rig training

I’ve written several posts about my interactions with drillers. See here and here. When I started working, I was pretty shy, so it was hard to speak up and tell the drillers what to do and what not to do. It is an essential skill, though, because drillers will always test limits.

So when I started training a brand-new geologist who was painfully shy, I understood. But at the same time, I needed to have the drilling done correctly, and I wanted to make sure that she understood everything. I told her, “I really do understand what you’re going through. This is hard. But the only way to get better is to speak up when you see something wrong. And please don’t hesitate to call if something looks wrong or you’re not sure what the drillers are doing.”

Did she ever call me to ask something once she was on her own? No. And although I stopped by when I could, I was busy with my own stuff.

I was trained somewhat half-assedly, and then when I was left on my own and an experienced geologist happened back on my site, he let it be known (to everyone else in the office) that he was not impressed with what I was doing. And he made noises about not letting me watch a drill rig on his project and generally undermined my trust instead of actually helping me to learn. But you can be sure that I was working my ass off to make sure I was doing things right.

I am trying not to be that geologist. I want to support inexperienced geologists, but I’m still not sure of the best method to get folks up to speed quickly. There’s just so much that can go wrong…