Life at The End of The Project

Anyone who has worked as a contractor knows the excitement of working in the world of billion dollar projects, the dynamic nature of the work , the excitement of succeeding with your part of the project, trouble shooting, it is all great stuff, but the drawbacks are many and profound. Most of the guys who work in this game are doomed to marriage failure, many times over in a few cases, it is just inevitable with the long weeks away from home, one critical one is the out of work activities soon become as demanding as the work itself, the need to feed the excitement zone in the brain. Most of the guys take drinking as a fairy vigourous activity and suffer physically and mentally from it, alcoholism is fairly common as is the pot belly of a regular drinker. A previous manager of mine went AWOL, as soon as he arrived on site and it turned out that he had a drink problem and had believed a girl in town loved him, her being 25 and a prostitute, he being 58 and ugly and an alcoholic, he drank himself into a stupor and locked himself and the girl in a hotel room for 3 days until he could drink no more and then returned to site, only to be fired from the job as you would expect. Most of the guys earn a great deal of money, and spend it at an equally great rate, beer, lots beer, silly toys to stimulate the excitement zone in the brain, laptop computers that they cannot use and only ever play DVD's on. and alot of time prostitutes. the later being another reason they get divorced, the wife is looking after babies at home become fat and unkempt from being so busy looking after babies and when a fantastic looking girl(prostitute) shows any interest in a guy telling him wonderful things he hasnt heard in 15 years of marriage he swoons and thinks he is in love with the most wonderful girl in the world, and gets divorced. I heard a terrible story of a guy taking a prostitute home as a wife from Malabo, and when they entered a bar in Aberdeen together she was confronted by one of her ex customers, who greeted her like a long lost sister, to the horror of her new husband. Anyhow getting back to the story line, as we all approach the end of the project for most of the guys, we work as a team and the groups of guys who spend days working and nights drinking together then realise that they are destined to be seperated and may not see each other again it all become like being at an extended wake. people talking about the next project and where they are going and where they are going to live to avoid paying tax, but hardly anyone is expected to be working with many if any of the guys again. We were given a party to celebrate achieving a milstone for the operation of the plant, all the jokes were flat and dead and not much fun was had , most guys stuck to there little groups, mostly along country and regional lines, brits, Yanks, texans, and amongst those , Geordies and macams, the older shipyard and north sea construction crews. only when the beer had been flowing long enough did the atmosphere lighten up a little, i have aligned myself with the guys who work here regular and willnot leave at the end of the project, they dont feel the misery of the deadline for leaving, i grew friendly with a guy who was one of the funniest i have worked with in a long time and i did his computer and he made me laugh, and last week he left and i was left feeling lonely and miserable and probably prompted me to decide to leave this place, there isnt enough funny people here to make life worth staying, i treasure fun and laughter more than money, i cannot stay with the miserable old farts who have been through the marriage mill several times and are bitter and twisted , and whose only humour surrounds insulting someone and being a grumpy old bastard.