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comment by goobster
goobster  ·  1730 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: July 3, 2019

Work

So, last week I talked to the head honchos at my company and told them my job was stupid, and it wasn't the way our company should be doing business, and that they were not getting as much value out of me as they could, and they should move me to a different position in the company and eliminate my role.

I told them a couple of different thoughts I had about how I could provide more value, and they thought it was interesting. (I told Hubski about it in the Pubski last week.)

Within a day, the honchos came back to me and said, "Fucking great thinking there, mate. You are right. Let's not wait to make those changes: let's do it now. You have your new job starting Monday."

So on Monday I sat down with my new boss and we created a job for me. That is AMAZING. And has a FUTURE. And gets me working on a TEAM again, rather than a lone(ly) wolf.

Oh. And everybody on this team gets paid a LOT more. So this new job I just gave myself? I also got myself a pretty significant raise, as well. (Exact numbers will come next week, but will include bonuses and profit sharing.)

So I've got that. And that's nice. =)

Fireworks

Tomorrow my family continues the tradition begun before I was born, of shooting fireworks professionally on the 4th of July. Yep. We get paid to shoot off $30k of someone else's fireworks, and are licensed by the State to do so. Weird, huh?

We still have all of our fingers and toes, and most of our hearing, and we have been shooting this city's show now for 30 years.

We have gotten GOOD at this. But, everybody is older. So nowadays, it's about 30 people sitting around in the shade eating, while about 5 of us use a tractor and shovels and hammers and nails and hand tools, doing heavy manual labor for about 7 hours to get everything set up. Then we work in close proximity (this is a hand-fired show: no electronics) with high-powered explosives while completely cracked-out and exhausted from the day's labors. And then the 5 of us spend two hours in the middle of the goddamn night tearing everything down and packing it up, while the other 30 people mysteriously disappear into the night without lifting a finger to help.

We collapse into bed in our RVs around 2:AM to try and get a little rest, then get up about 7:AM to finish cleaning up the site in the daylight. Around noon we go to brunch, gulp down enough food and coffee to get us home safely after a 3-hour drive (or so), and then collapse into bed and don't move for about 3 days.

And we go through all this work for about 20 minutes of actual fireworks. Oh yes... shooting fireworks professionally is all glamour and fun. (Not.)

But it is a requirement when you are in my family.

Have a safe 4th.





cgod  ·  1729 days ago  ·  link  ·  

A bunch of guys at my wife's work do firework shows. It sounds like a grind but they say the money is good.

goobster  ·  1725 days ago  ·  link  ·  

No, the money is terrible. We get about $1,000 for this show.

To transport the show in the U-Haul truck from the fireworks factory to the site, you must have a Commercial Driver's License (CDL). This is the same license that semi truck drivers need. When you get your CDL, all of your penalties for poor driving are doubled, and the allowances are halved (for things like blood-alcohol level, to determine whether you are DUI, or not).

This is the driver's license you drive with every single day, regardless of whether you are transporting fireworks from the fireworks plant to the site of the show.

It takes a minimum of 5 people about 10-12 hours to put on a show of this size. (And Blaine, WA is NOT a big show.)

Build and set up racks for the mortars, then dig 5 yards of sand to build berms along both sides of the racks you built. (From noon to about 7:PM.)

Around 6 or 7 you go through all the fireworks and prep the fuses, assess any damage to any of them, and generally make sure everything is ready to go. Then you load the mortars with the shells, and set up any ground-effect fireworks.

Now you need to do security for the next 2-3 hours, as your team guards thousands of feet of perimeter from drunks and kids, who want nothing more than to sneak in and set off all your fancy fireworks with their lighters.

If this is an electrically-fired show, plan about 3 hours to run wiring, tests, and configure the radio communications and go through the script for the firing order and to catch any mistakes in the script.

Finally, about 10 to 10:15 or so, it gets dark enough and you can shoot the show!

WOO HOO! 20 minutes of thrilling fun, danger, and big booms.

Then you have to immediately get back on perimeter duty to protect the site from any public incursion (you also need to make sure all the guns are empty, put out any little fires, and check to see that everything fired properly and you don't have any live ordinance still on site).

After an hour or so, everything has cooled down, and you can begin tear-down. Digging all the racks out of the sand, loading everything back in the truck, cleaning the site (in the dark), and assessing the area for any potential hazards that kids might find the next day. (Unexploded 'stars' or fuses or other composition that came out of the shells and didn't burn, etc.)

The truck is a target for vandalism, so you either need to get it back to the fireworks plant tonight (it's now 2:AM), or have a safe place to store it (NOT a motel parking lot!) for a couple hours so you can get a nap in.

For $1000.

For 5 people.

We do this for fun, only. You can't make a living at it.