"It'll make you weird, man"

"This job... it'll make you weird, man."

       I can't even remember who said that to me, but whoever it was, it was said to me on the first day at my current job. I passed the 10 year mark here last week.


          The HQ has small quarters. I've grown to love the place in the 7 years that this has been my home. It's not perfect- the gross-ass Tangerines who had her  for 5 years before me were disgustingly filthy animals, and ruined her house, sufficient that despite our best efforts, she'll never be truly pretty inside. How the fuck a sailor can call himself a sailor and not mop a deck in 5 years, for example,  instead choosing to just put new outdoor carpets down every year, after the black mold makes them crusty. 5 layers of moldy carpets. That was the Tangerine way.

 Sailors have an instinctual hatred for filth. Real sailors do, anyhow. Sadly, my employer recruits many failed commercial fishermen from one area whose knowledge of the sea is limited to about a 200 square mile area of brackish protected waters.  It shows in the difference in standards of seamanship... including hygienic practices in living spaces. There are many guys doing the same job as me who are equally as tidy, but there are many who are not.  Luckily, B, my partner on here, was a Navy guy for 12+ years, and, if anything, is even more allergic to disorder than I am.

         So, when I arrived, fresh off the boat, literally, I felt like a real sailor. "No, I come from ships." was something I said a lot. Not that it mattered much, except that I perhaps had access to better mentors prior to arriving. And on day one, when I mentioned that I was off product tankers, I was warned that after a time, I would be changed by my job.


 Well, they were right.

        We have a trainee on board the HQ for a few weeks, who came over my objections. Somewhere between Day 1 and today, I have become misanthropic enough that I am extremely uncomfortable with living, working and sleeping with a strange man who shadows me every waking and sleeping moment, never more than 6-8 feet away, and demanding of my attention constantly, forcing me to socialize, forcing me to divide my attention between him and doing my job. 

EDIT: OK, I wrote about 2,000 words more on why I am in hell, having a trainee, but on rereading it, I just sounded like a whiny bitch, so I deleted it.  So, TL;DR version.I am 100% completely miserable and I hate my job completely right now. I am trying my best not to take it out on the people around me.  Eh, bitch bitch bitch.