Tag Archives: Relocating to Watford City

Well Behaved Kids In Watford City, North Dakota

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At first, I had nothing good to say about Watford City.  After about five months of living in Watford City, and writing about it, I have covered most of the bad things in Watford City, probably more than several times.  There are a few good things about Watford City that appear every now and then.

I have noticed that the local school-aged kids here are very well behaved.  I lived in Idaho for about five years, Idaho is about 60% to 70% Mormon where I lived, and the Mormon areas of Idaho are well known for having very well behaved kids.  The local kids here are even better behaved than the Mormon kids, probably because they don’t believe that they will evolve to become gods, and become gods of their own planet one day (Mormon doctrine).

I guess that I have seen local kids aged two to eighteen.  I didn’t notice them or give much thought to them most of the time because they were quiet, not doing anything obnoxious, and not doing anything wrong.  I only started to consciously be aware of these local kids because they are so polite and respectful.  At many businesses they have been holding the door open for me, and letting me in or out ahead of themselves, because I am old.

I have only seen kids like this before, when I bought a home in rural Idaho in a town with a population of about 5,000.  The two boys at the end of the dirt road did not have a basketball, football, soccer ball, baseball, remote control car, mountain bike, or hardly anything.  Every day after school, they had to work on their farm, and their neighbors’ farms.  In the summer when there was no school, they had to set up irrigation pipes, let them run for an hour, then move the pipes further along, let them run for an hour, then move them again, all day long.  The one that had to mow my lawn when I was away working in North Dakota, his name was Zane.  When Zane graduated from high school a couple of years ago, his dad told me that he got into some school to be an air-traffic controller.  I believe that they make $200,000-$300,000 per year.  If I had to move back to Idaho, where it is difficult to get work, I might end up having to mow Zane’s lawn.

Watford City and the Mexicanification of Work

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When I went to work for an oil field service company in Dickinson, North Dakota in 2011, I asked the foreman why there weren’t a lot of Mexicans working in the oil field in North Dakota.  He said, “Because that is the way we want it.”  He did not feel the need to say anything else.  I had asked the question for several different reasons, he knew that, his answer just about covered everything.

When I was living in Arizona in 2005, I met a man named Todd who was 55 years old.  When Todd was in his twenties, he dropped out of Northern Arizona University, to work hanging drywall.  He got paid a little over a dollar per sheet, and he found that he could make $12-$14 per hour.  Todd liked hanging drywall, he was good at it, he was making good money.  By the time Todd was 30 years old, he was married, he had a young son, he owned a tri-plex home, he owned the the lot next to it, and he owned his own drywall business.  Things were going well for Todd.

Sometime in the 1990s, Todd started to have difficulty in his drywall business.  He was often under-bid on drywall contracts by competitors who were using mostly Mexican labor.  The Mexicans worked for less money.  By year 2000, Todd’s drywall company was out of business.  Todd could not even get a job as a drywall worker.  Companies said to Todd, “For the pay you want, I could hire two Mexicans.”

When I met Todd, he had lost everything, the only thing he had left was a 1990 Ford F350 that he had bought new, that was all he had left.  In the United States, roofers, framers, drywallers, painters, and concrete workers used to make enough money to own a home and support a wife and kids.  The Mexican workers accept less pay because the cost of living in Mexico is less, they send their earnings back to Mexico, and they themselves just rough it out here, with many people in the same apartment or trailer.

In Dickinson, back in 2011, it was recognized that these oil field related jobs were high enough paying, for men to support a wife and kids, and to have enough money left over to buy a truck, maybe a house, the way it used to be, the way it should be.  Nobody wanted to see this high wage rate messed up by cheap Mexican labor getting a foot in the door.

Somehow, the temptation was too great for building contractors in Dickinson.  Maybe not enough help was available.  A lot of concrete contractors in Dickinson began to use Mexican labor.  However, every oil field company in Dickinson persisted in using English speaking workers, even to this day.

Things are different in Watford City.  I wrote a previous post titled “Watford City Revisited”, where I stated that Watford City is so difficult to live in, not even North Dakotans will live in Watford City.  I wrote that many of the workers in Watford City are poor people from the South.  It gives me a little comfort to talk to people in Watford City that are from the South, but only a little, because a lot of these people from the South that are in Watford City, are very nearly White Trash.  They are White Trash that have decided that they want to work regularly, for the time being, unless you’ve got some Meth.

I am not really surprised that there are a lot of Mexican workers here in Watford City.  Conditions here in Watford City are very harsh, I believe that it is hard to get workers here.  But what I was surprised to see, and it alarmed me, that here in Watford City, they are having gangs of Mexicans working for oil field service companies.

I want to caution Watford City, that you are making a big, big mistake.  Once cheap Mexican labor gets its foot in the door, many more Mexicans will follow, and the English speaking workers will be displaced.  If there is a shortage of women in Watford City now, just wait until you have five Mexican males living in every apartment and trailer.  When the English speaking men are displaced from their jobs by less costly Mexicans, you will have a workforce that that makes no attempt to bring their wife and kids to Watford City, and makes no attempt to buy a home in Watford City.

Watford City, you had better watch what you are doing.  I don’t know what you did with all that oil field money, that you should have used to make road centerline markings, edge of pavement markings, street signs, street lights, road shoulders, but everybody notices that it isn’t there.  Nobody wants to drive in Watford City at night, edge of pavement not marked, no shoulder, just a deep chasm to make certain your vehicle is totaled.  You are also just about to ruin the high wage rate in the oil field for all of North Dakota.

Watford City Revisited

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Now that I have three jobs, I have to spend part of my time living and working in Watford City, North Dakota.  I have had to stay in Watford City before, and I have written about it before in this blog.

Though I have written a lot of bad things about Dickinson, Dickinson is nicer than Watford City.  I wish that I was back in Dickinson right now.  I could be walking the track at the West River Community Center.  I could be choosing between a variety of mediocre restaurants.  I could be driving on roads with pavement markings, street signs, and shoulders.

If I am “lucky”, my job in Watford City will last four or five months.  I want to be careful what I say, I don’t want to make a hasty decision, so for now, I will just say that Watford City is a shit hole.  Every bad thing that they have in the oil field towns in Utah, Texas, and Williston, they have here in Watford City.

Number one, here in Watford City, there is a shortage of women, and a lack of attractive women.  The ratio of men to women here is probably 6:1.  This is such a horrible place, that many of the workers here are from the South, from very poor areas, the North Dakotans won’t even live in Watford City.

I had to do some errands around town during the day, I had to wait in a couple of businesses with a few young women from the South.  They weren’t glamorous women, they were short and stout, they weren’t ugly, they weren’t pretty either.  They were brave, to attempt to live in Watford City, and to go out and do errands.  If I were them, I would just break down and cry.  I’m about ready to cry.

In Dickinson, women from North Dakota act hostile, angry, and unfriendly because they think some out-of-state worker is going to rape them.  In Watford City, the girlfriends and wives of the oil field workers have a look on their faces, like they know they are going to die, and they have come to accept it.  They get out of their car, and walk into the BBQ restaurant to pick up their to-go order, like it might be the last thing they will ever do.

I talked to some of the women from the South.  They are so fucking scared, that they will talk to you, they are so relieved that you are not going to rape them and kill them.  When I tell them that I live in Dickinson, and Dickinson is more normal than Watford City, like having street lights and places to go, their eyes light up, they are “all ears”, like you are talking about some wonderful place, and they wished that they lived there.

At the UPS store in Watford City, the young woman ahead of me in line, wanted to send a 9″x12″ envelope for next day delivery.  The clerk said,”That will be $105.”  The young lady said are you serious, for that little thing?  Isn’t there something cheaper?  The young lady went ahead and paid the $105 on her debit card.  (That is a day’s pay back where she comes from.).  I handed the clerk three sheets of paper to copy, she put them on the document feeder, three copies came out.  The clerk said that will be $5.00.  I said that’s ridiculous, are you kidding?

Through my Facebook Page, “Dickinson NorthDakota”, I am going to try to contact the Chamber of Commerce in Watford City, to remind them what a shit hole town they have.  I want to let the Chamber of Commerce know, that just like Dickinson, I can get every internet search for “living in Watford City”, “moving to Watford City”, “working in Watford City”, “women in Watford City”, “corruption in Watford City”, to show my site at the top of the first page of search results.  Every oil field company, construction company, business, worker, girlfriend, and housewife will read about Watford City, and not want to come here.

You really need to fix your town, it is horrible.  One of the worst places I have ever been.