This place is so ridiculous sometimes. I don't mean work specifically, though some work-related events make me say this. I've written a bit on government lately. For the most part, government is not the most efficient vehicle at getting things done. Now imagine something even worse, from an efficiency standpoint, and that is tribal government.
All of our trucks, both the DOT-registered ones and the pick-ups have papers in them for entering and crossing through the various states and tribal lands. Making sense so far, right? Good. Now, there's one tribe that requires work permits for individual workers working on tribal land which, as you might be sensing the tenor of where this post is going, is pretty ridiculous. For starters, apparently this has been the policy for about a yea, but no one knew about it nor was it enforced until very recently. In order to get these permits that expire every year, you must take your driver's license to Dulce, which isn't exactly what one would call nearby to Farmington which is where nearly every service company in the region is based out of, and fill out some mundane form so that they can issue you a card to be allowed to work on their land. Without said card, it's a $5000 fine and you'll end up in jail, which is what happened to a rig crew yesterday. Oh, and then the rig was confiscated too. Ridiculous enough?
So whatever are we doing to get around this matter? Well, our safety guy got some temporary permits last week by going down there and explaining the situation and the impracticality of jumping through their hoops. Of course, he had to get thee by 10:30 AM that day because they needed to close their office so that they could celebrate some kid's birthday. Check. Check two is that their office normally closes at 3:00 PM, a very demanding job no doubt. Our safety guy did enough explaining for them to issue us permits without everyone going down there in person, but they needed a photo of our driver's license and a digital copy of a photo of us (to put on the card). So he went down there today to pick them up for all the field personnel (this includes me) and they had given him some of them when 3:00 PM struck. At that point, he was ushered out event though it would have taken just a couple more minutes to hand him the rest of the cards. Oh, and those temporary permits from last week were apparently more temporary than we imagined, because we were told they're no good anymore because we should've gotten the cards by now. Wonderfully ridiculous.
Oh, but we were going to go do a job down there tomorrow, which we're still doing because enough people have permits that a crew can be cobbled together myself included. Lucky me. If they tribal police are making 'random' stops again, I'll hold my tongue even though I have plenty of choice words. Who would've guessed?
1 comment:
You, your fellow workers, and your company ran right up against ego. In this case, we are talking about tribal ego. Unfettered, institutionalized ego. How to combat this nonsense? Tell the people your company works for that jobs on this tribe's land are more expensive because of this ID and arrest nonsense. When they in turn go back to their periodic contract renewal talks with the tribe, the tribe will get the word. Interestingly, I expect the tribe will not change its ways. Institutionalized ego is an incredibly powerful ill.
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