Tag Archives: DUI in Dickinson

School Assignment, Dickinson, North Dakota

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Hello, and thank you for reading my blog.  The purpose of this blog is to tell people from out-of-state, what Dickinson, North Dakota is like.  Additionally, I hope that people from Dickinson read this blog.  The people here in Dickinson should be ashamed of how badly they treated everyone during the oil boom.  The people here in Dickinson were hostile, unfriendly, uncooperative, and they took advantage of people.

I want people to know the truth about Dickinson.  I don’t want people to get misinformation about Dickinson from the Chamber of Commerce, the City of Dickinson, or Dickinson State University.  Because I have written approximately forty-five blog posts about Dickinson, this site usually comes up on the first page of search engine results for “living in Dickinson”, “working in Dickinson”, “moving to Dickinson”, “relocating to Dickinson”, “women in Dickinson”, “corruption in Dickinson”, “nightlife in Dickinson”, and “the Dickinson mafia”.

Even though this site comes up on the first page of search engine results, there should be more views every day, from school kids doing their homework assignments for instance.  There should be more school kids looking at this site, but that doesn’t surprise me too much, North Dakota ranks first in some categories of illiteracy.

I want to write this blog for the school kids in Dickinson, to give them some useful information for their school assignments and reports on Dickinson, and to give them some useful life information.

The ratio of men to women in Dickinson is probably about 3:1, which is not normal.  Because there are way more men in Dickinson than women, there is a shortage of women for men to date, and marry in Dickinson.  There should be a strip bar, where men can go and talk to women and see them naked, but the City of Dickinson will not allow that.  There should be prostitution in Dickinson to provide women for men to date, but the City of Dickinson will not allow that.  Thank God there aren’t any rapes!  Because there is a shortage of women in Dickinson, most of the women in Dickinson do not try to stay in-shape, dress nicely, look nice, or be pleasant.  Most of the women in Dickinson are overweight and unfriendly.

There is not a lot to do in Dickinson.  It is cold from about the beginning of October through the end of April, that’s seven months.  It would be nice to go out to bars at night to have some drinks, but the City of Dickinson has instructed its police officers to be very aggressive in arresting people for Driving Under the Influence.  In fact, the Dickinson police arrest people and take them to jail, even before giving them a breathalyzer test, if they are under the legal limit at the police station where the breathalyzer test is given, they are still under arrest, are processed into jail, later post bail, and pay $3,000 up-front to an attorney.  Don’t let mom and dad go out to bars in Dickinson, they might get a DUI, lose their job, and then you’ll be out on the street!

Going out to restaurants in Dickinson is not that great either, the service is usually very bad.  The servers in Dickinson restaurants have been led to believe that all of the oilfield workers in Dickinson make over $100,000 per year, that’s what the television news says.  The servers have had the expectation that every oil field worker would spend $100 every meal and leave them a $20 tip.  The servers are angry that they aren’t making $300 per day at Applebees, Perkins, Country Kitchen, and Players Club.

There are not a lot of restaurants in Dickinson.  Prior to 2008, people in Dickinson did not go out to eat because they did not have much money, they were paid very low wages.  The local companies in Dickinson paid very low wages in order to control their workers.  The workers could not get ahead, they lived paycheck-to-paycheck, they could not afford to lose their job, they had no savings, they were completely dependent on their employer, they had to keep their job even if they were mistreated.

Because wages were low in Dickinson prior to 2008, home rents were low.  A one-bedroom apartment was probably $300 per month, a three-bedroom house was probably $700 per month. Due to the oil boom, by 2011, the rent for a one-bedroom apartment went up to $1,500 per month, a three-bedroom house went up to $3,500 per month.  This huge cost increase in housing not only hurt the oil field workers, it hurt the local people too.  This is why some people say that people in Dickinson were very greedy and took advantage of people.

That’s enough for now, your brains are probably jumping like a toad!  Please, please feel free to write comments and ask me questions.  I’ll go ahead with what will probably be a FAQ, Frequently Asked Question:

Question:  You seem to hate Dickinson, why don’t you just leave?

Answer:  I stay here because currently I can make more money here than elsewhere.  I have a home in a different state that I would like to go back to, but unemployment is high in that state.  While I am here, I would like to get the truth out about Dickinson, so that people from out-of-state will know what it is like, and maybe not come at this time.  I hope that I can change some things in Dickinson by exposing them.

 

 

A Different Side of Dickinson, North Dakota

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Throughout this blog, I have mostly been negative about Dickinson:  property owners and managers had been excessively greedy and had taken advantage of everyone from out-of-state, local people and co-workers had been hostile and unfriendly, there is shortage of attractive women, the Dickinson police’s over aggressive pursuit of DUIs cause people to be unable to go out and enjoy drinks at bars and restaurants.  Living in Dickinson, I felt like an illegal immigrant migrant worker, because I was treated like one.  Even though I had a bachelor of science in engineering, and had worked as an engineer, estimator, superintendent, and project manager in several different states, owned a home and business in another state, I was treated like shit by the local ignorant, uneducated, never-been-anywhere people here in Dickinson, because I was from some place else, and they could get away with it, and their natural primitive instinct is to treat people badly.  I explained these things already in this blog.

I currently still recommend that people do not come to Dickinson, North Dakota, at this time.  I came here to make money, and it was easier to make money here, than it was in the state where my home was.  But now, about 60% of the oil field jobs have gone away due to the low price of oil, which has caused other jobs to go away throughout the western North Dakota economy.  I recommend that you do not come to Dickinson at this time not because the people are hostile and unfriendly, but because you would probably have a difficult time getting a job, and housing prices are still very high.

Because of a reduction of in work at my job, and because I did not want to be solely dependent on my employer for income, I brought some of my equipment over to Dickinson, to begin doing some self-employment work.  At first, the Dickinson residents that I offered to do work for, they were negative.  After about one month, I got one project.  I did a good job, three people saw that project, and I got three more projects.  Without doing any advertising, I got about ten more projects, and continue to get phone calls every week.

In my self-employment work, I saw a different side of Dickinson.  All of the people who called me and asked me to come and give them an estimate, they were successful people.  About one-third of these customers were business owners, about one-third were white-collar professionals, and about one-third were blue-collar workers, but they were all successful.  They were intelligent, polite, professional, fair, and often times paid me more than what I charged.

I tried to keep quiet and quickly do my self-employment work, but about one-third of my customers at some point would ask me what I thought of Dickinson and the people here.  I would try to not say anything negative and say very little, but the customers would come out and say to me, “I moved here twenty years ago, the people here have never been friendly to me and my husband, it has been difficult, I don’t have hardly any friends, I had so many friends back where we came from.”  So even though I tried to say very little in order to keep my opinions to myself to be non offensive to customers and potential customers, many of my customers just came out and said that they had had a difficult time in Dickinson because the people were unfriendly.  This was the first time that I heard people that were successful, long time residents, come out and say it.  It made me feel a lot better.  Also, this was the first time after having lived in Dickinson for almost three years, that I wasn’t treated like shit.  In all of the self-employment projects that I have done in Dickinson so far, about fifteen of them, the customers have been very nice to me, they acted like they were happy to see me, happy that I was there, complimented me on my work, thanked me, and most them paid me more than I asked for.  This was a side of Dickinson that I had never seen.

Corruption In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have previously written two posts about the Dickinson Mafia, which is a group of men who are business owners and city officials in Dickinson who determine amongst themselves what they want to happen in Dickinson, they tell themselves and each other that what they are doing is in the best interest of Dickinson, but they are advancing their own interests and enriching themselves primarily.  I stated previously that the Dickinson Mafia is similar to the Good-Old-Boy Network in the South, though the Dickinson Mafia members are Catholic, and the Good-Old-Boy Network are Protestant.

I believe that I have already stated that the Good-Old-Boy Network in the South, sometimes decides who will succeed in business in a small town, and who will fail.  Unfortunately, it has been my experience that the Mormons do exactly the same thing in Idaho, and the Dickinson Mafia do the exact same thing in Dickinson.  In this post, I want to describe some corrupt practices of the City of Dickinson Police Department, and Dickinson State University.

The City of Dickinson Police Department posts advertisements for a job opening not on Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Indeed, the “Dickinson Press” newspaper, or North Dakota Job Services, but instead on some obscure website that no one would think to look for.  Secondly, the City of Dickinson Police Department will not only hide the job opening where no one will find it, they will post the advertisement for only one week.  Why do they do this?  They do this so that the only people who will know to apply are the people that they personally tell ahead of time: friends, family members, neighbors, people they owe a favor to, people they want to owe them a favor.  Maybe, they don’t want to hire black people, Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, or people from out-of-state, who knows, this practice allows them to discriminate any way they wish because the only applicants will be the people they personally tell ahead of time.  If you should accidentally find out about the job advertisement, apply, and meet all of the criteria, they have other ways of eliminating you, like giving you one business day notice to provide your high school transcripts from a school you graduated from twenty-five years ago in a different state.  If you overcome that by asking a county archivist to do you a big favor and fax you your transcripts the same day without receiving the required payment, they have additional ways to obscure the fact that you are not being hired because you are from out-of-state.

What else do the City of Dickinson Police do that is corrupt?  They like to arrest people, take them to jail, have them post bail, and pay $3,000 up front to local attorneys to represent them in court, even though the person arrested has not committed a crime.  For instance, if you are stopped for a DUI in Dickinson, you will likely be arrested and taken to jail prior to having your Blood Alcohol Level tested, and you will still be processed into jail and charged with DUI even if your BAC is below the legal limit, you can post bail, and go pay a local attorney their “$3,000 minimum, up-front fee.”  This will happen to you because you are a piece-of-shit, out-of-state worker, this will not happen to local business owners.  This arrest process occurs for other offenses, where the arrested person has not committed a crime.  This happened once to a friend of mine for “providing a false address to the DMV”, he was found not guilty a couple of months later  because he had provided his actual, real address.  This happened once to a friend of mine who was arrested for “possession of stolen property”, but he was found not guilty several months later  because no item of his property was in fact stolen.

Dickinson State University will advertise a job opening not on Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Indeed, the “Dickinson Press” newspaper, or North Dakota Job Services, but instead on some unknown website, where the only people that know to look there are the people who have been personally told ahead of time.  The job will be advertised for a short period, like one week.  The only people who will know to apply for the job opening will be the people who have been told ahead of time.  This technique of hiding the job advertisement, and listing it for a very short time, limits the applicants to those who have been personally told about the details of the advertisement ahead of time.  This practice should be illegal, and I believe that it might be.  Why wouldn’t you want to broadly advertise a job opening, for at least two weeks, so that you would have the opportunity to have many highly qualified applicants?  Is it because if your family member, relative, friend, or neighbor had to compete against out-of-state workers, who have much more education and experience, for a job at Dickinson State University, your family member, relative, friend, or neighbor would never get the job, so you have to hide the job advertisement?  This practice of hiding the job advertisement makes it possible to discriminate against blacks, hispanics, homosexuals, Muslims, Jews, and out-of-state workers, by making the job advertisement known to only people that you personally inform, based on your personal preference of who you think should be hired.  I believe that this procedure is illegal.

What else does Dickinson State University do that is corrupt?  In approximately 2012, Dickinson State University received nation wide news coverage for awarding bachelor degrees to at least a couple of hundred foreign students who never completed the course work required for that degree.  Dickinson State University nearly lost its accreditation as a University because of this.  Dickinson State University has also been found guilty of falsely inflating its enrollment numbers.  The Dickinson State University Foundation has been found to have been involved in the mismanagement of funds, possibly criminally, and this organization has been ordered by the state to go into receivership.

The Dickinson Mafia

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I have not wanted to write about the Dickinson Mafia until now.  No, I am not joking about the Dickinson Mafia, though they are a joke.  They  are a group of business owners and a few of the city leaders that try to decide and control what happens in Dickinson.  Though I could name them, I won’t, yet.

The Dickinson Mafia have agreed more or less amongst themselves what they envision for Dickinson.  They tell themselves and each other that they are looking out for the best interest of Dickinson and its citizens, but it is amazing how this coincides with making themselves richer and trying to control other people for their benefit and to maintain their power.

Two of the members of the Dickinson Mafia own large local companies.  Even now, their wages are low in comparison to what out-of-state companies and corporations operating in Dickinson pay.  These two large local companies attempt to pay skilled tradesmen and educated professionals the same wages as entry-level workers at Burger King, Wendys, and Wal-Mart here in Dickinson.  For the last thirty years they have treated their workers like slaves, paying them meager wages so that they live pay check to pay check with no chance of saving enough money to start their own business, or to leave Dickinson and not live pay check to pay check.  Paying low wages ensures that these workers have no choice but to be obedient, they have no money saved up to afford to be without a job, and should they not be obedient and lose their job, the Dickinson Mafia will try to make sure that they don’t get hired elsewhere.

Though these large local companies try to make their employees believe that the low wages they receive are just a matter of economics, what the company can afford to pay and remain in business, these large local companies have their names on the walls of the St. Joseph’s Hospital, the West River Community Center, and the Dickinson State University for their donations of millions of dollars.  It disgusts me that wealthy people deliberately pay their workers low wages so that they have no option but to work their whole lives to provide the bare necessities for themselves, so that the wealthy can make large profits, so that they can give away their extra millions like they are such lovers of mankind, yet really they are slave drivers.

In 2010, when work began to pick up in Dickinson, local workers in Dickinson began to see that they could earn higher wages from out-of-state companies that came to operate in Dickinson.  Many workers quit working for the locally owned companies.  The Dickinson Mafia did not like this, they did not like this at all!  In the past in Dickinson, a local worker could only afford a tiny apartment, or if his wife worked, they could afford a small plain house or a single-wide trailer.  This was how the Dickinson Mafia wanted things.  If you could just barely afford a place to live, you had to go along with what the Dickinson Mafia wanted: you had better do whatever it is that they told you at work, you had better not cause any problems around town after work, you had better not try to start any business without their permission, you had better not try to compete with them in business, and you had better not try to do or say anything against  them politically.

In the South, there used to be what was called the Good-Old-Boy Network.  If you came to a small town in the South and tried to start a business, let’s say a construction business for instance, your success or failure would depend on what the Good-Old-Boy Network wanted.  You might not have known, that the concrete company owner, the lumber company owner, the building inspector, the fire marshal, the city engineer, the bank manager, and the mayor had already gotten together, discussed it,  and decided that you were not somebody that they wanted to succeed.  Consequently, you would have problem after problem, and the Good-Old-Boy Network would make sure that you went out of business.

In the South, if you were conservative, Christian-Protestant, not a criminal, not pushy, and assured some of the members of the Good-Old-Boy Network that you were not going to do anything crazy, they would probably let you do business.  There is an expression, “People like people, who are like themselves.”  When I lived in Idaho, I came to find out that the region I lived in was about sixty percent Mormon, and I also came to find out that you were not going to get a good job, succeed in business, or go on a date with a good-looking Mormon girl, unless you were Mormon.  In Dickinson, the Dickinson Mafia is associated with the Catholic Church.  The members of the Dickinson Mafia grew up Catholic.  They associated with each other growing up at Catholic functions.  I suppose this is why they are called the “Dickinson Mafia”, I didn’t make the name up.  The Dickinson Mafia give preference to people who graduated from Trinity High School in Dickinson.  Trinity High School is a private Catholic school in Dickinson, some of the members of the Dickinson Mafia went to school there, most of the members of the Dickinson Mafia send their children there.

The Dickinson Mafia use their association with the Catholic Church to further their agenda in Dickinson.  I already stated that the Dickinson Mafia share a vision of what they want Dickinson to be, and though they tell themselves and each other that it is for the good of Dickinson and the well-being of its citizens, it coincides with making themselves richer and controlling others to benefit them and maintain their power.  I will try to give a few examples of the Dickinson Mafia at work, where they use their association with the Catholic Church as a tool to achieve their goals.

If you are an out-of-state worker, you already have a home in another state, if you would have wanted to move to North Dakota, you would have done so years ago.  You are here because the economy is bad in the state where your home is.  You would rather be home where it is warmer, and there are trees.  You are only here because there is work here.  You would just like an affordable place to stay while you are here.  You don’t want to stay in a $150 per night hotel, or a $1,500 per month one-bedroom apartment.  Back home, $1,500 per month would rent a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house.  There were developers that proposed temporary housing for workers in Dickinson, so-called “man-camps”.  The city/county council members and zoning boards voted against “man-camps” in Dickinson and Stark County.  There were concerned citizens in Dickinson that were worried about “all those men in those man-camps”, surely they would be raping women in Dickinson.  I remember the discussions of “man-camps” in Dickinson in 2011.  The citizens of Dickinson were saying that for the safety of the families in Dickinson, for the safety of the women and children, for the well-being of Dickinson, and to not destroy the God-fearing morality of Dickinson, that they be spared from the wickedness and the lawlessness of the “man-camps”.  How did everybody in Dickinson get so worked up about the wicked and lawless man-camps?  What happened is, apartment developments got approved and built instead.

I would like to point out, that the same wicked and lawless oil-field workers that would have lived in the man-camps on the north side of Dickinson are the same people that rented the newly constructed apartments on the north side of Dickinson.  The Dickinson Mafia put the word out and got it into people’s heads, particularly the church-going people that were determined to fight evil, that the man-camp dwellers were savages, but the people that would rent apartments were the kind of people Dickinson wanted.  Keep in mind the people were the same workers whether they lived in a man-camp or in an apartment.  The difference was, that the Dickinson Mafia wanted to force the purchase of acreage rather than the leasing of acreage.  The Dickinson Mafia wanted millions and millions of dollars to be spent on the construction of permanent apartments, and the permanent property tax assessment on those apartments.

Another thing that I think the Dickinson Mafia and the Catholic Church have initiated are the over-zealous DUI arrests in Dickinson.  The Dickinson Mafia and the Catholic Church want you to go to work, then go home to your family, and stay home until you are ready to go to work again the next day.  They do not want you to go out in town and get into any trouble after work.  Your life is work, and your family.  As far as the law in the United States goes, it is not illegal to go to a bar, have a couple of drinks, and then drive home.  But in Dickinson, the police will get behind you with the intention of finding something, anything, any reason to pull you over, so that they can ask you if you have been drinking, give you a field sobriety test, then arrest you for DUI, even if your blood alcohol level is below the legal limit.  Why do the police do this in Dickinson?  It is because they have been directed to do this.  The police would not do this unless they had been directed to do this and they were backed up and supported by those in power in both the business community and the dominant church community.  They have a vision for what Dickinson is going to be, and they have decided to control other people to benefit them.

A Business Fails In Dickinson, North Dakota

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In the blog post below I write about a business in Dickinson that I worked for.  The owners were not particularly evil or malevolent, but they were kind of mixed-up in their thinking.  It was frustrating to see them do things that most business owners elsewhere in the United States would not do, avoiding these mistakes by using normal business sense.  I also explain that it was difficult for this business to work in Dickinson, due to Dickinson being so hostile to out-of-state workers.

In 2013, when I returned to Dickinson, after having been gone for a year, I got a job at a construction company, as a foreman.  I was glad that I got the foreman position because I would have a better chance of protecting my safety and well-being, than if I were a crew worker.  The pay was not high, though it was O.K. with me.  On my first day of work, I came to find out that the foreman I was replacing had given his two-weeks notice of quitting, during his first week.  On this first day of work, both of the company owners came to the work sites, they were very hyped-up, and I could see why the foreman that I was replacing, was quitting.

Both of the construction company owners had a degree in engineering, both of them were in their late forties, early fifties.  This was a specialty type of construction company.  The workers and technicians had come from Oregon, Washington, North Dakota, Idaho, Florida, and Missouri.  Two workers had a degree in engineering, a third worker was about two years away from his degree in engineering.  Some of the workers had received technical training in the military regarding this type of work, other workers had gained knowledge and experience regarding this type of work in other states.  The construction company had accumulated these workers over three years of being in business.

In the beginning, when I first met everyone, all the employees seemed to have above average intelligence, everyone was upbeat, and positive, about forty percent of the workers were very sharp and quick-witted.  One of the very first problems that I became aware of at this construction company, was that all of the out-of-state employees were having housing problems.  My housing situation was very, very bad, and I didn’t want anyone to find out where I was living, I was embarrassed about it.  Two of the workers had paid a lot of money for a basement apartment, they had moved everything they owned from Oregon and Washington, to Dickinson, the basement apartment flooded in May and ruined all of their belongings.  They complained about this to the company owners, explaining their expenses in relocating to Dickinson, having to pay extremely high rent just to share a basement apartment, then having all of their belongings destroyed in a flooded basement.  These two employees explained to the company owners that they needed to be paid enough money to afford a decent place to live in Dickinson, or that the company needed to subsidize their housing, otherwise it would not be worth it to them to remain in North Dakota.  When I first came to work at this company, these two workers were intelligent, funny, energetic, and good at their jobs.  Due to their housing problems, they soon became sarcastic, bitter, and complaining, they hurt company morale, especially when they decided to quit the company and leave North Dakota in June, then they really ranted  about how much North Dakota sucks.

Of the remaining workers, one, then another, and then another had housing problems in Dickinson or other problems in Dickinson.  Due to the cost of housing in Dickinson, one of the married out-of-state workers, never brought his wife to live with him in North Dakota during the two years that he was here.  He had a single bedroom in a house that was shared with some of the other workers. He went straight home, never went out to eat, never went out to bars, never went to Patterson Lake.  I felt sorry for him.  He didn’t have much of a life, all he did was work and go home. He didn’t have any friends.  He was invited to go out by two of his out-of-state co-workers who had lived in the rental house with him, but he declined.  Unlike him, these two out-of-state co-workers tried to make the best of living in Dickinson, they went out to restaurants and bars every night in Dickinson.  In early June, these two out-of-state workers both got a DUI in Dickinson.  I liked these two guys, the corporation that we did work for liked these two guys, they were fun, positive, intelligent, and good at their jobs.  After they got their DUIs, they were not happy about being in Dickinson anymore, their attitudes were not good, they didn’t seem to care about their work very much.  The company had to let them go by the end of August, but they had been two of the best employees before they got their DUIs.

Due to the construction company getting into a position where all of their work was coming from one client corporation, and due to pressure from that client, the two owners of the company that I worked for under-bid the remainder of the work for the year.  Some of the work that I did with my two crews, was taking three times as long as what had been budgeted.  Rather than the jobs being straight forward, most of the jobs had several special conditions that had not been accounted for, which would require additional time and work.  I was frustrated with not being able to make money on jobs, but losing money on jobs.  In discussions with the company owners regarding the amount of time each job was taking, and the additional work required due to complicating conditions, the two company owners acknowledged that they had been led to believe that the work they were to provide fixed pricing on was nothing out of the ordinary, but the work that the company was given, was problem work.  The two company owners did not want to protest that the work they were given was problem work with special conditions, not ordinary work, and that additional work requires additional charges.  Instead, they thought that they would be “rewarded” at a later date for their perseverance by the corporation we were working for.

I was frustrated additionally, by a couple of hires that the two owners had made to do someone a favor.  One hire was made to give their niece a job.  A second hire was made to give the daughter of a friend a job.  At this point, two months in, we had lost four key employees, who were intelligent, funny, upbeat, who had knowledge and years of work experience in this specialized area.  They were replaced with two young ladies, who had no construction experience or skills, who were hired as a favor to someone.

To try to make a long story short, one of the young ladies who was hired as a favor to her father, was a problem.  She was not accustomed to doing physical labor, she was not good at performing physical labor, she did not want to perform physical labor, she did not want to follow instructions, instead she would question me when I would ask her to do something.  The other laborers would do their work, and then go and help her do her work, instead of getting a break from their work, the other laborers would complete their work, and go and do her work.  After a couple of weeks on the job, she wore a pair of jeans with the entire crotch missing.  Neither me, nor any crew member said a word.  At the end of the day I went to the company owners to speak about the problems I was having with this young lady, the company owners said that they had already received a complaint from the corporation we were working for, either through a site supervisor or through a member of the public reporting it.  The company owners asked this young lady why she was wearing pants with the entire crotch missing, and why she was questioning me when I asked her to do something.  She just acted innocent, and like she wanted to work just like everybody else.

In late August, I was tired of how things were going at work.  I felt pressured to try to complete jobs more quickly, though there was not much I could do to speed things up, there were no short cuts to be taken, the jobs had been under-bid, it had not been known that each of the jobs we were given would be unusually difficult due to special conditions.  I was additionally frustrated that keeping in mind that we needed to complete jobs more quickly, instead of getting a strong and experienced construction worker, I got a young lady crew worker who did not want to perform physical labor, would question what I asked her to do, and it looked like she tried to set us up for a claim of sexual harassment.  I quit in late August, and went to work for another company that did similar work.

An out-of-state worker from a southern state was made foreman for my two work crews at the company that I left.  He had arrived in Dickinson in July.  He had a wife and a couple of children back home in the state he had come from.  In August he had been able to lease a house about twenty-five miles south of Dickinson, and he brought his wife and children to North Dakota.  He was a little unhappy about the drive to and from work each day, but he could only afford a house that was outside of Dickinson.  I saw him a few times around town, and I saw him a couple of times on the job.  In about October, he and his family went back home to the state he had come from.  I guess that he was frustrated like I was about having to do nothing but problem jobs that had been under-bid.  He had seen enough of Dickinson to come to the conclusion that even though you can get a job here, the way Dickinson is and the cost of housing makes it not worth it to be here.

In 2014, the out-of-state co-worker who always went straight home after work, who never went out to eat or out to bars, whose wife lived in a different state, he finally went home.  The out-of-state construction manager who had brought his wife to North Dakota about six months previously and had leased a house about thirty miles to the east of Dickinson, he quit and went back to the state he had come from.  The local women who worked in the construction company office quit.  Then the young lady that had been hired as a favor to her father, she quit. Then the client corporation no longer wanted or needed this construction company, and there was no reward for the company’s “perseverance” through difficult work that had been underbid.  And the two owners, and their niece, were the last ones, and they went home.

Getting a DUI in Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have thought about it, and probably the most important thing that I could tell someone from out of state, is that you have to be extremely careful not to get a DUI in Dickinson, North Dakota.  In fact, if you have come here to make money, you should probably not go to bars in Dickinson at all.  It seems like that must be the intention of the police in Dickinson, they should probably just go ahead and make bars illegal.

Bars have parking spaces for automobiles.  People drive automobiles to bars.  People have a couple of drinks, and get in their cars to drive home.  The police have already seen your car in the parking space at the bar.  Maybe you are driving too fast, too slow, you did not come to a complete stop, you changed lanes without using your signal, you had a headlight out, you had a brake light out, your license plate light was not working, they could not read your license plate, your license plate was expired, you were not wearing your seat belt, something, you are stopped by the police.

You are asked if you have had any alcohol to drink.  If you say yes, I had one beer, you have just given the police officer probable cause to ask you to step out of the vehicle to take a field sobriety test.  At this point in Dickinson you are probably going to be arrested for DUI and are going to jail.  Once you said that you had one beer, you have just given the police the first piece of evidence of guilt for driving under the influence, you have just admitted that you have been drinking.  The field sobriety tests are just additional pieces of evidence to be used against you in court.  You will be placed under arrest for DUI and you will be taken to jail.  At the jail your blood alcohol level will be tested by breathalyzer or blood test.  You will be given the opportunity to post bail.  You will have a court date set.  From what I have been told by people that I have talked to in Dickinson that have been arrested for DUI,  all of the attorneys in town want $3,000 paid in advance to defend you.  If your BAC was below .08, maybe you will be found not guilty.

The law in North Dakota is that you can be convicted of a DUI if your blood alcohol level is greater than .08.  But you have to remember that in North Dakota, you are just a piece-of-shit, out-of-town, oil field trash, piece-of-shit construction worker.  They don’t want or need any piece-of-shit construction worker or oil field worker driving around, trying to rape their women, ruining their town, probably trying to kid nap their children.  Dickinson was nice before you got here.  Make them pay that $3,000 to my cousin the attorney, we got ten of them boys this month, boy we is making some money now, and we ain’t even working on no oil rig.

Hey, I know that you would rather be back home where it is warm, back in your own home with your wife, your kids, your family, your friends.  It would be nice just to be home mowing your own lawn, changing your oil in your driveway.  Here in Dickinson, because you are tired of work, you are lonely, there is nothing else to do, you don’t know anybody in Dickinson, you don’t know anywhere else to go, you go to a bar.  You might only have a few drinks.  You get a DUI on your way home.  You know that you are going to lose your job, you know that you really don’t have an extra $3,000 to throw away. But you have to have the whole North Dakota experience, first you get fucked paying fifty percent of your take home pay for an apartment, then you have to work out in the -20 below freezing weather, there aren’t any women, there isn’t anything to do, now you’ve got a DUI on your record, you are out $3,000 for an attorney, thousands of dollars more in court fines, fees, and the mandatory substance abuse counseling sessions, you have lost your job, and probably your apartment, and probably just about everything you own if you were making payments on a vehicle or anything else.  Hey it’s “Legendary North Dakota”, you come back now, you hear.