Quote:
Originally Posted by TheSquealer
A lot of things. More than anything, the money isn't worth it or loses its luster when you end up spending 8 months or more with the same 5 people in the middle of the Bering Sea. it was something i was basically born doing and never really wanted to do.
Apart from the seasons, there is time in the shipyards where you also need to be there as well and its just draining. You wake up one day and have no clue where many years went. You can't really have a life and can't have relationships. I could probably count on one hand the number of people i know that fish full time like that who didn't end up coming home one day to find the wife had drained the accounts and ran off with someone.
I was never a fan of crabbing. Its a very hit and miss and the thing with crabbing is that its even more work when you're not catching anything. If you've watched Deadliest Catch (many of those guys are from Kodiak), you get what I mean. Setting pots, hauling pots, stacking pots on deck, running for 30 minutes, setting pots again etc etc etc. Whether they are full of crab or not, the work is brutal and money is hit and miss. You see and remember all the big paydays... but dont really see 1/2 the fleet that had a disappointing season. Typical crab pots weigh about 750 pounds empty and after pushing them around on deck a few 1000 times, with no sleep, little food and no money, everyone is basically exhausted and homicidal.
Fishing pollock is a bit different if you are delivering to a shore based plant, you are fishing maybe 24 hrs, then running to town for 24-48hrs to offload.. then back out for 24 hrs or whatever. If you are delivering to floating processors, then you might be on a schedule where you deliver every 18hrs or something, so basically you set the gear (the net) and just tow it until its time to deliver... usually transferring 200 tons at a time.
To my point about hard work and bettering ones self, i have not been to dutch harbor in a decade and STILL have people calling me to do one money season. 2 years ago, i was offered a job to fill in for someone for "A Season" which is when the fish are more valuable as they are filled with roe and could have made around 80k or so for 45 days work, but didn't go. It's just not worth it to me. But its testimony to the power of hard work, getting along with people, bettering yourself, learning as much as you can and always trying to out-work everyone around you.... There is always a huge demand to hard workers and talented people and those people always land on their feet.
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It sounds like a pretty crazy, difficult life. I knew a little bit about it and have seen shows like deadliest catch, but with those shows they make it out like you go work for 8-12 weeks, make 60-80K then take the rest of the year off. Obviously most people don't do that.
It is a testament to hard work when years later people are still calling you to work for them. When I was 18 I went to work for Radio Shack, which is (or at least then in the 1989 was) a shitty place to work. I didn't realize it at first. I worked my ass off, learned everything I could and was quickly promoted from part time seasonal help to full time and within 6 months I was basically the assistant manager because I would do the books, make bank drops, I had keys and an alarm code so I would open the store and could run the place.
The problem is they don't pay worth a shit. I got minimum wage or 6.25% commission, whichever was more. The store I was in was one of the smaller stores so there just wasn't the foot traffic to make much money and anytime I tried to do outside sales (like I once went to a local private school and talked to them about buying computers) they would tell me that I can't do that. I had some good weeks including one when a guy came in bought 14 cell phones for his company (they were about $1200 each then), but it became evident that the only way to move up was to join the management training program and work towards that. I didn't really care for the place and hated the district manager so I ended up leaving. The final straw was when the store moved, I put in a ton of overtime helping get the new location set up and moving everything over and then they didn't want to pay me for those hours and told me I should just volunteer to do that work.
I went on vacation a few months later and never went back. Three days into my vacation I went in and gave the manager my keys. He was pissed that I wasn't going to give them notice. I told them I was giving 10 days notice, I was just going to be on vacation during it.
Six months later I get a call from the manager asking if I would consider coming back. He tells me he has gone through four people since I left and I was the best employee he ever had. I told him if he had said that while I worked there instead of always shitting on me as a way to impress the district manager and had he gone to bat for me to get me more money I might have stayed. While his call didn't really get me anything that would better my future, it did feel good knowing that he had finally realized my worth and I learned things while working there that I was able to use later down the road to help me make more money so it was a nice stepping stone that also helped me appreciate better jobs in the future.