Party Chief stories.

Not the same context, but a PC story nonetheless:

http://www.xyht.com/surveying/trial-by-fire-first-party-chief-experience/

D Bendell, post: 443655, member: 12975 wrote: ...I've had a couple good PCs to work with too. Its just a lot more entertaining to reflect back on the stupid stuff. I also like a lot of the old-school Party Chief stories I have been told from the older guys I respect...

I had a number (heck...maybe all of them) of old PCs that possessed all the qualities you've described. Because of my ability to keep my mouth shut (I actually invented the "deer-in-headlight" stare) most of them thought me to be of lesser mental capabilities. That was their bad. I took messing with them to heights still talked about today.

My favorite "every day" jab was to step on the chain at precisely the right moment. It usually just yanked the "smart end" out of their hand. If I was lucky, the PC would be on a steep slope and I might get to see him fall on his ass. I would just keep my head down and mumble "sorry...".

Another thing I loved to do was fill their mech pencils up with 6H lead. It's like trying to write in a field book with a 16 penny nail. Hiding all the HB in the truck was a prerequisite for this trick.

When I was the lowly chainman my ambidextrous alter-ego would always 'do up' the chain left handed. Since I was usually the one that dropped the chain when we got started, I knew to let it down left-handed. If the PC grabbed it and started letting it down I always just watched....(it produces a kink-loop every five feet and sometimes can take thirty minutes to rectify).

My favorite (if we had time) was pulling the distributor cap off the truck and dusting the inside of I with the graphite out of the old rotary lead pointer before replacing the cap. It makes for a lot of back-fires and an awfully bad running engine. While it was easy to clean-up, I usually saved this one for the days we were headed out to somewhere that I didn't want to be.

One PC use to leave his plumb bob in the truck because he never wore a belt. It was fun to either shorten the string on the Gammon reel to about a foot or remove and hide the point tip. That was always good if you wanted to learn new and innovative cuss words.

And of course there was always the trick of turning on all the accessories in the truck and turning the AM radio volume up to full blast. That way when the PC hopped in and started it all hell broke loose.

And sometimes we had to resort to extremes to let the PC know who was really in charge. Wiping the steering wheel down with poison ivy leaves was always good for a week's worth of giggles.

And then there was always the dead snake coiled up in his driver's seat.....

Paden, we probably didn't cross paths but would have gotten along well if we did. I had one crew chief who hated Gammon reels. He did his string up the old way. Almost any time I walked up behind him I would cut the loop at the top. He got me back by dropping the chain on top of an electric fence while I was letting the chain slide through my hand.
If we were chaining down a cut line he would occasionally sit on a cut log to make notes in the field book. Great time to tie plumb bob string around the log with just enough slack for him to get about halfway to his feet.
You'd think we would be enemies but you'd be wrong, We still buy each other a beer when we run into each other at Surveyors conventions.
Andy

One of my first gigs was slope staking about 20 miles of the Dalton Highway, known around here as the 'Haul Road' to Prudhoe Bay, about as far from anything as you can get on the road system. I was paired up with a gifted but horribly alcoholic PC in a cabover camper in road construction camp. He'd wake up and first thing chug a couple beers and away we'd go. This worked out just great for about the first week, and then ... the beer ran out. Did I mention we were about 200 miles from the nearest liquor store? He became so violently ill that he refused to leave that cabover for 3 days straight. I found a phone and told the boss what was going on. His reply? Can you do it by yourself because you're not coming back until it's done. Spent the next 10 days with a P-gun, rag tape and rod slope staking those last 7 miles by myself. For my first big road job, I think I did alright and I didn't want a thing to do with road work after that.

Andy Bruner, post: 443694, member: 1123 wrote: ...You'd think we would be enemies but you'd be wrong, We still buy each other a beer when we run into each other at Surveyors conventions....

I know, same here. Our tricks rarely fostered any real anger or ire between us all. The way I looked at it we just kept ourselves amused with a good sense of camaraderie for les corps. Nothing better to keep from thinking about how hot the weather was than a good laugh. 😉

D Bendell, post: 443655, member: 12975 wrote: While everybody isn't at the same point in their career, perhaps there are some memorable stories related to past or present PCs that either impressed or disgusted you? From the perspective of an employer or a subordinate?

I couldn't stand one particular guy who smoked and farted in the truck like that was his real job. ...

One of the best chiefs I ever worked for once told me "Everyone's good for something, even if it's only as a bad example."

I don't know if he came up with that wisdom or was just passing it along. Seems like something that might have come from a John Wayne movie.

The majority of party chiefs I worked with over the years were actually pretty good and we all got along. No horror stories, no significant pranking, I heard stories of other party chiefs who were horrible, so glad I never had to work with any of them.

One party chief I worked with was pretty much an a$$ and the reason I moved along to another company.

Another party chief was an ornery cuss, but we are still friends a this many years later. I do wish I could get down to see him more often. When working, we had a good likelihood of yelling at each other a bit, getting it out of our systems, and get right back to work.

One guy who became a party chief at one company I worked for was on his phone nonstop. All the time. Every single moment. With his girlfriend. I worked with him a time or two, glad I didn't have to work with him full time.

John, post: 443708, member: 791 wrote: ...One guy who became a party chief at one company I worked for was on his phone nonstop. All the time. Every single moment. With his girlfriend. I worked with him a time or two, glad I didn't have to work with him full time.

I had an employee that chatted with his girlfriend every chance he got, usually in the truck between jobs. I was prone to ask loudly (while he was on the phone) things like, "Are you talking to that red-head you took to lunch the other day?"

He quickly saved his phone calls for times that I was out of ear-shot...;)

This particular guy walked into his house one evening after his second job to find his then wife in bed with another man. It might occur to me to wonder if he was constantly talking with his subsequent girlfriend to ensure she wasn't cheating. On a subconscious level of course.

My favorite PC was the one that finally let me run the transit. He was doing the calcs while I performed my first setup. I asked, "Is this close enough?" His response, without even looking up, was, "What's the matter with right on?"

A second instance, and one that really made me understand surveying, or least made a real impression on me, was when we were re-running a 500 mile boundary around a reservoir, cutting the property lines and running the lines direct. When I asked him how he decided to call a bearing and distance "good", he said, "the bearing and distance helped me find the pin, so the bearing and distance are good."

John, post: 443710, member: 791 wrote: This particular guy walked into his house one evening after his second job to find his then wife in bed with another man. It might occur to me to wonder if he was constantly talking with his subsequent girlfriend to ensure she wasn't cheating. On a subconscious level of course.

I was unfortunate enough to have experience probably the strangest "love triangle" that ever happened on a survey crew.

I was the PC of a 3-man crew and we all had worked together a good long time and got along great. My two employees consisted of one married young man and one single guy. They got to where they were hanging out a lot, hunting and fishing and partying with each other after work. The one guy that was married started experiencing some marital trouble at home and eventually split up with his young wife and moved in with a family member that didn't live too far from our office.

The two guys remained good buddies...but unknown to the 'married' guy, his buddy started keeping company with his friend's estranged wife. I don't remember how I found out, but it made for some really uneasy moments in my truck.

Well as all things do, things shook out to their common denominators and the relationship that been on the DL came to light. I had to work with two guys with one sleeping with the other's estranged wife. I talked to myself a lot during the day...

They actually worked it out in a fairly civil manner and their friendship continued with a few scrapes and bruises. I knew things were on the mend when the estranged hubby asked the other guy to grab his tool-box from his estranged wife's garage and bring it to work with him the next day. He did.

There were a few days I thought a fist fight was going to break out, but it never did.

foggyidea, post: 443713, member: 155 wrote:

A second instance, and one that really made me understand surveying, or least made a real impression on me, was when we were re-running a 500 mile boundary around a reservoir

A 500 mile boundary?

paden cash, post: 443714, member: 20 wrote: I was unfortunate enough to have experience probably the strangest "love triangle" that ever happened on a survey crew.

Had similar when in my 2nd year.
My boss had a chainman who boarded with the family.
Sometime later the wife and the boarder moved out.
Ex boarder was still employed and made for rather tense moments.
It was a government job so sacking wasn't an available option for my boss.

Another party leader (leading hand chainman) didn't like anything over 40 mph.
He'd leave the job early to arrive back in the depot at knockoff time.

Another party chief I've known all my life....
Well, won't go down that one. Stories abound. Some good, some not so good.
Guess we all have them.
Kids want me to write a book about it all. It's started.

I've never worked under any PC's that I couldn't get along with, but there were one or two that tested what little patience I had.

The first PC I ever worked under was almost 75 years of age, and had a habit of falling asleep at his desk. He was certainly a character, though, if a bit ornery (I shouldn't talk there).

Another PC I had to work under, relied on me to do probably 95% of the calcs and I recall one time when I was running quite late. He called me at home to ask when I would be in, which I replied that I was about to head out the door (true). I decided to leave my calculator at home that day on purpose and sure enough, about three minutes after I arrived he wanted me to calculate coordinates for a number of items. The ball was in HIS court that time...

I've had a couple of good ones, too. One such PC was quite militant in his approach (IIRC his wife was a Marine of decent rank), but I learned a lot of good field procedures under him. He mentioned that his grandfather was also a surveyor and sure enough, I found his name in the PLS list that the Board of Registration maintains. We got along very well as we both respected each other. Sadly, he died a few years ago from a ladder fall at home.

Not long after I started what turned out to be a 14 year stint with this company one of the senior PLS's wanted to take me on a site tour of a very large job we were about to start. At the time this was Speed Goat and Prairie Dog country east of Denver; today it's nothing but shopping centers and roof tops. Anyway, we jumped in his '86 F250 and rattled our way out there. Near the bottom of a small drainage I could feel things getting a little loose in the back end. Boss could feel it too and stopped to drop it in 4. Having grown up on a farm and ranch in Montana I remembered what my Dad used to tell me as a pre-drivers license youth..."in the mud the only thing 4-wheel drive is good for is a long walk cause you're just gonna get stuck worse using it."

Anyway, I'm just a young pup at the time and not about to tell the Boss he ought to back up nice and slow. He gooses it forward and at the first sign of slippage puts his boot to the floor and we drop all 4 wheels right down to the axles. I spent the next 3 hours digging, scrounging up rocks and working the hi/low jack so when one of the PC's finally showed up we had half a prayer of getting out. We made it out muddy as hell but in one piece.

I've been stuck in the mud and snow what feels like a thousand times so I'm not sure what makes that time stick out in my mind. Maybe it was that instant flash to my Dad's advice and knowing exactly how the day was going to end a split second before it happened.

D Bendell, post: 443655, member: 12975 wrote: While everybody isn't at the same point in their career, perhaps there are some memorable stories related to past or present PCs that either impressed or disgusted you? From the perspective of an employer or a subordinate?

I couldn't stand one particular guy who smoked and farted in the truck like that was his real job. The AC in his truck didn't work because napkins, and junk had been sucked in there and the owners didn't want to get him a new truck because the smoke and farts would taint anything new. He'd always take credit for the accomplishments of our crew when he had never changed out of his flip-flops all day long or went less than 5-10 minutes without checking facebook or putzing around on his phone. Getting out of the truck was a thorn in his side. Teaching moments had to be taken with a grain of salt because it boiled down to a superiority complex. We easily identified mistakes he made that we'd get blamed for.

One good quote was on a hot FL day where we had to pull around 50+ sanitary covers and get directions/measures on the pipes. After we were nearly halfway done He says, "My hand is getting really tired from all this writing in the book!" He wasn't joking. Another beauty was when we were measuring a building where there was mud, puddles, scaffolds, and junk everywhere. The 100' tape on this crew was a jalopy with the first 3-4 tenths torn off. The reel barely functioned and to use it we had to measure from the 1 foot mark and subtract to get our true measurement. When I recklessly allowed the tape to drop into the water/mud while trying to reel it in I got an earful about how I'm not using common sense and that tapes get ruined that way. He also liked to come to work sick and sit in the truck all day moaning and groaning. Thankfully I never caught any of the ailments he brought around. I suppose he figured why not just come in and lounge in the truck so he can get paid while the crew handles the jobs. I know sometimes a PC needs to supervise but we got a lot of good work done despite him.

I've had a couple good PCs to work with too. Its just a lot more entertaining to reflect back on the stupid stuff. I also like a lot of the old-school Party Chief stories I have been told from the older guys I respect...

If a fart ruins the interior of the truck it's no longer a fart. Just sayin...

Two of the three party chiefs where I started working were the guys who helped lay out the transmission line from Boulder dam to Los Angeles.

(The other one was a short ex-serviceman who thought he should get medals for being on the same earth or floating in the same ocean as the people who really fought WWII).

What stories these guys could have told! I was too green to even know what to ask.

The cantankerous old PC took me out one day when I was an office puke and told me the story of how he went home early one day and found a strange man in his bathroom after having "visited" his first wife. A fistfight ensued, the man turned out to be a Sacramento Cop so half the City Police Department showed up to join in the fight. It came up because his former house was on the same street as the house I lived in at the time, outside the city limits.

Steve Gilbert, post: 443715, member: 111 wrote: A 500 mile boundary?

For the COE, it was a reservoir, J. Percy Priest, outside of Nashville. Lot's of nooks and crannys......