First Day on the New Job--Pecos, TX
Yesterday was my first day on the job, so I'm coming up on the first 24 hours of duty of my first week. I should start by saying that this experience is keeping me very alert and on edge. The possibility of call is constant, and my mind has not yet adapted to that constant pressure telling me to check the phone and cell signal non-stop. To compound the problem, I'm having 21st century cellphone withdrawl problems. T-mobile has no data plan service out here in Pecos, so I'm having to log on to a spotty wireless router that the hotel across the lot is providing. It worries me that I'll get an important email that needs my attention, or worse yet, I'll be in the middle of a wireless log on when the phone rings and I can't pick it up. At any rate, I'll adapt to these little pressures. As for housing, I'm lodged in one of several trailers that the company bought and placed under a dedicated awning behind a Best Western. Today I walked into the hotel because I was told that we have access to the breakfast, free laundry, and heated tub. All of these promises were true, and sure enough, there's a huge and very nicely done breakfast. Eating along with me were plenty of roughnecks who work the oil fields, but stay in the hotels at night. Those boys are the real source of income for the hotels here, and they are the ones that are driving up the good service and food. Were they to go, the hotel would revert back to a pumpking looking of a Best Western, where cobwebs would replace the beautiful ornamentation. By the way, the hotel is decorated like an Alpine multi story hotel, complete with painted on wooden windows next to the real glass windows, and fake stone work at every entrance to give one the feeling that it is built like an old European Insula building.