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Welding Jobs Part II

In the first article, Welding Jobs, I talked about…welding jobs. Okay, I know, that's a pitiful attempt at humor but I have no shame. Now I'm going to throw out some random advice about welding jobs for the greenhorn, the newbie, rookie, apprentice, or whatever they call new guys (or gals) where you're from.

Rough, mean, sarcastic and lousy is pretty much how you're gonna' get treated by a lot of people until you earn their respect. When I went to my first welding job as an apprentice in the Iron Worker's Union, I had been in the Army, welded in oilfield maintenance and re-building shop, and welded in a black-iron fabrication plant. Three years being on welding jobs in shops and I thought I was pretty cool.

I'd been out to a couple of welding jobs that were in the field, but only to make some minor repairs on steel fabricated wrong at our plant. As an apprentice on my first welding job as an Iron Worker in a HUGE fibre glass plant, I was lost! I was walking around like a country boy's first trip to New York City. My first real welding job in the field and I'm walking around wide-eyed, looking up at the massive beams and girders with my mouth hanging open like a fly-trap.

I was the only apprentice on that whole welding job. A couple of guys needed some help and one of them sez "Hey punk, lend us a hand."…" PUNK???!!! Them's fightin' words!!! Well, fightin' word anyway, you call someone a punk in the service and you better duck. I was gettin' ready to introduce that guy to a knuckle sandwich.

Thank goodness a journeyman grabbed me and told me to knock it off and schooled me on what was going on! You fight on a welding job and you get fired. "Punk" is a term used for apprentices in the Iron Workers Union. It is not meant disrespectfully, it is derived from "Punkin'." As in "we've got to go punk that steel." In other words, carrying, moving, dragging steel that is almost ALWAYS heavy. And there is a lot of punkin' to do on every welding job in the field.

So who gets to do all this hard, sometimes dirty and greasy, heavy, sometimes awkward and scary work on the welding jobs? (Walking on small beams up in the air with heavy weight on your shoulder is awkward and SCARY! You're worrying about you falling. You're worrying about making your partner fall. And you're worrying about dropping the load on someone below.)

Not to be left out, there is plenty of hard, crummy work to be done for the newbie at the shop welding jobs out there also. But that's alright because it's how you get familiar with whatever welding job you start out at and it's payin' your dues. You're showing that you're there to work, and besides, someday someone will be doing it for you.



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