That was my first big construction job ever. I didn’t even know that when huge excavators swing, they got a counterweight that’s wider than the tracks. So these guys would grab me and be like, “Yo, motherfucker,” when this thing would swing around. I came off a fucking ranch into that. I didn’t think about this much at the time, but it’s with me now still after working in all these different places: we all made the same money on the check, every one of us. Our straw boss made an hour a day or two hours a day more, maybe, but not much. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. They pushed me, probed me, gave me shit, busted my balls, taught me shit. But none of those guys ever bitched about making the same money that I made. One way the work crew would bring everybody on board was by getting a 12-pack for the drive back to the yard (remembering it’s a hundred-mile job). We’d be drinking in this company rig, and they’d make everyone split the empties and put them in their lunchboxes. Nobody’s snitching and getting out. Everybody’s disposing of the evidence together.

What I learned from all this was, despite shitty contracts, it really comes down to how organized you are on the job. I didn’t even read a contract till 2022, honestly. You looked around, sized people up, and if those fools were down, and we were savvy about it, we could push things further. That is how you get conditions and maintain them. I first learned this principle on pipeline spreads. I didn’t like the United Association (UA) – still don’t. But one thing they were really solid on was respect. They would drop their tools and respect a righteous beef. When we had a problem, those guys would hear what it was and roll as a unit. Suddenly, you’re having a way bigger ripple effect and shutting down way more of the job. Now, it’s not only the laborers not doing shit, it’s the welders too – ain’t nothing happening. The willingness of those guys, even if they were pricks in a lot of personal ways, to back shit up if there was actual beef gave us way more strength on those jobs than what our contract said.