Big Dead Place

by Nicholas Johnson

  Sasha: And this is because I used the letterhead?

  HR Guy: You cannot create official documents. It is a big no-no.

  Sasha: [HR Guy], you’ve done it. You’ve asked supervisors to switch from the [pre-season] eval to the post-season eval with the click and paste thing. I couldn’t get the logo off. And the logo was created by employees through a contest.

  HR Guy: No. You cannot do stuff like that. It’s pretty cut and dry. I’m allowed to do stuff like that. I have to get it approved. I don’t just get to start creating documents and sending them out. I have to run everything by my bosses, they have to approve it with their bosses, and so on and so on.

  Sasha: [Morale is really low and it] was something done to keep people from talking about Franz. So they could vent, and slide it under your door.

  HR Guy: [That’s my job, not yours.]

  Sasha: But nothing was happening. Nothing was being done.

  HR Guy: I’m sorry you feel that way. It’s unfortunate the course of action you decided to take was one that was pretty unexcusable.

  Sasha: A lot of people said that they felt [the form] would be all positive… Everyone was searching on the common drive. There is nothing to give feedback.

  HR Guy: There’s a Supervisor Progress Report Form out there. If someone truly felt they needed to express a concern—I mean, you guys shoot emails all the time to each other.

  Sasha: But that’s all I found—“Supervisor”—there was nothing for the station manager. That’s all I did was change one word.

  Franz: Well, technically, I’m not the station manager. [The NSF Rep is the] station manager. My title is “area manager,” so the people we’re hired by had a problem with… a form [criticizing] the client. … Regardless of what it was, you can’t forge forms. It’s just not your place.

  Sasha: Can I see that in writing? A law, or something in the employee handbook?

  Franz: [laughs] It’s pretty cut and dry.

  Sasha: Can I see it though? I’ve never seen that.

  HR Guy: There’s nothing down here on the ice. You just don’t forge documents.

  Franz: It’s on the list of 50 [fireable offenses]. It’s in my office. I’m sure I can—

  Sasha: Can I see that?

  Franz: I can go off and get it if you want me to—

  HR Guy: It’s done. You’re going home.

  Sasha: And this all started because I asked questions about Housing and because I was sarcastic—

  HR Guy: It has nothing to do with Housing.

  Sasha: It does. This is it. This is all vengeance.

  HR Guy: I’m sorry you feel that way. Y’know, there’s, y’know, definitely, what you did was wrong.

  Sasha: And who can I tell [all this to]?

  HR Guy: You’re going home tomorrow, so: nobody. You can talk with people once you get back to Denver if you feel you need to. And that would be Jim Scott. He’s the station manager, and he’s already approved it.

  Franz: He’s aware of what we’re doing right now.

  Sasha: And he’s gotten the full story of how this all started?

  HR Guy: Oh yeah.

  Sasha: He’s seen everything?

  HR Guy: [Sasha’s department boss, who was angry that Sasha was being fired] came in and talked to us this morning.

  Sasha: But he hasn’t talked to Jim Scott yet.

  HR Guy: Yes he has. [We all] had a conversation this morning.

  Sasha: And there’s nothing I can do. This is it. I’m gone.

  HR Guy: Mm-hmm.

  Franz: [inaudible]

  Sasha: It started out with you going off that you had a personal issue with me. You had me written up for asking questions, for trying to hold Housing accountable, and I still haven’t gotten an answer to that. There was a mistake made. And instead, I’m paying for it. I was compliant with all the rules that you guys set. I was out by the time when you said. I’ve got stuff, [HR Guy], that says that you didn’t clean up your room right. Did you get fined?

  HR Guy: Franz’s the one who inspected my room.

  Franz: No, there was no issues at all with [HR Guy’s room].

  HR Guy: Y’know, and we’re not here—it’s already done—

  Sasha: I know.

  HR Guy: So let’s focus on getting your stuff packed and getting ready for tomorrow—

  Franz:—the checklist.

  Sasha: It’s not right. I’m trying to hold Housing accountable and this is what it’s come to. And that is what started it. It actually started with you [Franz] getting mad at me for [not standing behind you at that meeting.]

  Franz: I can’t think of what that would be—

  Sasha: The one where you said, “Why don’t you ream me a bigger asshole.” That one.

  Franz: Nothing ever came of that.

  Sasha: I guess. Then you started after me with a vengeance.

  Franz: I don’t think that’s correct. But regardless, we’re here because you were documenting things that have happened up until now, and this is the end of the road.

  Sasha: So this is supposed to be my third warning, is that—

  Franz: You are fired, Sasha. You can’t forge a company document.

  Sasha: So it has nothing to do with the other warnings?

  Franz: No.

  Sasha: I thought you had to give three warnings.

  Franz: [inaudible] I thought we were friends. At the beginning of the season I felt that.

  Sasha: I did too until you started—yeah—

  [Long silence]

  HR Guy: I guess that’s it.

  Franz: Okay!

  HR Guy: Thank you.

  Sasha, leaving on the next day’s flight, had one evening to pack up her stuff. Her friends visited her while she packed, and took pictures of her flaunting her termination letter. Jane put one of these photos on the common drive, but someone across the network deleted it. People promised to mail packages for Sasha and take care of anything she couldn’t finish in time.

  At the Movement Control Center the next day, Injun Joe and the Fire Chief were ready to board the plane too. I went to Injun Joe and we shook hands. He had hooted and hollered and made noise one too many times. His department manager knew that Joe was noisy when he got drunk, but said that he “worked outdoors every day through the Antarctic winter erecting steel, never a complaint. I watched him many a time sitting up high in the air on a beam in below zero (F) weather bolting joints together.” Joe had cussed out the HR Guy at a party in 155. The HR Guy wrote it up as “verbal abuse” and fired him. Joe had managed to get booted from every binge in town, and now he was being kicked out for real. I became embarrassed after a few awkward pleasantries and left him to sit alone.

  I shook the Fire Chief’s hand, and he said “It’s all for the good,” but I didn’t know what he was talking about and said so. He repeated, and seemed desperate to hear, that it was all for the good. “Maybe it is,” I said. I would have preferred to talk again about boobytrapped meth labs, but those days were over; he was out on the plane.

  Sasha flew out on the same plane, with the rolled truck on one side of her and two guys from an “Asbestos Abatement Team” on the other. They had come down on the first Winfly flight to assess the asbestos situation. They said they were a little confused about their mission, because there currently was no asbestos situation. The exposure had already occurred, so there wasn’t much for the experts to do. They made a brief official appearance, took some samples, and flew back.

  Along with the police escort, a sympathetic friend in Christchurch greeted Sasha at the airport. She had worked in The Program even longer than Sasha. She had once been told to furnish a pap smear in order to PQ (Physically Qualify) for her job and explained that she had had a hysterectomy. But a pap smear was a requirement on the PQ checklist, and Denver Medical returned her paperwork as incomplete. She explained that her uterus had been removed from her body, so that it was not possible to take a sample of it. But a pap smear was a requirement on the PQ checklist, and
Denver Medical said she needed to meet the physical requirements, just like everyone else. Finally, her doctor became fed up and called Denver. “You tell me what to scrape and I’ll scrape it,” he said, as if she were waiting in the stirrups. A heavy silence came over Denver Medical, and the checklist finally became complete. She hadn’t heard the details of Sasha’s situation, but she met her bearing flowers.

  Over a year earlier, in a “Welcome to Raytheon Memo,” Tom Yelvington had introduced an RPSC “logo award contest” as “an effort to give everyone the opportunity to feel a sense of ownership in the company…” Now, for using the logo, The Program had arranged for Sasha a police escort.

  In mid-August, while working in the Greenhouse, Cuff found a bag of vermiculite distributed by W.R. Grace. Vermiculite is a grainy, absorbent mineral that, in McMurdo, is used primarily for packing lab chemicals. W.R. Grace ran a mine in Montana that produced vermiculite contaminated with tremolite asbestos that had killed hundreds of workers. Solid Waste handled vermiculite as one of our waste categories, so Thom did some research and learned from the EPA website that “the bulk of the vermiculite with the highest percentages of asbestos contamination came from vermiculite used for packaging chemicals for shipment,” which was the source of much of the vermiculite at McMurdo. So the vermiculite was likely contaminated, but we were uncertain to what extent. Both Thom and I had shoveled the stuff from the floor before in a cloud of dust, but we weren’t really too worried, as our exposure was infrequent and brief. However, we agreed that it would be better for Solid Waste workers in the future to know that vermiculite may contain asbestos, rather than think it a benign substance, as we had.

  Thom researched and wrote a report on the asbestos contamination of McMurdo’s vermiculite, then sent it to Denver and to the Safety Girl. Soon the Safety Girl called him at work to say that she was checking his sources.

  “But here you listed one of your sources as ‘ibid.,’” she said. “Is that a website?”

  He explained that it was referencing the previous source.

  “So it is a website?” she verified.

  “In this case, yes,” he said, “but it means ‘same as the last source.’”

  “So you’re being tricky,” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m being tricky,” he said.

  The Safety Guy, from the Driver’s Safety Course last summer, came in on one of the Winfly flights. He came up to the Barn one day to speak with Thom about his report. Safety Guy said he strongly believed in science, and that even though vermiculite contains asbestos, there was not enough scientific evidence that the vermiculite posed a hazard. Besides, employees were always allowed to request PPE, or Personal Protective Equipment, if they felt at risk.

  Thom agreed that there were not enough studies to determine exactly how hazardous the vermiculite was, but that yesterday we did not even know the vermiculite contained asbestos, while today we did. Therefore, Solid Waste workers in the future should know it too. If workers don’t know there’s asbestos in the vermiculite, then they won’t even know to ask for PPE.

  Safety Guy agreed that low levels of asbestos could be potentially dangerous, but he also said that there was nothing in the EPA investigation to indicate that worker exposure to vermiculite in current circumstances was above the OSHA Personal Exposure Limits. He said that if you tell people that something has asbestos in it, you also have to tell them to wear complete respiratory protection, and that complete respiratory protection poses a danger to the worker because it has, in some cases, caused heart attacks. The final outcome of the meeting was that, in order to prevent heart attacks, future workers would not be told that vermiculite contains asbestos.

  Thom had “voiced his concern,” as it is said, along the proper chain of command, and had reached the end of the road. Any further scrutiny of the matter would endanger his bonus or his ability to return to the ice. He shrugged. The meeting ended amiably; the Safety Guy departed.

  At one pre-season Denver Orientation, a Senior Safety Guy told everyone it was our responsibility to make sure that workplaces were kept safe.

  “We need to instigate action to make things happen,” he said.

  An employee raised his hand and said that the little bit of water remaining in the old pipes of some buildings all winter is not flushed out well at the beginning of summer, meaning that the danger of lead poisoning from the pipes may be greater at the beginning of the summer than later in the summer, when the water sampling team tests the water.

  The Senior Safety Guy became angry. “That’s why you need to tell someone about it,” he said to the employee who had told him about it. “You need to take charge, people!”

  The employee shrugged.

  While the Safety Girl was struggling to interpret the footnotes in the vermiculite report, Saul and Don in Denver had been writing us emails about our Safety record. Our numbers were too high. Jane had slipped on the ice while we were working outside at the beginning of the winter and had reported a slight sprain. To combat Antarctic hazards, Saul implemented a new Safety Observation Form and suggested that we meet in the mornings for a “Tool Box” talk to discuss “incident” prevention. Don wrote that he had slid into third base and scraped up his knee during the company softball game last Sunday, and that his injury could have been avoided with ten seconds of forethought. He suggested that we take at least 30 seconds, ten times a day, to think about our safety, because “each of you are the first line of defense in your own safety.” An incoming Winfly employee told me that this season’s Orientation in Denver had a new segment, which warned that inquiring whether your worksite contains asbestos is “your responsibility.”

  One day, picking up a box of vermiculite from the Science Cargo building, I noticed, stenciled at the main entrance, the slogan “Faith in Science.”

  [an email received by the Rec Department, printed as-is] ***BINGO***TRAVEL PRIZES***WED AUG 15TH*** LAST GAME OF THE WINTER!!

  When I saw the sign in the Galley, I said to myself..I have got to go because recreation had saved the BEST for last...The travel prizes!!!

  Does this background and lettering tell you how I feel when I went and spent 7 dollars and my free time that night? I am still livid and angry at the prizes that were selected for the last bingo game of the winter. The prizes were CHEAP and PATHETIC that I was just exasperated the whole evening. I played along but I didn’t want to win any of the games because of those stupid prizes!

  Let me remind you of the prizes that were represented as travel prizes. First game the prize was a black plastic water bottle! Cripes, what the hell would I want one of those when I get a water bottle from CDC. I don’t think I need a water bottle on my travels when I am going to be spoiling myself to restuarants/cafes!! Second, is shot glasses...how does that apply to travel...geez, I swear, there was no hope for the best that recreation would outdo themselves by now. Third, a frickin trekkie book. I do not and will not be treking anywhere. Why didn’t you just post “Bingo for Trekkies” and then I would have stayed in my room. Fourth was a gift certificate to “Bailies”. Why couldn’t there be an effort made at Annies Wine and Cafe but no, somebody was too damn lazy. Fifth was a stupid fanny pack that I would flatly not own and Last was a jackpot of 150 dollars... wow! There was no grand prize for a trip for 2 to Hanmer Springs or a Winery tour. Urrgghh!! Cheap, Cheap, Cheap!! I mean it and say it again, I did not want to win and I did tell myself and to the person I was with is that if I did win I will not holler out bingo!!

  What happened to the money? In the past, lots of money has been brought into recreation and we had some really nice bingo prizes..

  I hope that next winter, somebody better pay attention to the community because not only your department but also the TV/ Radio are high profile on how the mood of the winter goes!

  Just another upset OAE winter-over who keeps telling herself that this is a FINGI winter!2

  The Winfly flights socially invigorated the winter-overs. One night Ivan donned a baggy rainbow cl
own shirt and a wig, slapped on some makeup, and walked into Gallagher’s to co-host Wednesday night bingo at the invitation of Bingo the Clown, who had amateur clown credentials stateside.

  Unlike cheery Bingo with her fastidious clown markings, Boozy was a terrible sight. His makeup looked stale, and his eyes glinted with malice. Before the games began, while people were settling in with drinks, buying game cards, and selecting their favorite colors of bingo daubers, Boozy made the rounds from table to table, ripping up people’s raffle tickets, taking gulps of their drinks, and throwing their daubers on the floor. This was a new and exciting feistiness for the crowd at bingo night, who took it in with goodnatured laughter. The aptly named Boozy had downed about a liter of vodka and tonic before arriving at the bar.

  Boozy’s job was to pull the little numbered balls out of the agitator and read them to the enthusiastic gamblers. People bought shots of tequila for Boozy as he slurred out the numbers. Someone yelled out, “Did you say O53 or O63?” Boozy replied, “Both!”—which was simply not the case, and one could on these occasions sense the crowd’s good humor becoming brittle.

  For some, bingo is as serious as a heart attack. You can shovel asbestos into them, change their contracts midstream, wheedle them with technicalities, and prohibit their commentary, but if you fuck with their chances of winning a penguin sweatshirt or a bottle of root-beer schnapps, then you have made a lifelong enemy. Boozy didn’t care. He taunted the crowd and venomously attacked hecklers. He embarrassed the meek ones who barely squeaked out their bingos, and he ridiculed those who bellowed their bingos in excitement. When a winner brought his booklet of bingo cards to Boozy for verification, Boozy said that the gentleman was indeed a winner, but reminded all winners in the audience just to bring up their winning card and not their whole goddamn booklet, as he crumpled the aghast winner’s booklet and tossed it on the floor before reaching for the bottle of vodka hidden inside a cloth penguin puppet.