Tag Archives: working in Watford City North Dakota

The Worst Job Advertisement I Have Seen In Some Time, AE2S Construction

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I have been looking at the on-line job advertisement sites like North Dakota Job Services and Indeed.com, and I came across one of the worst job advertisements that I have seen in some time, for a Project Coordinator at AE2S Construction:

Due to our continued growth, AE2S Construction is currently seeking an experienced Project Coordinator to work out of our Watford City Shop location.  The ideal candidate is organized with an eye for detail, is a strong communicator, and excels in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment.

  • Assemble project documents, shop drawings, manuals, etc., and other project and post-construction submittals, for distribution to clients and vendors
  • Assemble and verify construction contract change order information for approval by Project Manager
  • Provide assistance with contract administration for various projects
  • Participate in project status meetings
  • Enter project data, track the accounting and billing of materials, and maintain ProContractor database
  • Maintain calendars, coordinate meetings, and arrange travel with Travel Coordinator for ACL staff
  • Provide project coordination and support to ACL Construction Manager, Project Managers, Estimators, and all other employees to include duties such as filing, copying, scanning, answering phones, mailing documents, preparing conference room and meeting materials, and distributing mail
  • Perform weekly processing tasks, in conjunction with the AE2S Construction Accounting team, including payroll, timesheets, equipment usage processing, new hire paperwork, accounts payable, credit card processing, and initial accounts receivable follow up
  • Create payment requests and prepare lien waivers
  • Maintain WC vehicles and equipment registrations and other related licensing and maintenance
  • Order and manage inventory of office supplies
  • Work directly with the AE2S Construction Accounting team on all matters related to WC accounting, as well as perform additional accounting activities as requested

This is fucking ridiculous.  If you cut that list in half, that would still be more work than one person should be assigned.  What the Fuck is wrong with AE2S Construction?  Who wrote this?

If you count down to bullet points #7 and #8, just those duties alone are what one administrative assistant should be assigned.  I am an engineer, and I have worked as an estimator, project coordinator, superintendent, and project manager, and whoever wrote this job advertisement is a Fucking Asshole, or perhaps the entire company management are Assholes.

Once the job advertisement gets into ordering office supplies, filing, answering phones, copying, scanning, arranging travel, preparing conference room and meeting materials, it appears that they are most likely seeking a woman with secretarial skills, and getting her to do accounting, payroll, human resources, billing, and project coordination too.  This is wrong.

I hope that any woman who reads this understands what this is all about, she would be expected to perform accounting, payroll, human resources, and project coordination work, and not be paid at the same level as an accountant, human resources person, or project manager.

If there is any woman or person who could perform all of these duties, please start your own business.  You are a very talented, intelligent, and skilled person.  Do not let other people take advantage of you by dumping their work on you because they are lazy pieces of shit.

Advice To Poor People From Out Of State Regarding Dickinson, North Dakota

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If you are a poor person living in a different state, and you are considering coming to North Dakota, I have some advice and some warnings for you.  If you are White Trash, and you don’t plan on buckling down before you get here, you will probably be stopped by the police your first day here, your information will be collected, and every time a police car gets behind you in Williston, Watford City, or Dickinson, your information will show up from when you were last stopped.  They will try to get you for everything and anything that White Trash normally do:  open container, DUI, drug paraphernalia, illegal drugs, drugs without a prescription, concealed weapon, failure to have vehicle insurance, and possession of stolen property.

Keep this in mind, I know someone this happened to, and I have read about it being done elsewhere.  You can be arrested for possession of stolen property, placed in handcuffs, placed in a police car, be processed at the jail, have your photo taken, post bail, have court dates set, for “possession of stolen property”.  After several months pass, and your court date nears, and you have obtained legal representation, and some legal filings have been made, the prosecutor may dismiss the case against you because they can’t prove that anything in your possession at the time of your arrest was stolen.  You never did have any stolen property in your possession, but you were acting like White Trash, and the police in North Dakota will try every minute of every day to incarcerate you, or make you leave, they don’t care which.  You will see for yourself if you don’t believe me.

If you are a poor person living in a different state, and you want to come to North Dakota, I want to warn you that it will be very difficult in a number of different ways.  Because of the number of people who have tried to move to North Dakota since 2007, the local people here and the transplanted people here have no sympathy or mercy for anyone.  The local people hate people from out of state now.  Any problems that you may have, you will not find help, but you will find hatred.

If you have an older vehicle that is not in good condition, everyone here will notice you right away, treat you with scorn, assume you are White Trash, and expect that you will get out of your car and begin asking people for gas money.  And if you do begin trying to tell people your hard luck story, several people will call the police immediately, and then you will have a hard luck story to tell involving the police, (see paragraph two above.)  That is how you will be treated, and you need to know this before you come here.

If you have vehicle problems, and you have a credit card, you probably can get your vehicle repaired within a week at a car dealer, but know that it will be expensive.  If you expect to not pay dealer prices and take your vehicle to a mechanic, you will probably be told that they can get to your vehicle in six weeks.  They don’t want to hear your crying, they have about thirty people just as poor as you, in the same situation as you, ahead of you in line.

There is no homeless shelter in Dickinson or Watford City.  God knows the Catholics in Dickinson collectively have way more than enough money to have a homeless shelter, but they don’t want one, because they hate you.  You will not have any sympathy or mercy for being homeless in Dickinson, you will have hatred and scorn.  You will not be left alone if you try to sleep in your vehicle.  The truck stops, WalMart, the parks will not allow you to sleep in your vehicle.  Retired Catholic couples in Dickinson like to go out to eat breakfast or lunch, then afterwards go driving through the parks, parking lots, and truck stops to spot people sleeping in their cars, and then call the police to report suspicious illegal activity.  In their minds, all people who sleep in their vehicles are naer-do-wells, up to no good suspicious illegal activities, and they are just “cleaning out the trash”.

If you are poor, you will probably not be able to afford an apartment.  Even though apartment rents have gone down, a cheap one bedroom apartment will probably be $750 per month, with $750 deposit due at the same time, with probably a $200 utility deposit due at the same time.  Do you have $1,700 for an apartment, $300 gas money to get over here and drive around, $300 for a motel for a couple of days, $200 for food, that’s $2,500?  You probably don’t if you are poor.

Everything that I wrote above is the truth, and I wanted you to know it before you try to come to North Dakota.  I do have some suggestions to try to help you.  Right now there are very few job openings in North Dakota.  Look at all the jobs listed on the internet website Indeed.com for Dickinson, Watford City, and Williston.  Also look on the North Dakota Job Service website for all jobs in Dickinson, Watford City, and Williston.  See if there are any jobs that you can do.  Get a resume together, even if it is just a job history with employer names and dates of employment.  Remember, North Dakota employers are simple, direct people, and they are looking for simple, direct, truthful answers, nothing fancy.  Call or contact the job listings that you can do, and be ready to write down names, phone numbers, dates, and addresses. Don’t be a pain in the ass on the telephone with an employer asking a bunch of questions, as if you are helpless to figure things out for yourself, they are not the convention and visitors bureau, they are an employer.

At this time, I would not drive to North Dakota from out of state unless I had one good firm specific offer of employment, and at least two other employers that I had spoken to that were willing to give me a try if I got here.  Don’t load up your entire family!  If you have any friends or family where you are, or if your spouse has a job, let your spouse and family stay behind, they are much safer staying where they are, and you might have to go back.  Probably about 60% to 70% of out of state workers return to where they came from within a year.  Just the person who has the job offer needs to come.

Currently in western North Dakota, I know of two older motels that have a monthly rate of $650.  This is where you want to stay when you first get to North Dakota.  You do not want to get committed in a lease before you know how your job will turn out.  Even as you get your first pay checks, do not get into an apartment lease, you need to save these first several pay checks.  At your new job, you need to be aware that North Dakotans are slow thinkers, they are taking in the things that you say, and they are trying to think what to do with it.  North Dakotans are sometimes determined to not like people, the friendliest they will ever be is when they first meet you, which is not too friendly, but they will take in what you say, consider it, and begin to hate you more and more.  Things that you talk about that may seem ordinary, your North Dakota co-workers may be using to convince themselves more and more that they do not like you.  So you may have thought that things were going well at your new job, but after a few weeks your North Dakota co-workers may say that you just can’t do anything right, and you will need to find another job.  Save as much money as you can from your first pay checks, you may unexpectedly have to go home.

Regional Construction Manager Quit, And I Don’t Blame Him

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In Watford City, at my third job, the manager of my manager, recently resigned. He was the regional manager, responsible for all construction activities in North Dakota. I was sorry to hear that he resigned. I did not see this coming. He was in his late fifties, calm, steady, controlled, and having more energy than anyone I know.

I don’t blame him for quitting. The owners of this company have management teams in Texas and New York City, and they were calling daily to quiz and question the managers. The management teams wanted to put constant pressure on the managers here in North Dakota, thinking that this was necessary to make them perform optimally. In my opinion, when this happens, you tell management to get somebody else.

The regional manager here in North Dakota was extremely intelligent, highly competent, very knowledgeable about all areas of finance, business, and construction. I see no way that this company will be able to find anyone equaling his abilities. This is exactly the kind of person you let alone to do their job, because there is no one that could do this job as well or better.

One of the reasons that this company did such a stupid thing as to make this regional manager quit, is because they are from Texas, they are stupid, obnoxious, loud-mouthed, know-it-alls. Likewise, the managers in New York City are also pushy, obnoxious, know-it-alls. I don’t know which is worse, people from Texas or people from New York City.

Why do they know better than the regional manager here in North Dakota? Because of the recent internet and newspaper articles like “Oil Boom Headed For North Dakota! (It’s About To Get Crazy Again!)”. In one of my recent blog posts I explained that this article was a desperate attempt by people in Williston to get people to move to Williston to occupy their nearly vacant new apartments. I was angry about this article because it was spreading misinformation that would cause people harm.

The company managers in Texas and New York City read articles like “Oil Boom Headed For North Dakota! (It’s About To Get Crazy Again!)”, where it stated that the population of Williston was going to climb from 30,000 to 80,000, and new construction was needed right now. How could this be? All the managers in North Dakota have been saying that new construction occupancy rates are at 30%, and that 80% of the oil field workers have already left Western North Dakota.

The managers here in North Dakota tried their best to explain what was happening here. In order to operate a business you have to understand what is actually happening in your environment and have a strategy to succeed in that environment. Right now in North Dakota, it is not the time for property developers to buy more property, to create more subdivisions, to build more apartments, for construction companies to hire more employees, to buy more equipment, because most new construction is at 30% occupancy, and may even decrease.

Note To Watford City, North Dakota

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Anyone, anywhere in the World, who does a Google search for “moving to Watford City, North Dakota”, “relocating to Watford City, North Dakota”, or “women in Watford City, North Dakota”, this website appears on the first page of search results.  Soon, the search for “living in Watford City, North Dakota”, this website will appear on the first page of search results.

Everyone will be able to get information about Watford City, from this website.  I am going to provide useful, truthful information about Watford City, so that people will know what it is like.

Women who might come to Watford City, women who work in the oil industry, work in banking, work in accounting, who are company owner wives, or oil field worker wives, would not like the living conditions here, as they are now.  If they were to arrive in Watford City now, they would find completely dark and unlighted streets at night, with no pavement markings, no street signs, no road shoulders, just an immediate drop off to 30 feet below.  Women already feel unsafe at night because the ratio of men to women is about 6:1 in Watford City.  The fear of being out at night is only made worse by roads that are dark, unlighted, with no shoulder.  Getting a car tire even one foot over the edge of pavement could cause their car to be wrecked or stuck, making them vulnerable to being victimized.

You people in Watford City have got this North Dakota attitude, “We like things the way they are.  If you don’t like it, you can leave.”  Fine, everybody is going to leave.  In fact, they just won’t come in the first place.

I will give some more examples of things that are not O.K. the way they are.  I will never forget the day I came back to Watford City, stopping at the UPS Store and getting charged $5.00 to make three black & white photocopies, the young woman in front of me getting charged $105 to mail an envelope.  Going over to a nearby restaurant to eat and walking out because the food looked like slop and cartoons were on the TV at about 130 Decibels.  I should have walked out of the second nearby restaurant that I went to.  There is a saying, “If nobody is at a restaurant, and no cars are in the parking lot, don’t eat there!”

Three times this past week, I saw the Watford City police ticketing people on the Disenchanted Highway, besides being a dangerous road, it is now a speed trap.

I have some advice for the Chamber of Commerce in Watford City, for Watford City business owners, and Watford City government.  Now that the Oil Boom is over, the only possible thing that Watford City has to offer that anybody might possibly want, is a relaxed, peaceful, not-in-a-hurry, small town lifestyle with thousands of acres of undeveloped prairie land nearby.  People want to get out of cities and congested areas, and live in an area with an unspoiled rural landscape.

The stress that you cause people, with your unmarked and unlighted roads with no road shoulders, your speed traps, your terrible restaurants with 130 decibel TV playing cartoons, your “no other choice”  high priced merchants, chases everybody away, people can’t wait to get out of your town.

Update!: Beginning in April of 2016, Watford City began making road improvements, which included adding dump truck loads of dirt to the road shoulders on the Disenchanted Highway to make it safer.  Other road improvements continue.

There are so many Watford City police, that the White Trash are kept under control all the time, it’s almost like they are in jail they are so controlled, they can’t do anything because the police are watching them so close.  So it is safe for women to go out in Watford City from dawn until dark.

Eventually, I might have to re-write this post.