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Originally Posted by kane
Sorry to hijack the thread and turn into the fishing/crabbing thread, but this is a subject that fascinates me. Speaking of felons, It seems like this is a job that a lot of guys go to looking for a new start. Did you find that there were a lot of people with criminal pasts or who had questionable backgrounds working there?
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Actually, yeah. It was very common - particularly through the 90s... lots of East LA gang bangers trying to leave that life because most processing plants are all mexicans and spanish speaking. There was never any employment docs or anything for fishing boats. They would just hand you a check. It took a lot of years for boat owners to get organized, get corporate, have contracts with crew, have all id's, report earnings to the IRS etc. It was very lawless. People could work under assumed names and as a bonus, be gone at sea for 6 months and make great money while they waited for the LAPD, FBI or whoever to stop looking for them.
Imagine a place like Dutch Harbor... its remote and flying in and out is very dependent on weather. There used to be no police there. So someone could butcher someone else and eat the body and it still might take 3 weeks for police to get there. That part was nutty. I saw a lot of crazy shit happen with no help to be found. Particularly in a few villages where I spent my summers growing up. Alaska Natives + Alcohol + Too Much Free Time = Bad Times for All.
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Recently she got together with a dozen or so people she graduated culinary school with. With the exception of one who is working for a famous chef in Los Angeles the rest are all still line cooks and were talking about how lucky she was to get the job she has. She said she went on a rant explaining that it wasn't luck. She worked hard and put herself out there. She didn't just come in, do her job well enough to not get fired and then go home. She said most of them just shook their heads and didn't get it. They didn't seem to make the connection be working hard and smart and moving up.
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