Tales From The Road I

Left Houston Sunday, July 18th and convoyed to Gravette-by-god Arkansas with three other techs (two to a car) to work for an IT contractor that had hired me about this time last year to work on a Wal-Mart project. This go-round though I won’t be working as a project manager, but as a Network Technician. “What’s the job description?”, I asked of my recruiter. “Don’t worry”, she said, “you’re perfect for it”. And off we went. More about that in a future installment.

My car-mate for the ride up was a 6’ 3” Jamaican I’ll call Nathan, and he was good company. It took us ten hours to get up there and we talked at least six of it about politics and the world. Nathan was amazingly well informed, neither liberal or conservative. I’m always impressed when somebody knows as much about political events as me, a sure sign of political junkiness, not to mention the fact that he’s been in the country only ten years, and has an over-arching political philosophy to boot.

That said, you would not be surprised to hear that Nathan failed his blood test for THC, the active chemical in Marijuana, which is the stuff of legend in the popular portrayal of Jamaican culture. As Nathan put it: “I follow the Rastafarian teachings of Bob Marley. To Bob Marley, Ganja was a sacrament”. Fair enough, but it’s a deal killer too, at least for some employers. I and two other techs dropped him at a bus station on our way out of town, and he smiled and waved as if he had not a care in the world. The two guys I was riding with to St. Augustine, FL turned out not to be near as interesting conversationalists.

Reminds me of another Marijuana incident two weeks later. One of our Techs was trying to get his son hired, and called him to advise that he would have to pass a drug test. “How long has it been since you smoked any weed?”, he asked his son. “A couple weeks” was the answer. Another Tech advised him to go to GNC and get an herbal supplement that would mask THC, which stays in your system for several weeks otherwise. Yet another member of our group from Fayetteville, AR advised that before the test, he should drink a gallon of pickle juice. “It is 100% fool proof”, he announced, with the casual authority of a man raised in the hills of Ozarka, and the passer of many a drug test.

The rest of the group then compared notes on how long it takes to get various drugs out of your system, favored ways to defeat a drug test. Near as I can remember, the consensus was: cocaine: 4-7 days; Ecstasy: 2 days; Meth: 2 weeks; marijuana: 1 month. And everybody agreed that there were home remedies to block all of them from showing up on a drug test. I asked how long before the test you needed to drink the gallon of pickle juice to mask THC, and the pickle juice guy said at least one hour. Everybody agreed that Marijuana stayed in your bloodstream longer than anything else.

“That Weed will screw you every time”, said one guy, “and it ain’t nearly the high of those other things”. Did I mention Contract Techs are a diverse lot?

That reminds me of another story: As I mentioned earlier, last year I did a stint as a Project Manager for the same company, which involved me living in Northwest Arkansas for about 3 and 1/2 months. For most of that time I lived in a company-rented home with the company’s Senior Project Manager, a guy I’ll call Bob. Bob was a font of wisdom on the ins-and-outs of company politics, Project Management methodology, and living for extended periods of time on the road. He also had very strong opinions about the character, usefulness and reliability of Contract Technicians, which is pretty much all this company hires. Bob treated all of his Techs like crap, and I asked him why. He replied: “There’s not a one of them worth a damn”, says Bob. “If they were, they’d have regular jobs. None of them can get regular jobs because none of them is worth a damn".

Bob was himself a contract employee, and not a keen appreciator of irony.