch tonight. 

 And me? Once the rigamarole was done and the Blessed Sacred caffeine had done its' thing, I went for a walk, as we're lying to over by Brooklyn bridge.