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Rant: trainee on an oil rig job in the Gulf told me to 'just hold the light' for 9 hours straight
Last month I was on a saturation job off Louisiana, doing anode inspections on a platform leg. This new guy, fresh out of school, got handed to me as my tender. First dive, I'm down at 80 feet checking a weld seam, and he's topside on the comms. Every time I ask for a tool or a different angle, he just says 'hold on' and then goes quiet for 20 minutes. Turns out he was watching Netflix on his phone and not logging my gas readings. I came up after 9 hours with a headache and a logbook full of blanks. I told him, 'You're not holding a light, you're keeping me alive up here.' He just stared at me. Has anyone else dealt with a tender who treats the job like a break? What do you do when they won't take the comms seriously?
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the_thomas23d ago
That line about "just hold the light" hit me right in the gut. I had a guy on a harbor job who thought holding the hook was a spectator sport, kept asking me if I was almost done so he could get back to his podcast. Nine hours of blanks in the logbook is rough, but I've been there too, where you surface and realize the only thing keeping you company was your own breathing and a guy who thinks comms are optional. I once spent a whole dive wondering why my gas mix felt off, only to find out my tender was "saving battery" by turning off the monitor. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I'd rather have a slow tender who writes everything down than a fast one who treats my air supply like background noise. At least with Netflix he was quiet, my last guy kept trying to tell me about his fantasy football team through the mask speaker.
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