Your Worst Surveying Experience??

Your Worst Surverying Experience??

An as-built of 3000'± of underground culvert 8' wide 5.5' deep. The culvert ran under the runway at the Norfolk Naval Station, Virginia. JP5 Jet fuel had leaked into the culvert. I had to throw away my clothes after the field work was complete. There is just simply no way to get the smell of the JP5 out especially after the steam blow offs reminded us of where we were.

Aside from that....being crossed examined in court by the x husband of my client who had been diagnosed as Bipolar (he decided he was too smart to have an attorney represent him).

It might have been having to duck-walk a 42" dia tunnel to set line and grade every 30'. The tunnel was about 1/4 full of water, so you couldn't sit back on your haunches and it was winter.

or it could've been the day a guy stuck a 44 in my face and made unfriendly comments.

Your Worst Surveying Experience?

Probably the time I had to do a topo survey of a slaughter house, during operation. The shots around the building were the worst part. 🙁

Your Worst Surveying Experience?

> Probably the time I had to do a topo survey of a slaughter house, during operation. The shots around the building were the worst part. 🙁

So were the sounds by your description. I would of lost my marbles!! :'(

That's a toss-up between bees that swarmed me that time or the guy that leveled his 30 06 at me. Actually, I got along fine with guy with the gun. That was just a nervous moment until I explained what we were doing. The bees however, don't give a f..k who, or what, you are and were just plain rutheless!!

Maybe someone can find TDDs famous sewer story.

Your Worst Surveying Experience?

An engineering topo for design, of an operating rendering plant. It took 3 days at a dead run, as we wanted to be out of there as soon as possible.

We got really, really good at never letting the reel tape touch the ground, when we were measuring up the processing plant.

OR

It could be a ridiculous amount of topo in Barateria, La., for a channel that never got dug, in a perfectly flat swamp. Cross sections every 100' for 500' either side, and every tree over 4" located. There were cypress scattered all over the place, no big groupings, just the occasional tree. There were also canals everywhere, too shallow to get the hydro boat into, so we hired an airboat and operator for several weeks.

OR

It could be overbank topo on the riprap at the outlet of the MRGO. Only to the toe on the landside, no ranges to work from, trying to keep up with the hydro boat. They had GPS, we had a level, field book, and topo rod. Another dead run job, and I had the flu the entire time.

getting a f-word laced tirade yelled at me in the office by the super *sshole deputy director although that wasn't really survey related.

he screwed the place up so badly the director fired him a few weeks later. trouble is the new guy (still over there as far as I know) is a finance guy that doesn't know blink about surveying, engineering, architecture or construction.

Just to be clear, I don't work there anymore.

The incident happened 8 years ago but I'm not bitter or anything.

about a year after super *sshole was gone I had the joy of riding in the elevator with him because he came back to visit his former mistress, now big wig useless person nice to look at though. I don't think he remembered why I didn't want to have anything to do with him.

Big E

Yup...them bee's are nasty....and they bite (not sting) which makes it even worse!!!

Big E

Working for a douche bag boss.

Big E

Being shot at. Being stump cussed by a man with a shot gun that you know is loaded and pointing at you. Stepping in a small bear foot trap. Crossing a barb wire fence and the wire your standing in break while straddling it. Stung thirty times by yellow jackets. Surveying up and running up on the pot plants. Surveying and finding the meth lab.

All equally bad.

Not Pretty

Had about 10 locals watching, while being chewed on by the irate neighbor, when I went back to fix a 10-foot error on a survey of town lots. Of course, the correction was stealing the 10 extra feet I had awarded him a week earlier. He absolutely hated my client, which I could definitely understand as she was extremely upset by both my initial error and the correction.

"What makes you so dammm sure you're doing it right this time? Huh? Huh?"

Hmmm... where do I begin...

Being hit on the hand by a sledgehammer...

An accident (enroute from job to office) that I had to be cut out of the truck...

Guns pointed at me...

Stumbling upon dope farmers armed for battle...

LOTS of good experiences too.... 🙂

Been there, done most of that. The 30 hornet stings, the pot farmers with guns drawn, the neighbors yelling while you're trying to work, the heavy equipment buzzing by your ear while you're trying to figure out why the plans are f'ed up. None of it seems so bad now. Some of the depositions and court testimony still gives me a bit of a shudder when I recall it, but that's part of the game too. Oh, the one time I was working with my dad and another guy on a Forest Service job and we just went out to check one angle. Took a little longer than we thought and by the time we headed back to the truck, we were digging with our hands in little mud puddles so we would not just die right there from dehydration. That still sticks with me as a bad day.

In the rural Alaska villages, most don't have sewer systems, or complete systems. So there is the "honey bucket lagoon" The place where everyone takes their five gallon buckets of personal affluent and dumps it. Some are huge (like 15 acre holes in the tundra). Most are so discusting it is almost indescribable. Many if not most also serve as a solid waste dumping. Some, that are so bad people cannot even make to the lagoon edge to dump their bucket, so they start dumping on the road to the lagoon. Pampers blowing across the tundra in the wind like tumbleweeds. So, the surveys setting land corners that are in, near or downwind of village sewage lagoons are some of the most disgusting moments of my life, let alone my surveying career. It takes a strong will to even be out near one for a few minutes, let alone a good part of a day. Love the engineer's request to go do a topographic survey of one so they can engineer a fix or expansion. Gotta pass on that one.

Pretty close second are the village landfills after they go through and kill all of the dogs in the village. Had a few surveys where we had to place monuments in areas where we had to remove piles of rotting dog carcasses. It is hard to explain how hard that is, particularly if you are a dog lover like me...let alone the toxic gag

Daryl can back me up on this one.... Of all of the beauty of Alaska, the village sewage lagoons and dumps are the balance to that beauty.

Need a little Lynard Skynard... ooooh ooooh that smell....

Your Worst Surverying Experience??

> An as-built of 3000'± of underground culvert 8' wide 5.5' deep. The culvert ran under the runway at the Norfolk Naval Station, Virginia. JP5 Jet fuel had leaked into the culvert. I had to throw away my clothes after the field work was complete. There is just simply no way to get the smell of the JP5 out especially after the steam blow offs reminded us of where we were.
>
> Aside from that....being crossed examined in court by the x husband of my client who had been diagnosed as Bipolar (he decided he was too smart to have an attorney represent him).

I liked your "other" text you had before you deleted it. 😉

> Pretty close second are the village landfills after they go through and kill all of the dogs in the village. Had a few surveys where we had to place monuments in areas where we had to remove piles of rotting dog carcasses. It is hard to explain how hard that is, particularly if you are a dog lover like me...

🙁 I know just how much you are a dog lover by your videos and pics.
How come they kill the dogs?! POOR doggies!! :dog:

You guys are brave, I tell ya. The bees alone would do it for me. Then add on the snakes, guns, sewers, crap, irate people, etc... I swear if anyone reading this STILL doesn't have any respect for surveyors then they need their head examined!!

Wendell told me a story one time of how he was set up out on a road and a car came by and the cars mirror "clipped" his arm and scared the !@#$% out of him! Scares the !@$%# out of me now whenever he has to go out on the roads to do a survey. :-S

A day in the woods with Bob Manley...

Getting lost in the tick infested and ravine laced woods in Jacktown with Bob Manley. We were there most of a long June day. Bob and I argued about the shadows at noon and how to find north. It rained and we were soaked. My letter size printed aerial of the section became waterlogged and useless.

When we finally found a clearing, it was occupied by a 3000 lb. Santa Gertrudis bull... I started snorting and stomping the ground. Bob thought I was crazy. I told him I just wanted the bull to know I wasn't a cow.

About three in the afternoon we spotted a house on a hill. After making it through two more 30' deep ravines we made it to the house. The old man gave us water (the best water I have ever tasted) and drove us a mile south..to start a half mile hike back to the truck.

I don't ever want to talk to Bob again about shadows and which way is north..

I dont know if its worst or not but i dont know if any you are familiar with Bee Jay thats the catfish bait produced in Smithville Missouri the gawd awfulist smell u can imagine iminated out those doorways on a 95 degree humid day i dont know how the employess could stand it. Poultry house takes a close second though.