Tag Archives: out-of-state worker

Why I Keep Writing About Dickinson, North Dakota, Part III

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In the states affected by hurricanes, there are laws against price gouging by businesses on supplies when a hurricane is approaching.  Businesses can not double the price of plywood and gasoline, among other things.  There are criminal charges, fines, and publicity in every newspaper about who took advantage of people.

North Dakota has just gone through its third oil boom.  The first one was in the 1950s, the second one was in the late 1970s, and the most recent one started in about 2007.  Note that each of these oil booms lasted about 7 years, and that each of these oil booms were about 30 years apart.  From everything that happened, I wish that the North Dakota State Legislature would enact “The North Dakota Boom Rush Law”.

“The State of North Dakota hereby enacts The North Dakota Boom Rush Law,  whereby the Governor acting alone, or by vote of 2/3 of the State Legislature, a condition of a Boom or Rush is officially recognized as occurring somewhere in the state, and the following protections are taken:

No business, or individual, may increase the price of necessities to more than double what the price was during the year prior to the declaration of the Boom or Rush condition.  Necessities include food, fuel, housing, hotel, transportation, vehicle repair, vehicle towing and recovery.  To do so is a crime, punishable by up to one year in jail, and $5,000 fine.

Further, it shall be unlawful for any business, individual, or government entity to interfere, impede, or delay the construction of housing, for the purpose of creating or causing a scarcity of housing, or for creating or causing high housing prices.  To do so is a crime, punishable by up to one year in jail, and $5,000 fine.

Additionally, the State of North Dakota shall be responsible for actively contacting all national news services with accurate truthful information regarding the Boom or Rush condition, and taking an active role in not allowing misrepresentations in work, working conditions, and rates of pay.

The purpose of this legislation it to prevent the hardship and suffering of both the residents in the affected areas, and the migrating workers.”

I thought that just about covers it.  Then I realized that neither the Governor nor the Legislators would allow this legislation.  The truth is, they are probably greedy also, or they are accountable to a bunch of greedy business people back home.  The real estate agents, property managers, and property investors would scream, “Are you crazy!”

Where did I ever get these ideas about treating people fairly, treating people like you would want to be treated, not taking advantage of people, not harming people, helping people?  There has got to be something wrong with me.

 

Why I Keep Writing About Dickinson, North Dakota, Part II

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I believe in the necessity of Child Labor Laws, Minimum Wage Laws, Workers Compensation Laws, Occupational Safety and Health Laws.  They came about because workers were mistreated.

Some of you business people would probably like to express your opinion that there should be free markets, let the market place decide, we don’t need any regulations on business.  I would like to have you spend several weeks scrubbing out the inside of rail road tanker cars.  You don’t need to know what was in them.  You don’t need to see any MSDS sheets.  You don’t need a respirator.  You don’t need positive ventilation.  You just need to shut up, and do your job scrubbing out these tanker cars.

I believe that workers arriving in Western North Dakota should have had some protection.  Prior to 2007 in Dickinson, a one bedroom apartment rented for approximately $400 per month.  By 2011, a one bedroom apartment rented for approximately $1,500 per month.  Prior to 2007 in Dickinson, a three bedroom house rented for approximately $700 per month.  By 2011, a three bedroom house rented for approximately $3,000 per month.  The price of rent quadrupled from 2007 to 2011.

Real estate agents, property managers, and property investors liked to say, “We have no choice, our prices have gone up and up.”  No, your prices went up by %50 at the most.  If a property investor purchased a three bedroom home in Dickinson in 2001 for $40,000, their mortgage payment, property tax, and insurance was probably less than $350 per month.  The mortgage payment is fixed, the insurance may have increased slightly, and the property tax may have gone up as much as %100 by 2011.  So by 2011, the monthly payments might now be $525 per month, it went up %50.  Why were you trying to charge $3,000 per month for rent?  It is because you are greedy, you were trying to take advantage of people, and you thought that you could get away with it.

Like I said before, if investors could have figured out a way to buy up all of the food before anyone else could get any, they would sell it back to you at quadruple the price.  Not being able to buy up all the food, or have children work at factory labor, the real estate agents, property managers, and property investors in Dickinson had to stick to real estate.  So all they could do was just make sure that there was a scarcity of housing available, which they did.

Why I Keep Writing About Dickinson, North Dakota, Part I

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Why do I keep writing about Dickinson, North Dakota?  I started writing about Dickinson partly because of how I felt.  I felt angry and frustrated.

One of the things that I was angry and frustrated about, was news stories on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News about how all these workers were moving to North Dakota and making over $100,000 per year.  This was not the case.  Yes, working directly on an oil drilling rig, you can make that much, by working 12 hour shifts, 14 days straight, then 7 days off.  Keep in mind, it is also going to be below 0 degrees Fahrenheit for those 14 days straight.  American males between 18 years and 28 years old, I believe that less than 10% are physically and mentally strong enough to do this.  At one drilling company that I went to, there was a one-way glass window overlooking the reception area, the managers could tell with a quick glance which applications to not even consider.

What the drilling companies were looking for, was a male between 18 years and 28 years old, that looked like they did not have any physical defect, no signs of physical weakness, that looked like they were accustomed to labor.  Probably their favorite candidates were young men that grew up on a farm and had to work.  Their second favorite candidates were probably former high school football players that were linemen.

I don’t think the drilling companies wanted to hire anyone over 32 years old to work on a drill rig if they hadn’t worked on a drill rig before.  Those 12 hour shifts, for 14 days straight: any foot problem, ankle problem, knee problem, hip problem, back problem, elbow problem, shoulder problem, in muscle, joint, or tendon, would appear and just become worse and worse, hour by hour, worse and worse every day.  It was just a safer business practice to try to get people 18 years to 28 years old with no physical defects.

In Dickinson, probably more than half of the out-of-state workers that showed up looking for work were over 30 years old.  They all had the expectation that they were going to get a $23 to $30 per hour job, working 60 to 80 hours per week.  This is what they had heard.  The reality was, that at their age, not being able to work on a drill rig, the jobs available to them paid probably $14 to $23 per hour.

The other thing that the out-of-state workers that showed up in Dickinson did not understand, was that if you were an idiot where you came from, you were still going to be an idiot when you arrived in Dickinson.  If you hadn’t ever been able to do any type of work competently, you were not going to be able to obtain or keep a job in Dickinson either.

There should have been a great big American Red Cross tent in the Wal-Mart parking lot for all of the dazed out-of-state workers who suddenly found that there weren’t any $100,000 per year jobs.

Many, many people had heard false information about work in the oil field in North Dakota and traveled across the United States to get here.  They did not know or understand what it would be like in North Dakota.  It would have been better for everyone involved if more accurate, truthful information would have been provided to all the national networks, stations, news services, and publications.  Better for everyone if it had been done, except for the real estate agents, property managers, and property investors.

Is Dickinson A Good Place To Live?

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Is Dickinson a good place to live?  Almost, Dickinson is almost a good place to live.

Dickinson is a town that has most of the things that people want and need.  It is easy to drive around town, the town is not ugly, it is not overdeveloped, it is not underdeveloped, it is surrounded by thousands of acres of attractive farm land, and there is not a lot of crime.

Dickinson has a new $75 million hospital, with ER, critical care unit, maternity unit, surgery unit, and outpatient treatment offices.  Medical helicopter stationed 100 feet from ER.  Very large approx. $15 million Sanford Health facility across the street from hospital.

Dickinson has a nice commercial airport.  A fifty passenger jet will take you to Denver or Minneapolis, to take a larger plane to anywhere you want.  It is a very safe airport, not a lot of air traffic, nothing for planes to hit, no big problem landing too short or too long, maybe hit a wire fence and a cow.

For shopping, the Prairie Hills Mall is O.K., Menards, Runnings, and WalMart.  Hardware stores Macs and Ace Hardware.  Enough tire stores.  Good Ford, Dodge, Chevrolet, and Toyota dealerships in Dickinson.

In the Winter, you can go to one of the best indoor recreation centers in the U.S.:  hockey rink, competition pool, leisure pool, basketball courts, volleyball courts, tennis courts, racquetball courts, weight room, cardio equipment, climb wall, and track.  In the summer you can swim, fish, canoe, ski, cook out at Patterson Lake.  Small University in Dickinson.

The only problem, is the people.  The people in Dickinson are not friendly, not cooperative, not helpful, and not hospitable.  They do not like people from out of state, and they do not even like each other.

I think that I have finally figured out why the people in Dickinson are so hostile:  For one hundred years Dickinson had been very poor, education was not valued because there was nothing to do with it, and no way to get ahead.  All of the great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents of the people living in Dickinson now, felt that they were never going to be anything or get ahead, they weren’t going to, but in order to feel O.K. about their position in life, they were going to make sure that nobody else got ahead either, and the only way that they were going to “get ahead”, was to let other people fail.  Therefore, if anyone needed any help in Dickinson, the way to “get ahead” was to let other people fail.

I never could understand why the people in Dickinson were so unhelpful, until I realized that the only way these people here had to feel successful, was when somebody here failed.  One of the many things that led me to this belief, was that I saw people in Dickinson did not celebrate financial success by building a nice large home, or buying a Jaguar, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, or Porsche, they appeared to not be interested in having anything nice for themselves, but instead were intensely interested in what the lower middle class and low class people were doing.  Some of the successful people in Dickinson appear to delight in the paycheck-to-paycheck existence of many people on Dickinson.  The successful, the middle class, the lower middle class, and the low class in Dickinson, for the most part all agree about not having a homeless shelter in Dickinson, because somebody has got to be failing in order for them to feel good about themselves.

Christianity In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have written a great deal about people being hostile, unfriendly, uncooperative, and not helpful in Dickinson.  I have been upset about it.  I tried to understand it, discuss it, find reasons for it, explain it.

About one year ago, I began attending a small Christian Church in Dickinson.  I wanted to see if there were any good people in Dickinson.

I have tried to help more than several people in Dickinson, but hardly ever did I just give anyone money.  At the Church that I began going to, I did give some people money, people who seemed to legitimately need money: a visiting pastor and his wife, an out-of-state worker who was homeless, an out-of-state young person who was almost homeless, and to the pastor of the church whose family was having difficulties.  Some of the people in the Church were looking for work, I offered some work that I had available to three people.

I tried to give, what I could afford to give, in an instance when I thought that a person really needed help, in order to try to help some, and hoping that others in the Church would also try to help that individual.  Please remember, I stated a few months ago, that my first job was not that busy, my second job was not that busy, so I had to get a third job, I don’t have a lot of extra money to spare.

I became aware, that though this was a small church, this Church had a great deal of money.  I thought that this was both good and bad.  Announcements were made each month, about some very large donations that this Church had made to other churches, and I thought that this was both good and bad.  The very large amount of money that was in the bank, the very large money donations that were made to other churches outside this area from this Church, I thought, “Hold on, what about all of these individuals right here in Dickinson who need help?  Why can’t we help these people right here in Dickinson?  Why can’t we help these people first?”

There are several people in Dickinson, that I have helped again and again.  One of them, I really don’t want to be friends with him anymore because I kind of feel exhausted from helping him after many many self-inflicted vehicle breakdowns.  Another person that I know, who needed money very much, I got him a job working with me.  Shortly, after I got him hired to work with me, he became difficult and pig-like, partly because he was tired, and I regretted hiring him.  In a second job that I have, I have hired this same person to help me on about eight different projects, he usually gets tired and cranky and has to go sit down, and I swear to myself that I will never hire him again.  About the same time that I had to get a third job, this person was having severe financial problems.  I got him hired to work with me.  I re-did his resume and helped him through the application process, which was difficult.  I did some pre-interview coaching with him, and did some practice interview questioning.  Because I had more experience, was overqualified, and would be there to help him, my friend who was less experienced and less qualified, was hired to work with me.

The first week on this new job, my friend really let me down one day when he was working by himself, he could have cost both of us our jobs.  He apologized the next day, and said that he realized he was totally wrong.  About two weeks later, he did the same thing again when he was working by himself, and it could have cost both of us our jobs.  The next day, this time he did not apologize, instead he threatened to quit because I had yelled at him, and he started to imply that he was going to attempt to get me fired for being verbally abusive to him, under the “hostile work place employment laws”.

I couldn’t believe it.  I had gotten this guy hired to work with me through a lot of effort.  He would not have gotten this job without me, he had not even known that this job existed, and he was not a very good candidate for this job.  Now, it looked like he was going to try to get me fired, which would have resulted in him being fired too, when it became known why I had reprimanded him.  Besides losing this job, I had more to worry about, I had two extra trucks, and two work trailers on property that this person owned.  I was paying him rent, but not high rent.  It appeared that I had better start looking for some place else to park four things.

I called the pastor of the Church that I had been going to, to ask him if he knew anywhere that I could park my two extra trucks and trailers.  I explained the situation to him, that I was really upset that my friend was trying to get me fired from my job because I had reprimanded him for twice doing something that could have caused us both to lose our jobs, and now I needed to get my trucks and trailers off of his property.  I knew that the pastor’s sons had farms outside of Dickinson.  I knew that one of the church members had 3,000 acres outside of Dickinson.

I never heard back from this pastor.  I didn’t ask for money, I asked if he knew of a place for me to park my two trucks and two trailers, knowing that he did know several places belonging to Church members.  I said that I was worried about losing this job, I needed this job right now.  I didn’t hear back from him.

As I stated earlier in this blog post, I have given money to the pastor of this Church, I have given money to several of the Church members, I have offered to give work to several Church members.  As I have already stated, this Church has a very large amount of money in the bank, and they make announcements each month about having donated large amounts of money to churches outside of this area.  I didn’t ask for money, I just asked for help.  Why can’t anyone help me?

My friend realized that he would more likely lose his job than me, for complaining that I yelled at him for what he did.  I don’t have to get my trucks and trailers off of his property at the moment.  I did see again, that there is something wrong with people in North Dakota.  Why was my friend trying to cause me to lose my job, after I have helped him so many times?  Why was the Church that I was going to, refusing to help me, when I had given money and had helped people in the Church?

 

German Catholics In North Dakota Part III

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In the South, during the 1700s and 1800s, there was slavery.  Wealthy people on farms and plantations owned black people, and forced them to work for free.

In order to be wealthy enough to own slaves, you were not a stupid person, you were likely educated.  I have wondered what kind of thought process occurred in an educated person’s mind, in order to reconcile, the fact that you owned other people.  Three general possibilities:  You believed that blacks were so inferior, that they did not have the same rights as whites;  You believed that according to the Bible, slavery had existed, and it was allowable;  You didn’t let the thought of moral right and wrong guide what you did.

I can see atheists deciding that they would not worry about moral right and wrong, and participate in slavery because it would not be in conflict with their religious beliefs, they have none.  But slavery was not engaged in by atheists alone.  The South was predominantly Christian Protestant.  I see that the root of the slavery problem was not that people in the South did not worry about moral right and wrong, it was that their sense and understanding of moral right and wrong was warped.

The Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, De-Segregation, Integration of Public Schools, the Civil Rights Movement, all happened in order to bring equal and fair treatment to people in the South.  Me, I have to admit, that one of the underlying causes of the resistance to change was that the Christian Protestant beliefs in the South did not squash the prejudice and hate in people’s minds, like it should have.  In other words, people in the South were predominantly Christian Protestant, but they were filled with hate, and they should not have been if they were in fact followers and believers in Christianity.

Now, I want to point out a similar problem that the German Catholics have had.  Over in Germany in the 1930s, the people were predominantly Catholic.  In Germany, there became an out of control hatred of the Jews.  The Jews were forced by law, to wear the Star of David on their clothes.  They were mistreated, ridiculed, and abused in public.  The Jews were forced to relocate to crowded ghettos, their homes, property, and land were taken.  The Jews were later relocated to work camps and concentration camps, and forced to work as slaves.  Many Jews were worked to death, starved to death, or were killed in the gas chambers.  The Catholics in Germany, if they were truly following and believing in Christianity, they would not have allowed this to happen.

At the end of World War II, there were two entities that were authorized to create identification papers and travel documents for refugees in Europe:  the Red Cross, and the Catholic Church.  It is now known historical record and fact, that the Catholic Church officials created many false identification papers for Nazis that were known to be war criminals being sought by allied forces for prosecution for atrocities against the Jews.  The Catholic Church provided false identification, false documents, aid, and assistance to known war criminals, to allow them to escape to other parts of Europe and South America.

It was not that Germany was full of atheists, it was full of Catholics.  How could you be a Catholic, and think that rounding up millions of Jews, taking their property, and killing them, was the Christian thing to do?  The Catholic Church itself even helped the war criminals escape prosecution, and escape from Germany.

What the Christian Protestants did in the South with slavery was wrong.  What the Christian Catholics did in Germany was wrong.

The De-Segregation, forced Integration of Schools, and Civil Rights Movements that occurred in the South in the 1960s and 1970s were recent actions that occurred to battle continued prejudice, discrimination, and hatred in the South, that had not been successfully eliminated by Protestant religions.  The Protestant religions in the South are partly to blame for allowing and enabling many Christians to live with hateful ideas and hateful practices.

Right here in Dickinson, the Catholic Church is greatly to blame for allowing and enabling these Catholics here in Dickinson to mistreat and take advantage of out-of-state workers.  The Catholic Church, which is one of the wealthiest institutions in the World, had the resources, to help the many thousands of people who came to North Dakota and lived in filth and squalor.

Again, go and look at the Real Estate Multiple Listing Guide in Dickinson, and look at all the happy smiling faces of the realtors.  They have no remorse for taking advantage of the out-of-state workers.  People traveling here to Dickinson, with hopes of finding a good job, and providing for their families back home, only to find that one-bedroom apartments were $1,500 per month, homes that had once been $700 per month, were now $4,000 per month.  Many workers slept in their cars at Wal-Mart, many workers slept in their cars at Tiger Truck Stop, many workers slept in tents at Patterson Lake, or in people’s back yards.  Real estate agents and property developers did not want any man-camps, they wanted to keep prices high!, they wanted to get rich!  They, and the Catholic Church did not want any homeless shelter, these homeless people don’t matter.  The Catholics in Dickinson greatly mistreated the out-of-state workers.  It was not that the Catholic Church or the Catholics did not have the resources, means, and ability to help, it was that the Catholics in Dickinson have hatred towards others.

German Catholics In North Dakota, Part I

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I went to Catholic School, first through fourth grade, Sacred Heart School.  My first grade teacher was Sister Louise.  Sister Louise used to beat us severely.  Mostly she would use her bare hands to slap our faces, but she also beat our palms with a paddle-ball paddle, and she also had a long wooden rod for other types of beatings.

I believe that most of the kids’ parents did not believe how bad she beat us.  Justin, Jonathan, and George all talked to me about it later in High School, “Can you believe that shit, that shit was fucked up.”  All I could say was, “Yea, I know.”

There were other stories of physical harm done to kids at Sacred Heart.  I do remember some students who did not return to Sacred Heart after the first day or the first week of school, these were the kids whose parents believed them.

Now days, the police would have been to that school, the first day, and taken teachers away in handcuffs for assault and child abuse.  We, all of us, could easily win a class action lawsuit today against the Catholic Church for the physical abuse that was done to us.  I could write pages and pages of instances of physical abuse at Sacred Heart School, both of me, and of my classmates.

Putting the above aside for a moment, I want to talk about something else in the Catholic Church that I became aware of as a young teenager.  A friend of my father had been a comptroller for a very large Catholic organization for many years, so many years, that he was trusted.  Many Catholic priests had come to this comptroller with the same “problem”.  These priests had accumulated over a million dollars in personal assets, and they did not want anyone to know or for anyone to find out.  One of the ways in which this was happening, was through relatives and parish members bequeathing things to them in their Wills.

My mother was disgusted, that throughout our state, our country, the World, the Catholic Church solicits offerings, alms, donations, from the poorest of the poor, the people that are barely surviving, and yet the Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions on Earth.  The Catholic priests are millionaires, yet there are many poor people in their parish, who have a hard time paying for food, rent, and utilities.

I started off this blog post the way I did, so that I could state that I know there are some things wrong with the Catholic Church, and Catholic culture and values.  Here in Dickinson, North Dakota, the Catholic Church is, and has been the primary cultural and societal influence.  When there was no oil field, when the German and Ukrainian settlers first came to this area, the Catholic Church was very, very important, and it always has been.

The reason why I am writing about all of this now, is that I want to say that going to Mass, going to Confession, saying Hail Marys and Our Fathers, is not really getting it done as far as instilling human decency in these Catholic people here in Dickinson.  I want to point out again, that the people here in Dickinson really treated out of state workers very badly during this last oil boom.  The people who mistreated the out of state workers the most, were the real estate agents, the property managers, and the property investors here in Dickinson.  Not only did the real estate agents, property managers, and property investors make the rent and housing prices quadruple, they helped to make sure that there was a scarcity of housing and no inexpensive housing alternatives, by making sure there were no new trailer parks or man-camps constructed outside of Dickinson.

If you read the Bible, what you are supposed to do if you are a Christian, you will read sayings and teachings of Jesus and the Apostles.  Jesus once said, so as you do to the least of my people, so do you to me.  Therefore, if you are a Christian, you should watch what you do, to everybody!  Jesus didn’t say, so as you do to the people who are from this area ….

There is a big flaw in Catholicism, if you go to Mass every Sunday, and you do not know some simple teachings from the Bible.  “What profiteth a man that he gain the whole World, yet lose his soul?  Or, what shall he give in exchange for his soul?”

You can go and look at the Real Estate Multiple Listing Guide in Dickinson, and you can look at the smiling photographs of the realtors in Dickinson, good good Catholics all!  People who have connections, and can really get things done!  Yet there is no homeless shelter in Dickinson.  Did I mention, that the Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions in the World?

There are probably some Catholics reading this right now, and they are probably screaming,  “We don’t have to help people!  We don’t have to help anybody!”  If you don’t like this post, you are sure to not like the next post, “German Catholics In North Dakota Part II”.

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.

 

 

I Want To Beat The Chamber of Commerce In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I want to beat the Chamber of Commerce in Dickinson, North Dakota.  I want to get to you, before they do.  I want to tell you the truth, rather than have you listen to lies and bullshit.

The individuals in the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce may not be bad people, but they have a job to do, and that job is to lie to you about Dickinson.

When I first wrote this blog post in November of 2015, the housing prices in Dickinson were very, very high.  Extremely high.  This was the result of greed, lack of human decency, and stupidity.  There was this lie going around that everybody in the oil field was making $100,000 per year.  In the five years that I have lived in Dickinson, I have only ever met three people who made over $100,000 per year in the oil field.

The Oil Boom was over in western North Dakota by the end of 2015, due to the price of oil falling from over $100 per barrel down to $40 per barrel.  Many oil field jobs went away, and many out of state workers returned to the states where they came from.  Once the apartments, manufactured home parks, and trailer parks in Dickinson became less than half occupied, the rents throughout Dickinson dropped greatly.

During the Oil Boom, the people in Dickinson were not friendly, not helpful, and not cooperative.  Now that the Oil Boom is over, the people in Dickinson are even meaner, in part due to increased competition for fewer jobs, and also because they want people to leave Dickinson.

The people in Dickinson dislike people who are from someplace else, and they also dislike each other.  Anything you say to people in Dickinson, will probably make them dislike you more.  If you arrive in Dickinson now, you are better off staying away from people.  Remain in your hotel, or your home, there isn’t anything to do or anywhere to go anyway, and you will likely be followed and stopped by the Dickinson Police.

There is a shortage of women in Dickinson, and a lack of attractive women.  The ratio of men to women in Dickinson is probably 3:1.  The Dickinson Police Department try as hard as they can to not allow prostitution in Dickinson, though it is needed.  The Dickinson Police create fake advertisement for women wanting to have sex, and then arrest people when they show up.

You can not safely go out to bars or restaurants in Dickinson at night, because the Dickinson Police try as hard as they can to arrest people for DUI.  In Dickinson, the Police are so eager to arrest people for DUI or other charges, that they will follow you and stop you for any reason that they can think of.  The Police try to encourage people to leave Dickinson.

In Dickinson, all of the restaurants have employees and servers that don’t like their jobs.  All of the restaurant employees think that everyone else is making over $100,000 per year, and they aren’t, and they are mad about it.  The servers are disappointed and can’t understand why people don’t spend $50 per meal and leave them a $20 tip, like they all heard about.  How are they ever going to make $300 a night at Applebees like they planned?

There is not a lot to do in Dickinson.  It is cold and grey from about October through April, at least seven months of cold weather.

The oil field work has been reduced by about 80% over the past several years.  Most of the oil field workers who lost their jobs went back to the states where they came from because housing prices were so high here, the people are unfriendly, there is a shortage of women, you can’t go out to bars or restaurants at night, the restaurants have terrible service, there is not a lot to do, the Police encourage people to leave Dickinson, and it is cold for at least seven months of the year.

The people in Dickinson, and the employers in Dickinson, hate people with an education.  The employers in Dickinson would much rather hire someone with several felony convictions, than someone with a college degree.  In Dickinson, your supervisors and co-workers will be people convicted of robbery, theft, assault, and drug charges.  Perform a Google search and look up your company owners, managers, and personnel on www.ndcourts.gov/publicsearch/default.html before you accept a job with a company in Dickinson.

What do I want?  I want the truth to be known.  I had thought that Dickinson could change, but once the Oil Boom was over, the local people in Dickinson became ever meaner.  I had not realized that the local people in Dickinson were on their best behavior during the Oil Boom.  All I can do now is warn people what Dickinson is like.

What Dickinson, North Dakota, Is Like

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When I was a kid in the 1970s, when my family went on vacations, we visited old houses and museums.  When we went to St. Augustine, Florida, we visited the oldest school house in the United States, which I believe was built in the late 1600s, and also some other old houses that were built in the 1800s.  When we went to Key West, Florida, we visited the house where the writer Ernest Hemingway had lived, I believe this house was built in the 1930s, and we also went to the Naval museum.  In Sarasota, Florida, we went to the Ringling Circus winter residence, I believe this house was built in the 1930s, and we also went to the Ringling Circus museum.  In Savannah, Georgia, I remember when I was about eight years old, it seemed like we went through about a hundred houses that were built in the 1800s.  Outside of Lynchburg, Virginia, I went through a residence of Thomas Jefferson, called Poplar Forest, that was built in about 1790.

In contrast to what I saw when I had visited old houses and museums in other states, in the Dickinson area of North Dakota in the early 1900s, families were living in 10’x12′ grass sod huts, with dirt floors, dirt walls, no furniture, no paintings, no photographs, no children’s toys, no phonographs, no pianos, no indoor water pump, no indoor toilet.  In order to understand what living in Dickinson, North Dakota, is like now, you have got to realize and understand that many people in this area of North Dakota lived in very primitive conditions up until very recently.

When I had travelled to other states and visited old houses, I could see how the people had lived in the past, what types of things they did to prepare food, how they decorated and adorned their homes, what kinds of “modern” conveniences they had, what they did in their spare time:  read books, write letters, draw, play an instrument, play board games, swing on porch or tree swings, ride bicycles, play lawn games.  However, when I visited old houses outside of Dickinson, visited the pioneer museum, looked at old photographs, and talked to Dickinson residents, I found that the people here had had very little, often times they did not even have all of the bare necessities.  The harshness and starkness of life in this area of North Dakota is partially the cause of people in this area being unfriendly, inhospitable, jealous and malicious to people from out-of-state, and behaving in a primitive manner.

There are some psychological theories on human development, that explain human behavior based on what is called a “hierarchy of needs”,  which basically says that humans will try to fulfill their most basic needs first, in this order: 1)oxygen, 2)water, 3)food, 4)clothing, 5)shelter, 6)personal security, 7)mating, 8)security of family, 9)social interaction within family, 10)social interaction within extended family, 11) social interaction within a village,  … and when the basic needs have been fulfilled, later, there comes the expression of religion, creation of laws, passing on of learning,  …. and if a group of people passes out of the primitive stage of development they begin to have higher learning in the areas of science, math, medicine, art, architecture, and philosophy.

In order for a group of people to pass out of the primitive stage of existence, there has to be enough resources available so that the people do not have to spend every minute of every day just trying to survive.  Unfortunately in North Dakota, that didn’t happen.  Resources were so scarce in fact, that people looked and looked for something to build their houses with, and all they could figure to do was to cut the grass sod and stack it, in order to make the walls for their house.  They looked and looked, and all they could find to use to heat their home was dried buffalo dung, so they burned dried buffalo dung for heating and cooking.  Forget about furniture, forget about wall paper, forget about art or photographs on the wall, forget about a piano or a phonograph, this was just bare survival.  This was the early 1900s in North Dakota.  Back East, people were painting, boating, playing tennis, playing golf, riding bicycles, attending concerts, going on picnics.

If you looked at a map in the early 1900s, you could see the state of Vermont, Maine, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, …O.K., these are cold states.  On the map you could see the state of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Texas.  In those states, they have houses, built of wood, with furniture, they had houses there for a couple of hundred years already.  Why did people in North Dakota, stack grass sod to make a 10’x12′ house, and collect buffalo dung to burn, when they could have moved to the southern United States?  I asked a Dickinson resident in his late 50s one time, why people in North Dakota didn’t look at a map, and move south?  Why didn’t people in North Dakota read a book or a newspaper and realize that they didn’t have to live in the cold and the barrenness?  He replied that people just didn’t really think you could do that.

If you come to North Dakota, you will see that there are not very many trees, it is mostly grassland and badlands.  There used to be a lot of buffalo, now there isn’t.  There are some deer, but not a lot.  It is cold October through May, eight months of cold.  If you stay here for a year, and you have to go outside in the winter, you will begin to understand how hard it was to live in North Dakota.  The people in North Dakota had such a hard time trying to survive, that they did not progress to the higher levels on the human development scale, they were stuck at the lower levels, spending all of their time trying to meet basic needs.  As a result, there was no architectural development in this area of North Dakota, all structures are very basic.  The education level is very low due to children having to leave school at an early age to work on the farm, and very few families able or wanting to have their children go to college, which contributes to ignorance and primitive behavior.  Due to it being so hard for people to survive in North Dakota, they do not have any concept of hospitality.

The local people in Dickinson think that they are friendly, but because this area had been isolated in the past, with many people here never traveling outside this area, and the education level being very low, somehow the people here do not realize that they are in fact, unfriendly.  Their sense of friendliness and helpfulness to other human beings is not very civilized.  Just this evening, I was watching the evening news with a Dickinson resident, where it was shown on the news that a Southwest Airlines passenger ran to the bathroom on the airplane, and was heard groaning, about ten minutes prior to landing.  The flight attendants assumed the man was drunk, didn’t check on him, and had everyone de-board the plane at landing, and called the police.  The passenger was found dead in the bathroom, he had had a brain aneurism.  The Dickinson resident stated,”They are not required to do anything, a person is not required to do anything, you might think that someone has to help somebody else, but there is no law requiring people to help somebody else.”

Because the people in Dickinson had had such a hard time trying to survive, and they were not able to progress to the higher levels of human development, there are other manifestations of this in addition to the lack of architectural development and lack of hospitality.  People in Dickinson do not have an appreciation for beauty, recreation, and leisure.

I have written several posts to this blog about women in Dickinson being overweight, out-of-shape, unattractive, poorly dressed, and making no attempt to look attractive.  In architecture, painting, sculpture, dance, music, poetry, and writing there is the pursuit of beauty, but they don’t have that here, they are still primitive here.  I think that the women here would not be so overweight it they had the concept of recreation, where you swim, walk, ride bikes, roller blade, canoe, sail board, play tennis, play golf, but they don’t understand recreation.

If you come to Dickinson, as I have written elsewhere in this blog, there are certain things that will get you into trouble with the local people.  If you have a wife or girl friend that is not overweight, they won’t understand this, and they won’t like this, so I recommend if you have an attractive wife or girl friend, that you keep her out of sight, they don’t appreciate or understand beauty, and they tend to be jealous.  If you have an Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Porsche, or Mercedes, they will not like it, they will not work on it, and they will not like you, they don’t appreciate or understand beauty, and they tend to be jealous.  If you talk about warm weather, the beach, sailing, surfing, running, rock climbing, swimming, bicycling, or travelling, they won’t like this, they won’t understand, and they will just get mad and frustrated, they don’t appreciate or understand recreation and leisure.  As I have stated before, if you want to know what living in Dickinson will be like, you need to watch the movies “Deliverance”, “The Grapes of Wrath”, and “Planet of the Apes”.

Women in Watford City, North Dakota

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In this blog post, I will explain that there appears to be a higher percentage of attractive women in Watford City, North Dakota than in Dickinson, due to the amount of women who have come from out-of-state to work in Watford City.  Also, I would like to point out some of the differences between the out-of-state worker women in Watford City and the women in Dickinson.

I have had to work in Watford City, North Dakota for one month now.  I stayed at Teddy’s Hotel in Watford City for the first two weeks, and at Roosevelt’s Hotel in Watford City for the second two weeks.  I look forward to going back to Roosevelt’s Hotel each day when I get done at work, because Roosevelt’s Hotel has about four very attractive women who work at the front desk, and several nice looking women who work elsewhere in the hotel.  When I have to deal with the women at the front desk, like asking them to fax something, extending the length of the reservation, going over a schedule, I can’t think straight, I can’t talk right, I don’t think that I make sense, and it’s because I am distracted by them, in a good way.  I wish I had more reasons to stop at the front desk.

I don’t know if the owner of Roosevelt’s Hotel has a charismatic and charming personality, or if the over-decorated hotel interior attracts very good-looking women, I don’t know how or why, but Roosevelt’s Hotel has somehow managed to hire some women that are very, very hard to find in North Dakota.  The front desk women are feminine, slender, in-shape, healthy, good-looking, poised, have a positive attitude, and are attractively dressed.  Unlike most women from North Dakota, the women at the front desk care about their appearance, they have beautiful healthy long hair, they wear nice modest bits of jewelry that look good on them and match their outfits, they wear tasteful and appropriate dresses, skirts, and slacks.

As I write this, I realize that women in North Dakota make me mad.  I have spent about three years of my life in North Dakota, about two years more than I intended.  I am in my mid-forties.  I feel like my life is concluding in a way that I never would have wanted.  I am living in a place that is unpleasantly cold for about seven months each year.  The rents and property prices are extremely high, especially considering that it is unpleasantly cold for about seven months each year.  There is not a lot to do for recreation or entertainment.  The police will get you right away if you try to drink at a bar.  And the women.

The women in North Dakota are overweight.  They have decided amongst themselves that they are not going to put any effort or care into how they look.  They are not going to exercise, stay in shape, stay fit, or stay healthy.  They are not going to take care of their hair.  They are not going to buy nice clothes.  There is not a chance they are going to shop for shoes, a belt, bracelet, earings, necklace, or a scarf, to put together an outfit to match a skirt.  I could also say that once these women in North Dakota have decided to be unattractive, that this includes being unattractive in their attitudes, intellect, and speech.

What I have previously failed to write about, it just didn’t consciously occur to me, is that the deliberately unattractive attitude of women in North Dakota has carried over into just about every aspect of life in North Dakota.  I have previously written a couple of times about the woman in the Dickinson Department of Motor Vehicles saying to people,”No!, You have to have a North Dakota birth certificate!  We can’t take birth certificates from other states!”  In this case, the deliberately unattractive attitude of women in North Dakota shows up as hostility and ignorance.  I previously wrote about an evening event in Dickinson where about sixty percent of the women were under-dressed.  In this case, the deliberately unattractive attitude of women in North Dakota shows up as “We don’t care how we look, we don’t care if we look bad.”

When I have been in Watford City, and I have met women who are from out-of-state, I have noticed that their attitude is different, it is what I would call more normal.  I guess that I had been perceiving that their attitude was different by observing their actions, their behavior, what they said, and partly by the way that they dressed.  I hadn’t realized until I began writing this post, that when a woman buys and wears nice shoes, nice belt, jewelry, dresses, skirts, and slacks, that it communicates,”I am not ignorant, I care about how I look, I want to be attractive.”

 

 

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.

Watford City, North Dakota

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I have been in Watford City, North Dakota for two weeks.  Watford City is approximately seventy miles north of Dickinson.  I am here for work.  Watford City is more of a boom town than Dickinson.  It seems like about eighty percent of the people in Watford City are out-of-state workers.  Most of the license plates in Watford City are Idaho license plates, many license plates from Texas, Minnesota, Washington, and California.  There appears to be a much greater shortage of housing in Watford City than in Dickinson.  There is no mistaking that the people in Watford City are here to work, there is absolutely no other reason to be in Watford City.

I am pretty sure that there is no movie theater in Watford City, there is no shopping mall, and no recreation center.  I do not think that there is any car dealer or taxi service.  There is a Tractor Supply hardware store and a Cash Wise grocery store.  There is a pizza restaurant, a Subway, a Chinese restaurant, a Japanese steakhouse, and I hear that there is a Taco Johns.  There are several bars.  There is an Anytime Fitness, next to the Subway, which is right next to Teddy’s Hotel and the Little Missouri Hotel where I am staying.  Too bad I quit my membership with Anytime Fitness in Dickinson about six months ago.

I have heard that the true oil-field jobs in North Dakota are primarily centered in Williston, and I have believed that.  Watford City is approximately forty-five miles south of Williston, and the work here seems to be a lot more focused on oil-field work than in Dickinson.  The workers here that have steady employment all have new $40K plus trucks.  The workers who just got here have old ratty cars with out-of-state license plates and all of their clothes piled up to the windows in the back seat.

Because of the amount of money involved in the oil-field project that I am working on, the company that I am working for has each of us in our own hotel room, each room is $1,300 per week.  I worked 84 hours my first week, and 84 hours my second week.  With the overtime and per-diem pay, this will be the most money I have ever made per week.  I have spoken to some of the electricians on this project, and some of them are making $4,000 per week with overtime and per-diem pay.  This work may last eight more months.

At first, I thought that the women working in Watford City were the wives and girlfriends of out-of-state oil-field workers.  This is partly true.  It also appears to be the case, that young women from places like Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Oklahoma, etc., have come to Watford City to work in restaurant and hospitality jobs.  I think that these young women came here because they could get a job right away, and these service, restaurant, and hospitality jobs pay much better than in the states where they came from.  Unlike Dickinson, these women seem to like men.  At first, I incorrectly assumed that in a boom town, there are a lot more men than women, and the women are tired of getting hit-on and asked out.  In Watford City, there are so many young unattached women that have come here to work, that these women actually want to meet men.  I think that another reason why these young unattached women are interested in men in Watford City is because they found out that a lot of these men are making $4,000 per week.

I think that it might be easier right now to get a higher paying oil-field job in Watford City than in Dickinson, but I think that it is much harder to find a place to live, you might have to stay in a hotel, and the hotels are expensive.  The kinds of jobs that appear to be available in Watford City are truck driving, heavy equipment operating, welding, electrician, heavy-equipment mechanic, metal fabricator.

Work Slow-Down in Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have not posted anything to this blog for approximately six weeks.  I have been very busy due to changes in Dickinson.  Normally, there is a work slow-down in North Dakota from the beginning of December through the end of March.  This normal work slow down did occur.  It is difficult to perform different types of construction due to the ground freezing solid, due to concrete not being able to cure, and due to it being difficult to work outside when it is below 0 degrees Fahrenheit.  I would estimate that approximately twenty-five percent of the out-of-state workers go home at this time of year.

For the out-of-state worker, if you are not working more than forty hours per week, the cost of rent is so high in Dickinson, that you would probably want to go home in the winter, you see most of your money going towards rent, you are not getting ahead financially, there is not a lot to do in Dickinson, it is miserably cold outside, so you go home.  The long time residents of Dickinson say that the winter in North Dakota “keeps out the riff-raff”.  I agree with them on this.  I hate white-trash.  The high cost of rent, the high cost of utilities, the severity of the cold and snow, the lack of work, makes it difficult to get by in the winter in North Dakota, and the white-trash leave here like rats from a sinking ship.

In addition to the normal winter work slow-down, there has been a second contributor to the work slow-down, the price of oil.  Sometime in December, the price of oil went below $50 per barrel.  The oil companies here in North Dakota such as Whiting, Marathon, and Continental, have calculated that when they can sell the North Dakota oil for more than $80 per barrel, they are making a profit.  Once the price of North Dakota oil falls below $80 per barrel, to the oil companies, it’s like a car dealer selling a new car for less than it costs to manufacture it, they don’t want to do this, there is no point in pumping oil from the ground to sell it at a loss.  People here in North Dakota and across the United States speculate on how this will affect employment.  People that use sound logic and reasoning believe that under these circumstances, the oil companies will reduce the amount of oil that is pumped, and try to reduce costs wherever they can because they are not making a profit on the oil that is pumped.  In the “Dickinson Press” newspaper in late January, there was a front page news story about the Patterson drilling company parking forty of its drill rigs on land outside of Dickinson because contracts for drilling new wells had declined.  This newspaper story also cited another drilling company parking its drill rigs outside of Dickinson due to a slow down in drilling.

In national news, it was either Baker Hughes or Halliburton that announced they were laying off 7,000 people.  Schlumberger announced that they were laying off 1,000 workers.  Other oil industry companies announced lay-offs.  My estimate is that the Baker Hughes and Schlumberger lay-offs will probably remove at least one hundred workers in Dickinson.  Patterson drilling parking forty of their drill rigs will probably cost about four hundred jobs in Dickinson.  The Dakota Prairie Refinery in Dickinson is just being completed, this project had employed more than several hundred people at any one time, and these people are going to be laid off now.  When you add in the other drilling company that parked its drill rigs outside of Dickinson, just these companies mentioned in this paragraph will total about 1,000 jobs lost in Dickinson in January.

There are approximately six very large apartment communities that are just being completed in Dickinson, totaling approximately 1,000 new units.  At this same time, I believe that there are at least 1,000 jobs that have been lost in Dickinson.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  If you have read some of my blog posts from 2014, you can see that much of what I wrote about, was that the oil boom that Dickinson had been experiencing presently, had happened before about thirty years ago.  I think that in 2015 many people in Dickinson will experience a catastrophe.  Some people employed with Baker Hughes, Halliburton, or Patterson drilling, who had purchased a house in Dickinson in order to move their wife and children here, will not be able to pay their mortgage on the $300,000 house they bought, nor will they be able to sell it for more than $250,000.  People who purchased new travel trailers to live in RV Parks, and people who purchased manufactured homes in manufactured home communities will just walk away from their trailers because they will no longer be able to make the payments and pay the lot rent, and there will be no point in living in Dickinson anyway if they can’t get a job here.  People will walk away from their apartment leases.  Will the new apartment communities still be able to charge $2,000 a month for an apartment?

I would like to be here in Dickinson long enough to see some people have their heads shoved in shit, which is what I felt that some people have done to me, merely for coming here, and being from somewhere else.  Myself, and other people have come to North Dakota, with a college education, with no criminal record, with a work history of professionalism, and having lived and worked throughout the United States, and been treated like dirt by ignorant, uneducated, never-been-anywhere North Dakotans who temporarily and briefly have been given power over other people by the oil boom here.  I would like to be here to see some of the local people and businesses who have mistreated and taken advantage of people from out-of-town, get what is coming to them.