Tag Archives: would you move to Dickinson North Dakota

Essential Information On Working And Living In Dickinson, North Dakota

November 2, 2017Uncategorizedguide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what are people like in Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, working in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

I was an outsider to Dickinson, North Dakota. I have now lived and worked in Dickinson for 5-1/2 years. For the past three years, I have been writing about Dickinson on this blog website. After writing, thinking, discussing, and searching hard for answers, about why Dickinson is the way that it is, I finally think that I have the answers.

I have seen and experienced that the local people from Dickinson have hatred, hostility, bitterness, resentment, maliciousness, and malevolence for the non-local people who have come to Dickinson to work. Non-local people will experience this most profoundly at work in Dickinson.

I believe that one of the causes for the hatred of non-local people, was the Catholic Church here in Dickinson. The Catholic Church here in Dickinson, was probably the biggest social and cultural influence for many years. This Church did not teach kindness and helpfulness to others, but instead it taught foremost to protect one’s own family, Catholics, and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church here in Dickinson instilled an attitude of elitism and the belief of superiority of one’s own family, Catholics, and the Catholic Church, above all other people.

Another cause for the hatred of non-local people in Dickinson, has been the oil boom that made some local families rich, while other local families remained poor. With it not seeming right to the local people to have hatred and resentment towards their local neighbors who became rich, the local people re-directed their anger and resentment toward the non-local people.

Another cause for the hatred of non-local people in Dickinson, has been that the local people have always had work as their main focus in life. In Dickinson, life has always been hard due to the very long and very cold winters. Work and surviving was the primary focus of people in Dickinson. Unlike other places in the United States where entertainment, recreation, and social activities were a big part of people’s lives, Dickinson never had this. In Dickinson, the local people’s identities, meaning, and purpose in life, was work.

During the oil boom that occurred in Dickinson from 2007 to 2014, and especially now that the oil boom is over and many jobs have recently gone away, the local people from Dickinson have been hostile, hateful, mean, uncooperative, and undermining to their non-local co-workers. It wasn’t until recently that I determined that the specific primary cause for this, was that local people from Dickinson get their identity, meaning, and purpose in life, from work.

Unlike other places in the United States where people have many different interests and things that are important in their lives, the local people from Dickinson have just one primary focus, that is their job. There is a shortage of women in Dickinson, and a scarcity of attractive women. There are not enough women to go around. The pursuit of romantic relationships is not common in Dickinson. There is not much reason for people to go out or socialize in Dickinson. Nor are there many places to go in Dickinson, or things to do.

The time that other people living in other places put into playing sports, exercising, recreation, entertainment, shopping, going out, socializing, dating, and having fun, the local people from Dickinson never had that, they just put all of their time into work. Work was their focus, meaning, identity, and purpose in life.

In summary, the local people from Dickinson are so hostile, hateful, unfriendly, bitter, resentful, malicious, malevolent, and undermining to non-local people because the Catholic Church has taught the local people to feel superior to others; there is anger and resentment over some local families becoming rich, and this anger is re-directed toward non-local people; the local people have only work as the meaning and purpose in their lives, the non-local co-workers are a threat to the local people from Dickinson in their only purpose and reason for living.

What this means for people from out of state who come to work in Dickinson, is that your local co-workers from Dickinson will try to get you to leave because you are a threat to their very existence and reason for living.

Thinking About A Normal Life In Dickinson, North Dakota

November 2, 2017Uncategorizedguide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, people in dickinson north dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, working in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

In my previous blog post, I wrote about going to a job in Dickinson, where they wanted me to stand and work on a two foot wide elevated platform from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. During this 15 hours of standing and working on this platform by myself, I had a lot of time to think. One of the things that I was thinking about, was that this is bullshit, and this is not normal.

Something else that I was thinking about, was what I wrote in my recent previous blog post titled “Jobs, Employment, and Working In Dickinson, North Dakota”. I wrote about local co-workers from Dickinson having hatred, hostility, bitterness, malevolence, maliciousness, and ill intentions towards their out of state co-workers in Dickinson.

These long work hours and remote locations, provide local co-workers from Dickinson abundant opportunity to conceive, plan, and carry out their ill intentions and meanness against their non-local co-workers.

I believe, that it is abnormal and deviant, to have extreme hatred towards others, to think up plans on how to harm others, and to carry out hostility, hatred, and maliciousness towards others. I think that it is abnormal and wrong, to try to hatch hateful plans against others at work.

If you have ever read about convicted criminals who have committed crimes of violence against other people, sometimes against people that they have never met, or if you have watched documentaries on these convicted criminals, it is most often the case that they had unbalanced, abnormal, anti-social lives. Often, they were reclusive, with no friends, no romantic relationships, no social activities or interaction, and they kept to themselves spending an inordinate amount of time on one thing. This describes life for most local workers from Dickinson.

In Dickinson, there is a shortage of women, and a scarcity of attractive women. There are not enough women to go around, and most of the women are not very attractive. In the past several years living in Dickinson, the people that I know and have worked with, none of them were pursuing women, or any romantic relationship. Because they were not pursuing women or any romantic relationship, there was often no reason for them to go out, go anywhere, or socialize.

There is not a lot to do in Dickinson. People do not have many things to look forward to. People in Dickinson spend way too much time working. It is like the time that other people in other places use for having fun, doing things that they like, and socializing, in Dickinson this time just gets applied to work. This is one reason why I think that the local people in Dickinson are so hateful, hostile, and resentful at work.

At this time in Dickinson, it may only be the workers from out of state, that know in other areas of the country, people “work to live”, they don’t “live to work”. In Florida where I am from, there were many fun things for people to do all year: Surf, sail, sailboard, water ski, jet ski, swim, scuba dive, boat, fish from boats, fish offshore, fish from bridges, fish from beaches, go crabbing, go clamming, go oystering, go shrimping, sun bathe, ride motorcycles, ride bikes, rollerblade, jog, walk, hike, play tennis, play golf, and more. People of all ages searched for and pursued romantic relationships.

In Florida, people loved to have fun, recreate, go shopping, socialize, go out to eat, and enjoy life. For most people in Florida, work was something that took time away from the things that they would rather be doing.

I will drop talking about Florida, and briefly use the example of another state, Arizona. There were many fun activities in Arizona that people could do all year. People in Arizona also liked to go shopping, socialize, and enjoy life. People in Arizona would have liked to have spent less time working, and more time doing the things that they liked to do outside of work.

In the Dickinson area, generations of people did not have fun things or fun activities to do. Life in the Dickinson area was very difficult. It was difficult just to survive due to the very long and very cold winters, and the barrenness of the land. There is still not a lot to do in Dickinson, and there is a scarcity of attractive women.

The local people from Dickinson, historically, culturally, and genetically, for generation after generation, they have gotten up way too early in the morning, sat in their dirty worn work clothes, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, talking and muttering about work for an hour, before there was even enough light outside to go do any work. In Dickinson, the local people like to try to “sneak up on work” or try to “get a head start on work”, when really they are just wasting time being miserable, and they don’t even know it.

In Arizona or Florida, an educated business owner would see this behavior, and put an end to it. He would probably say, “At the end of each day, that is the time to clean the garbage out of your work truck, to load the equipment and material that you will need for the following day onto your truck, and to inform the workers what they will be doing the following day. There is no need to get here at 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m., 6:00 a.m. would be the earliest you would need to get here, it is not even daylight at 6:00 a.m. I want my employees to have a normal work-life balance. I don’t want my employees to get burned out, be unhappy, and be unproductive. Also, I am not going to pay overtime every week for people to get here at 5:00 a.m. half asleep, to sit around smoking, drinking coffee, and muttering.”

People in Dickinson spend way too much time at work. This is partly because the local people from Dickinson don’t have anything or don’t know of anything that they would rather be doing. The local people from Dickinson, the focus of their life is on work, even if they are just an oil field service worker. And I don’t mean their focus is on excellence. They just burrow in like a tick at their job.

They have got to get to their job early in the morning, smoke a certain amount of cigarettes, drink a certain amount of coffee, talk for a certain amount of time, and accomplish absolutely nothing for about one hour. Then it is load equipment and material, and go get fuel, when all of this could have been done the day before. In my observation, these activities are all attempts to make the work day longer than it needed to be.

There is not the pursuit of excellence, insight, innovation, growth, progression, or increased effectiveness of the local people at their job. Instead the local workers from Dickinson spend their time, energy, and mental faculties on trying to find something wrong with what their co-workers are doing, and trying to find ways to hinder and undermine their co-workers.

This is what I mean when I say that the local workers from Dickinson try to burrow in to their job like a tick. What they are doing is not particularly beneficial, helpful, or productive, it is sometimes counter productive. They have got to get to their job early, and stay there late, like they can’t let go of their job and go do something else. They don’t have anything else, their job is their life and their identity.

I think that this is another reason why the local people from Dickinson try to drive their co-workers away. This job is their entire life, their identity, and their purpose. Without this job they don’t have anywhere to go, anything to do, or any purpose in life. I think that this is abnormal and not a very good way to live your life.

Example Of Working In Dickinson, North Dakota

November 1, 2017Uncategorizedguide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what are people like in Dickinson North Dakota, working in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

In my previous blog post titled “Jobs, Employment, And Working In Dickinson, North Dakota”, I explained that local people from Dickinson are hostile, mean, malicious, and hateful to their non-local co-workers. I wrote some pretty harsh things in that blog post, but I stand by what I wrote, and I believe that what I wrote was truthful, honest, and accurate. Readers are probably wondering, where do I come up with this, how did I come to this conclusion? I will give one, recent example.

I agreed to do a job recently. I was not given a very accurate job description, or any kind of warning. I don’t think that there was any ill-intention in this, the people giving me the information did not know.

I had to drive about an hour from Dickinson to get to the job location. My job, was to climb up to a two foot wide platform, to work by myself, and to be just one part of the overall work operation.

There were three significant problems with this job: There was the requirement and expectation that I would be up on the platform, standing, for 15 hours; It was extremely cold and windy; There was not a railing on one side of the platform, and if I fell off this side, I would certainly die.

My thoughts were, “This is bullshit, this is fucked up.” I had worked at heights before, I had worked at dangerous jobs before, I had worked in the cold and wind before, but not for 15 hours straight.

According to OSHA, when you are working at heights like this, where you can fall to your death, it is required that there be a continuous railing of 42″ in height, or you are tied off with a safety harness and lanyard. There was no railing on one side, just steel that came up to knee height. The company did not have, offer, or want the person on the platform wearing a safety harness and lanyard. I have two safety harnesses, but I didn’t know that I would need to bring one, and I realized that they wouldn’t like me wearing one.

In this company’s and its employees’ “ignorance”, they just didn’t care to have a railing on one side of the platform, or have a safety harness for the person on the platform. Their opinion was, “What, just don’t fall off.” I asked what happened to the person who used to have this job before me, and they said they didn’t know what happened to him, he just didn’t come back.

It was very cold and windy on the elevated platform. I was wearing thermal underwear, FR pants, heavy hooded FR sweatshirt, heavy hooded winter jacket, and work gloves. After a couple of hours on the platform, I kept getting colder and colder. I had to climb down quickly, run to my vehicle, put on a second heavy winter jacket, run back, and quickly climb back up to the platform. I made it back up on top of the platform, just in time to do my part of the work process and not create a delay for everyone.

All day long, my hands were cold, my feet were cold, and I was generally cold. After about eight more hours, I had to climb down again, run, get a third winter jacket to tie around my waste, run, and climb back up the platform, just in time to do my part of the work process.

When it got dark at 6:00 p.m., I couldn’t see anything. I had to quickly climb down, and run to my vehicle to get a flashlight. This time, I just drove my vehicle over, and parked it next to a small tanker truck and other parked equipment.

During the day when I had to urinate, I would quickly climb down and urinate beside the parked equipment. At night, after it was dark, I would just urinate off the platform. If I had had to poop, I could not have run to the portable toilet and turned around and run back in time, let alone go in and sit down.

We worked until 9:30 p.m. that night. The longer that I worked, and the more tired that I became, the more careless, unworried, and not paying attention I became, plus it became dark. That is when I caught myself a few times almost falling off the one side of the platform without a railing.

After stopping on the drive home to get fuel in my vehicle, and going to the drive thru at McDonalds, it was approximately 11:15 p.m. when I got home. I slept for five hours, and then I had to get up and drive back to the job site by 6:00 a.m.

Do you think that I was looking forward to standing on that platform for another day from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., for 15 hours? In the cold and the wind. Where tripping, losing your balance, or not paying attention will result in you falling to your death. I never planned on working or living like this. This is not normal.

After several days of working like this, my local co-workers and work supervisor from Dickinson were not very nice or friendly to me. It was hard to do this job, and I did not delay the work once. It was like my work supervisor had a dislike and resentment for me. Even though I showed up on time, did my job all day long without complaining to anyone, didn’t get hurt, didn’t make a mistake, didn’t cause any kind of delay, my local Dickinson co-workers and local Dickinson work supervisor were determined to dislike me. They were just thinking and thinking, and hoping to be able to find fault with something I was doing, so that they could complain.

Jobs, Employment, And Working In Dickinson, North Dakota

November 1, 2017UncategorizedDickinson, North Dakota, employment in Dickinson North Dakota, guide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what are people like in Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota lilke, working in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

In many ways, the people in Dickinson are an open book. Their behavior, actions, beliefs, and motivations are so blatant, apparent, and un-hidden, that it is almost like observing children, primitive, or low functioning people.

It might also have something to do with my age, with me having seen all of these behaviors and scenarios in Dickinson, play out before in other places. Nevertheless, whenever I did see these types of things that occur in Dickinson in other places, I was painfully aware of the ignorance, stupidity, and backwardness of the perpetrators and accomplices.

In our private, personal, and social lives in Dickinson, we can retreat to our homes, families, and friends in order to get away from things, people, and situations that we don’t like. However, work is a part of our lives where we are forced to deal with things, people, and situations that we would have never voluntarily been involved with.

The Biggest Point, that I wish to make in this blog post, is that many bad, ignorant, backward, malicious, and ill-intentioned people in Dickinson, use work as the opportunity to act on and fulfill their desire to cause problems for others.

I am sorry that I have not previously been able to articulate this so clearly: There are many people in Dickinson who are uneducated, uncultured, untravelled, small minded, ignorant, close minded, bitter, hateful, malicious people. More so than any other place that I have ever lived. I am not saying this to be hateful, I am saying this to be truthful, honest, and accurate.

One of the reasons for the lack of education, ignorance, close mindedness, bitterness, hatefulness, and maliciousness, I believe, is the Catholic Church here in Dickinson. One of my readers tried to explain to me, that in oil field towns, the wind-falls that some families receive, while other families receive nothing, is something that inspires bitterness, resentment, and hatred. The families in the oil field towns that receive nothing, while their neighbors become rich, don’t feel right about taking their hatred out on local people, so they direct all of their anger, meanness, and hostility toward people from some place else.

It has been my experience in Dickinson, time after time, again and again, that local co-workers from Dickinson, have this horrible, not very hidden, intention of doing bad things to non-local co-workers. But, to be completely honest and accurate, there is often also something wrong with the people who could not get a job anywhere in Texas, Arizona, or New York, that came all of this way in order to be able to get a job.

The third and fourth elements or factors, that makes working in Dickinson a horrible and terrible experience, time after time, is the fact that the people in Dickinson have to work more than forty hours per week, and people do not have normal home lives here.

I believe, that one of the reasons why people get up to no good at work in Dickinson, is because they are working more than forty hours per week, and spending too much time at work. There is just too much time and opportunity for malicious, bitter, ignorant, hateful, mean people to conceive, hatch, and carry out their bad intentions towards others. Normal people are stuck way too long at work, with people who have evil intentions towards others.

I believe, another reason why people get up to hatching and carrying out their bad intentions towards others at work in Dickinson, is because they do not have a normal home life. There is a shortage of women in Dickinson, and a scarcity of attractive women. Many men in Dickinson do not have anyone to look forward to seeing, talking to, spending time with, or doing activities with. Plus, there is not a lot to do in Dickinson. Thus, you have ignorant, uneducated, untravelled, uncultured, close minded, malicious, bitter, hateful people, who have nothing better to do than think about harming other people at work, and the opportunity to cause other people harm at work, because everyone is working too many hours.

Dickinson, North Dakota Has Removed The Welcome Matt

October 26, 2017UncategorizedDickinson, North Dakota, guide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, the Dickinson Rule, what are people like in Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, working in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

In my previous two blog posts, I explained that Dickinson, North Dakota has removed the Welcome Matt, and I explained the reasons why. I will not go into these reasons again, instead I will explain what this means, more clearly and more plainly.

If you are living in a different state, and you are considering moving to Dickinson to work, I want to caution you, and give you some things to consider.

The local people in Dickinson do not like workers from out of state. They did not like out of state workers during the oil boom, and they dislike out of state workers even more now that the oil boom has gone away.

Many oil field jobs have gone away, local people are making less money, work hours have been reduced, and overtime hours have been reduced. Some local people have lost their jobs, and some local people are having difficulty in finding a new job. The winter work slow down is here, there will be fewer jobs, layoffs, and it will be much harder to find a job this winter in Dickinson.

During the oil boom, the local co-workers in Dickinson, were often hostile, hateful, uncooperative, mean, and undermining to out of state workers. Now, the local people in Dickinson not only hate out of state workers, they feel that out of state workers are a threat to them in preventing them from finding job, taking a job that could have gone to a local person, or keeping their job while a local person is laid off or fired.

I would not come to Dickinson now from out of state without having a good solid job offer, and a second or third prospective employer. Your prospective employer may be a good person, their management team may be good people, but once you get out to your office, counter, warehouse, truck, route, job site, or oil field, your local Dickinson co-workers may have other plans for you, specifically, you not being here.

In my previous two blog posts, I described something called the “Dickinson Rule”. What this means is, the local people in Dickinson have adopted this rule, where local people are given preference in hiring, promotion, work assignments, overtime, and should be the last people to be reprimanded, demoted, laid off, or fired. People from out of state, are not due equal treatment or fair treatment.

If you are a worker from out of state, be prepared to not receive complete instructions when required, not receive important information when necessary, be given incorrect instructions and information, be assigned faulty equipment, faulty equipment to not be repaired, to not be given the necessary tools, to not receive cooperation, to have your work performance reported as unsatisfactory, to not be paid for hours worked, and to not be paid as agreed. These things are the implementation and application of the “Dickinson Rule”.

I am going to try to write enough about this “Dickinson Rule”, so that company owners and company managers can fully understand and realize that this is happening. I believe that many company owners and managers have spotted some of these things, but I doubt that many of them are completely aware of everything that is going on. Further, I think that there are company owners and managers who do not care.

I also want to write enough about this “Dickinson Rule”, so that workers from out of state will know about this ahead of time. Workers from out of state can plan ahead, what they think that they would do in their particular work situation, when they don’t get cooperation, complete information, correct instructions, fully functioning equipment, all the necessary tools, pay for all hours worked, or the pay that was agreed upon.

One of the things that out of state workers can do, is say, “No, I don’t want to work for you company because of the Dickinson Rule.” If enough out of state workers call this out as their reason for not accepting a job offer, not coming to work, quitting and leaving, then company owners and managers may have to address this problem, and try to put an end to the implementation of the “Dickinson Rule” at their company.

Starting Over Writing About People In Dickinson, North Dakota

October 26, 2017Uncategorizedguide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, the Dickinson Rule, what are people like in Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, working in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

I have lived in Dickinson, North Dakota since 2011. I have been writing blog posts about living in Dickinson for the past three years. I have been seeing such a significant change in the people in Dickinson during the past several months, that I believe a transition has occurred.

There was an oil boom in North Dakota from 2007 through 2014. In 2015, there was a sharp drop in the price of oil. The number of operating oil drill rigs decreased, work in the oil field slowed down, other businesses slowed down, and many out of state workers returned home to the states where they came from.

Dickinson became less crowded, less busy, quieter, and calmer. However, the attitude, outlook, mood, and behavior of people in Dickinson did not change that much from what it had been during the oil boom years of 2007 through 2014.

In 2015 and 2016, people in Dickinson wondered and speculated whether the oil boom would come back. People’s opinions would change daily depending on what they had heard, read, or what other people had persuaded them to believe. No matter what we thought, we were all waiting to see what actually happened.

In 2017, I believe that most people in Dickinson had concluded that the oil boom was not coming back, whether they admitted this out loud or not. Reaching this conclusion, every individual considered what this meant for them, how would this affect them.

In the Fall of 2017, it was like everyone in Dickinson had changed overnight. It was like they had all changed in unison, their attitudes, outlook, mood, and behavior.

In Dickinson every winter, there is a work slow down, and a work shut down. It becomes so cold, that it is difficult to work outside. It begins to snow, and the ground freezes. Farmers don’t do any work with their fields, construction companies can’t do many types of work because it isn’t practical, personal work projects and commercial work projects can’t be done due to the weather.

In the winter, there are fewer jobs, it is harder to find a job, there are fewer ways to make money, and it is harder to make money. It is a time of financial hardship for many people in Dickinson because they are not working. This year, as winter approached, people in Dickinson had already been thinking that the oil boom was over, and it wasn’t coming back.

I think that this is why, I saw a sudden universal change in everyone in Dickinson during the past couple of months. I think that everyone in Dickinson is preparing for hard times.

I wrote about this some in my previous blog post. For the past three years, I had been writing that the people from Dickinson were unfriendly, and that they did not like the workers who came from out of state during the oil boom to work in Dickinson. The unfriendliness, hostility, lack of cooperation, hatred, and undermining of out of state workers that I had written about for the past three years, all of sudden got worse and more severe.

What I thought was happening, was the local people from Dickinson had their wages reduced, hours reduced, overtime hours reduced, they had lost their job, or they were unable to get a job, and they felt that they had more of right to make money and earn a living than the workers who had come from out of state.

With the realization of the local people in Dickinson that the oil boom was not coming back, that there would be fewer and fewer jobs in the oil field, that winter is coming where there is a work shut down and reduced work, the local people from Dickinson universally decided all at once that their “benevolence” toward people from out of state was over.

Approximately one-half of the employers and companies in the Dickinson area, are not from Dickinson. Examples are: Menards, Wal-Mart, Runnings, Marathon Oil, Continental Oil, Whiting Oil, Tesoro Oil, Conoco Philips Oil, Lufkin, Halliburton, BJ, Nabors Drilling, Scull Construction, JE Dunn Construction, Knife River Construction, MDU, BNSF, Family Fare Grocery Store, Cash Wise Grocery Store, Sanford Health, St. Alelxius Health, and Dickinson State University.

However, even though approximately one-half of the employers and companies in the Dickinson area are not from Dickinson, some of these companies do pay attention to whether they are hiring local people from Dickinson, or non-local people. One reason why they pay attention to whether they are hiring local people from Dickinson, is because their management and their workers are from Dickinson, and these people already working at the company have collectively started enforcing the “Dickinson Rule”, whether the company owners wanted this or not.

Non locally owned companies in Dickinson that appear to try to hire mostly local people from Dickinson whenever possible are: Runnings, Whiting Oil, MDU, Family Fare Grocery Store, St. Alexius Health, and Dickinson State University.

Non locally owned companies in Dickinson that appear to have slight favoritism to hiring local people from Dickinson are: Marathon Oil, Continental Oil, Conoco Philips Oil. This slight favoritism may be because these oil companies want people who work in the field to be familiar with the area, knowledgeable about the area, and accustomed to the weather.

Non locally owned companies in Dickinson who appear to have no preference in hiring people based on where they are from: Menards, Wal-Mart, Tesoro Oil, Lufkin, Halliburton, BJ, Nabors Drilling, Scull Construction, JE Dunn Construction, Knife River Construction, BNSF, Cash Wise Grocery Store, and Sanford Health.

Because of the large amount of people that work at Menards, Wal-Mart, Tesoro Oil, Halliburton, BJ, Knife River Construction, Cash Wise, and Sanford Health, these businesses could not stay open if they tried to only hire people from Dickinson. For that matter, all the other non locally owned companies in Dickinson that have some preference for hiring local people from Dickinson, Runnings, Whiting, MDU, Family Fare, St. Alexuis Health, DSU, Marathon, Continental, and Conoco Philips could not stay open if they tried to only hire people from Dickinson.

The local people from Dickinson almost unanimously do not want people who are from out of state to be living in Dickinson now, but the non locally owned companies in Dickinson need the out of state workers in order to have enough employees to stay open and function.

The locally owned companies in Dickinson, they still have some out of state workers employed with their company. Several example are MBI, Nuverra, Winn Construction, Northern Improvement, and McDonalds. These companies would not have enough workers if they did not hire some people from out of state.

I believe that I just explained rather thoroughly up above, that both the non locally owned companies and the locally owned companies in Dickinson have had to hire workers from out of state in order to keep their businesses open and functioning. I explained that some of the non locally owned companies in Dickinson, do have a preference for hiring local people from Dickinson. Because some non locally owned companies have so many local people from Dickinson working in them, these local people at these companies have begun applying or enforcing the “Dickinson Rule” in hiring, and also in the work place.

The point that I want to make, the “Transition” that I believe occurred in 2017, the almost universal and unanimous change in the people in Dickinson that seemed to occur overnight, was the passing of the “Dickinson Rule” into law in Dickinson.

The “Dickinson Rule”, is that the local people from Dickinson are to be given preference in all things over people from out of state. The local people from Dickinson should be the first to be hired, the first to be promoted, the last to be reprimanded, the last to be demoted, the last to be let go, the last to be fired. In all dealings, business, financial, social, medical, religious, and enforcement of law, local people from Dickinson have precedence over people from out of state. People from out of state are not due equal treatment. Whenever and wherever possible, the people from out of state should be encouraged to leave Dickinson.

Starting Over Writing About Dickinson, North Dakota

October 26, 2017UncategorizedDickinson, North Dakota, economy in Dickinson North Dakota, guide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, oil boom over in North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what are people like in Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, work slow down in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

Dickinson, North Dakota has changed so much over the past 12 months, that I need to start over, and begin again in describing Dickinson, North Dakota.

The economy, business, business practices, real estate, construction, construction companies, oil field, oil field companies, employment, jobs, crime, people’s attitudes, and people’s behavior have changed so much, that I have to completely start over in describing what Dickinson, North Dakota is like now.

For my own personal reference and orientation, in thinking about Dickinson, and describing Dickinson, I will have to be clear, that there is a big difference between what Dickinson was like 2007 through 2016, and what Dickinson had changed into by the end of 2017.

The price of oil fell drastically in 2015, causing the oil boom in North Dakota to begin slowing down. There were changes that occurred in western North Dakota as the number of operating oil drill rigs declined. The oil field work slowed down, which in turn caused there to be a slow down in the rest of the economy in western North Dakota. Many workers from out of state returned home to the states where they came from.

When the oil boom slowed down in 2015, Dickinson became calmer and quieter. There became less people in Dickinson, and less traffic. Some oil field businesses closed, other businesses closed, and some residents moved out of state.

However, the character, mood, attitudes, and mentality in Dickinson remained the same as what it had been during the last years of the oil boom, up until 2017.

I believe that 2017 is a clear cut-off point, to where everything changed in Dickinson. I believe that all through the beginning of 2017, virtually everyone in Dickinson realized that the oil boom was over, whether they said it out loud or not. Throughout Dickinson, everyone considered how the oil boom being over, would affect them. By the end of 2017, everyone’s outlook, attitude, mentality, and behavior changed.

To me, who had been living in Dickinson since 2011, there came a point in late 2017, that it seemed like everyone in Dickinson had changed over night. It was like the people in Dickinson had changed in unison.

In writing this blog post, and in discussing it, I see that the origin of this change was the sharp decline in the price of oil, the slow down in the oil field, the decline in business and the number of out of state workers, the continuation of the slow down, and the gradual realization by the people in Dickinson that the oil boom was over, and that it was not coming back. However, the outlook, attitude, mentality, and behavior of people in Dickinson seemed to change all of a sudden, in late 2017.

The people in Dickinson became less friendly. That is right, the people in Dickinson became even less friendly. For the past three years, I have described the people in Dickinson as being unfriendly, but now, they have become distinctly even more unfriendly.

There is becoming a greater distinction and division between the people who are from Dickinson, and the people who are not from Dickinson. During the oil boom that occurred in Dickinson from 2007 through 2014, the people from Dickinson did not like the out of state workers. Now that the oil boom is over, the people from Dickinson dislike people from out of state even more.

Working in Dickinson from 2011 through 2014, my co-workers from Dickinson were sometimes hostile, unfriendly, uncooperative, not helpful, resentful, and undermining. Beginning in 2015, I could see that the people from Dickinson, were becoming even more hostile, unfriendly, uncooperative, resentful, and undermining with their co-workers, both with local and out of state workers, but much more so with out of state workers.

What is happening is this: The local people from Dickinson are making less money, working less hours, and working less overtime. The local people from Dickinson have lost their jobs, and have had difficulty in getting jobs. The local people in Dickinson, they want to be able to afford to pay for the things that they have, not lose their car or their house, and be able to live. The local people in Dickinson, believe that they should have more of a right to work and earn a living, than workers from out of state.

Many or most of the local people in Dickinson, did not like people from out of state coming to Dickinson to work during the oil boom. The local people were hostile and unfriendly to the people who were from out of state, during the oil boom. Now, with local people making less money, having lost their job, and not being able to get a job, their dislike for people who are from out of state, is much greater.

With work having slowed down in Dickinson, many out of state workers having moved away, traffic being lower, businesses being slower, things being quieter and calmer, there are a few other ways that Dickinson had changed distinctly by 2017.

Apartment rent and house rent have decreased greatly. The new apartments that were built during the oil boom, are now much more affordable. The older apartments and older homes, the rent on these are now very low.

The house prices in Dickinson have come down some, but not as much as they should have, considering that the oil boom is over. There are several reasons why the house prices remain high, higher than they should be: Real estate agents and property owners are deliberately trying to keep house prices high through their own efforts; some home owners do not understand and will not face reality; some home owners mistakenly think that the oil boom will return any minute now; some people are just so hung up with what they paid for their home during the oil boom, that they will not price it for what the market is now; some people paid so much for their home during the oil boom that they owe much more than their home is worth now.

I will mention one more way that Dickinson had changed significantly by 2017. There was an increase in property theft in Dickinson in 2016 and 2017. In reading the Dickinson Press newspaper “Crime And Courts” and the “Police Blotter” over the past several years, I noticed that there were more and more thefts from businesses, homes, garages, and automobiles. In 2016, the amount property theft appeared to be distinctly greater than in previous years. Now in 2017, property theft seems to be a permanent, daily, ongoing thing in Dickinson. Dickinson is now a high theft area.

Roers Road Failing In Dickinson, North Dakota

October 17, 2017UncategorizedLiving in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

I have written several blog posts where I stated that one of the reasons why I wanted to remain in Dickinson, is to see everybody get what is coming to them. Local people took advantage of the out-of-state workers tremendously, gouging them on housing and quadrupling the rent in Dickinson. Now that the oil boom is over, I wanted to see everybody who tried to get rich by taking advantage of other people, get what is coming to them.

In my mind, the epitome of the property owners and property developers who were trying to get rich by taking advantage of the out-of-state workers, was the Roers family. In 2013, I remember a friend of mine, an electrician named Dwayne, telling me that he had worked on the construction of the Roers West Ridge Apartments. He said that the rent for these apartments was $2,000 to $3,000 per month. My friend Dwayne, he was sleeping in his Jeep Liberty at the Tiger Truck stop and at vacant lots around Dickinson for about six months, he didn’t make enough money to afford what they were charging for rent in Dickinson.

Back in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 uninformed people, ill-intentioned people, and liars, used to like to repeat the phrase, “Everybody is making $100,000 per year in the oil field.” This was far from being true. This false statement, was used as justification to take advantage of the people who came from out-of-state to work in Dickinson, and as justification to quadruple the rent.

The people who did make over $50,000 per year in Dickinson, about 95% of them did so by working 30 to 40 overtime hours per week, week after week. I don’t know how many of you readers have done this, working 30 to 40 hours of overtime per week, for many weeks in a row, it is a big personal sacrifice and hardship. You barely have time to eat before you have to go to sleep, but you still have to do grocery shopping, wash dishes, wash clothes, and pay bills. Everything in your own personal life gets neglected.

I hate it, and I am angry about it, that property owners and property developers felt entitled and justified in trying to fleece working people who were trying to get ahead financially by making the personal sacrifice of working 30 to 40 hours of overtime every week.

To me, the following story from the Dickinson Press Newspaper, is like the hand of God coming down and shoving the Roers family faces in shit:

Dickinson works on fixing problems with West Ridge Drive, by Grady McGregor, October 4, 2017

“The nearly mile-long road on Dickinson’s northwest side connects 30th Avenue West with about a dozen businesses including Menards, Wells Fargo and Buffalo Wild Wings. The road was completed in 2013 as part of Roers Development’s West Ridge Development, but city officials have noticed problems with the road that may call for costly repairs, if not complete reconstruction, of the concrete road.

City Engineer Craig Kubas said the city was first made aware of problems with the road almost immediately after it was constructed when they noticed water valves along the road were settling deeper into the ground than initially expected.

City residents complained in 2015 that manhole covers were rising out of the road, which could be potentially hazardous to users and present problems to snowplows in the winter….

One option is to rebuild the entire road at a cost of over $4 million. Another option is to hire a company to inject foam into voids beneath the road to stabilize them, Kubas said. The third option is to do nothing and patch problem areas as they pop up, but this option would be inefficient and could cause problems in winter months, Kubas said.”

If you do not believe me that the $2,000 to $3,000 per month rent for the West Ridge Apartments was gouging back in 2013, why are these rents $800 per month now?

Some Of The Flaws With Companies In Dickinson, North Dakota

October 16, 2017UncategorizedLiving in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what are companies like in Dickinson North Dakota, what are employers like in Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, what is wrong with companies in Dickinson North Dakota, working in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

I won’t be able to cover everything that is wrong with companies in Dickinson, North Dakota, but I want to point out some of the things that are wrong. I hope that this will give company owners and managers in Dickinson some things to consider. I hope that this will give people who are planning on moving to Dickinson some things to watch out for and be aware of.

The company that I recently worked for in Dickinson, starts most new-hires out as laborers, whether they are equipment operators or not. They want to see if the new-hire can do physical work, if they can follow instructions, if they can get along with others, if they have sound judgment, if they are normal, and….so that they have enough laborers in order to complete the work. This is not a bad idea, it works O.K., except some experienced equipment operators would quit before long, after getting tired of being a laborer.

When the opportunity arises at this company, a laborer can sometimes get in a piece of equipment and run it, in order to demonstrate his operating ability, and increase his chances of getting to be an operator in the future. This is O.K. too.

When the need arises for a foreman at this company, they pick one of the equipment operators to be a foreman. They do this because they believe that the equipment operator has enough knowledge and job experience to know what is going on, what needs to be done, and how to complete the work. This is a problem if the equipment operator who is chosen to be a foreman is a bad person and unfit to be a manager.

Stop and think about this, why would you think that a person with no education, no management training, no management experience, who is not a very good person, would be a good manager? This happens all the time in Dickinson, and none of the company owners or company managers ever spot this as being one of the biggest flaws in their company.

I will try to point out and explain why promoting equipment operators to foremen, and foremen who used to be equipment operators to superintendent, can be a very bad idea that hurts both the company and the other employees.

A company owner, or a company manager, often seek to hire the most competent and skilled employees. As far as the company owner or the company manager are concerned, the more qualified, experienced, and skilled an applicant is, the better, they would be an asset to the company, with potential to move up.

To an equipment operator who was promoted to foreman, or to a foreman who used to be an equipment operator who was promoted to superintendent, a competent, skilled, qualified, experienced new-hire is not an asset, it is a threat to them.

An equipment operator without any education, without any management training, without any management experience, looks at someone who is a better equipment operator than them, a more experienced equipment operator than them, a more qualified equipment operator than them, a physically stronger person than them, a more intelligent person than them, a faster learner than them, a more likable person than them, as a threat to them.

A person with training in management, a person with higher education, a person with more broad management experience, a highly intelligent person, or a good natured person, would recognize a skilled, experienced, qualified new-hire, as an employee with potential, someone who could help complete the work, take more responsibility, be in charge of portions of the work, a person to depend on, a good example for other workers. A good manager would utilize a new-hire in the most effective way to get work done. A good manager would just use a skilled, experienced, qualified, talented, intelligent worker as a tool or resource to get work done, not look at them as a threat.

Perhaps the biggest problem with companies in Dickinson, is that they promote a person to manager, who is unfit to be a manager. Yes, a person who has been with the company for a while, who has performed many aspects of the work, does probably know how to complete the work. But many of the workers in Dickinson who have been promoted to manager, do not like workers who are more experienced, more qualified, more knowledgeable, more intelligent, a faster learner, quicker, stronger, or more likable than them. They see them as a threat.

A good manager would look at a talented employee, and think, “Good, finally, thank God, now we can get work done, now I don’t have to watch someone all the time, this will make less work for me.” However, the workers that get promoted to manager in Dickinson think, “I have got to get rid of this person, I have got to make this person leave, I have got to try to find a way to make them leave, I have got to get other people to help me make them leave, …or they will take my job.”

At this company that I recently worked for in Dickinson, there was a young man who was much quicker than any of the other workers, he had much more energy than any of the other workers, he was more intelligent than any of the other workers, he remembered how to do things more than the other workers, he was always coming up with ways how to complete the work quicker, and he was an equipment operator. I didn’t like him at first, until I worked with him some, and then I had to hand it to him, he was quicker, faster, better, more intelligent, and more knowledgeable in the work that we were doing.

He was not treated very well by the foreman. The foreman appeared to resent him, and not want him around. This young man told me that the foreman had done a few things to try to get rid of him. This foreman’s life would have been so much easier, if he would have given this young man a written list of work projects in the morning, told him to take the people that he needed, that he was responsible for getting it done, and to go do it. More work would have been completed, and probably completed better, with less work required from the foreman. Instead, the foreman didn’t utilize this young man like he could have, and tried to make him not want to work at this company.

Expect To Not Be Paid By Local Employers In Dickinson, North Dakota

One of the purposes of this blog website, is to inform people from out of state what living in Dickinson, North Dakota is like. One of the most important things that I can tell people who are planning on moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, is to be prepared for local companies in Dickinson to not pay wages that are owed.

I am 48 years old, and I have worked in Florida, Colorado, Texas, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and North Dakota. The only time that I have not been paid wages owed, is here in Dickinson, North Dakota.

I have already written a couple of blog posts about my previous employer in Dickinson, a local oil field service company with about seventy employees, that had failed to pay me for all the hours that I had worked, which amounted to approximately $630 in unpaid wages owed by the time that I received my third pay check. I had to contact the North Dakota Department of Labor, and then go and get the Small Claims Court paper work at the Court House to file a civil suit against this employer before they agreed to pay me the wages that I was owed.

The Bismarck Tribune newspaper wrote an article approximately one year ago, stating that the Department of Labor in North Dakota has been overwhelmed with non-payment of wages cases, mostly from Western North Dakota. This is why I realized that the Small Claims Court would be a quicker, surer way to get the money that I was owed.

Now, for my most recent employer, another local Dickinson company with about seventy employees, the person that hired me told me that I would be paid $20 per hour. There was no negotiating or discussion, this is what I was offered, and this is what I accepted. I was told that I would be working every day, for twelve hours per day, for approximately the next month. This worked out to about $2,000 per week, and $8,000 per month.

The work was very hard physical labor. I have had above average strength and stamina for most of my life, but I am 48 years old now, and I am not as physically strong as I used to be. I did not know if I could hand dig, pound stakes with a sledge hammer, lift, and carry heavy things all day long, for twelve hours a day, day after day after day. It was very difficult for me, but I did it, I wanted the $2,000 per week.

I received two other job offers shortly after accepting this job, but I politely declined both of these job offers, explaining that I had already accepted another job, and was sticking with it because it paid $2,000 per week, otherwise I would have liked to have worked for their company.

After working for sixteen days straight, I received my first pay check direct deposited to my checking account on this past Friday. The check was for much less money than it should have been. One of the reasons why it was less than it should have been, was because I was being paid at $18 per hour, not $20 per hour as I was offered and accepted when I was hired.

I was very, very angry about this, in part, because I was not paid wages owed by my previous local employer here in Dickinson, I had to threaten to take them to court to get all of my unpaid wages, and now this same thing is happening to me again. I was angry because it was very hard physical labor for twelve hours each day, and I was expecting to be paid $2,000 per week. I was angry because I had declined two job offers from other companies because I was expecting to be paid $2,000 per week at this company.

I do not yet know who/how/why I was not paid what I was told, what I accepted, and what I agreed to. I considered not going to work Saturday morning, this morning, because I was so angry. But I thought that perhaps it was a simple mistake, that the company would be willing to resolve.

I went to work this Saturday morning. By 12 noon, approximately four of the ten workers present, left for the remainder of the day, with various excuses, whether they were legitimate reasons or not. I was still so angry about not being paid what I was owed, that I thought that perhaps the best thing for me to do, would be to say that I was sick, and to go home for the remainder of the day, lest I lose my temper at someone, or over something.

At approximately 1:00 p.m., a foreman named Mike, who was not my foreman, who I had never met, and who I had never worked for, drove by my work truck and called me out on the radio, “Why are you sitting in your truck?!” I replied, “I just got in my truck to move it forward, my foreman is on the loader behind me, watching me and what I am doing, are you my foreman, or is Jeremy?” Mike replied, “We are all your foreman.” My foreman who was one hundred feet behind me on the loader, and the superintendent remained silent, and didn’t object.

I could tell from foreman Mike’s demeanor, that he was going to try to assert some kind of master-slave work conditions on me for the remainder of the day. I had worked for the past sixteen days straight, without complaint, mistake, mishap, or problems with my co-workers, foreman, and superintendent. I tried to get along with these twelve people, to do what they wanted, to work in agreement, to work in cooperation, to keep up with them, to do as much or more of the work, and to help them in their work. My co-workers, my foreman, and the superintendent were with me throughout the day, every day. If anything needed to be done, I took direction from my co-workers, my foreman, and the superintendent. I did not need, and it was not a good idea, for someone outside of this work group, who did not know me or anything about me, who was not aware of what I had been instructed to do, to drive by or drive up and get on me about my work.

I couldn’t believe, and I didn’t like, that I was not being paid what I had been told, and that my foreman and the superintendent were not sticking up for me when another foreman was trying to get on me about my work. I told my co-worker that I was quitting, to get in the truck, I will drive back to the yard and that he could take the truck. I told my foreman that I was quitting because I was not being paid what I was told, and that I didn’t like being fucked with by someone who doesn’t know me, who I have never met, and who I have never worked for. I drove to the yard, and I told the superintendent the same thing.

Neither my foreman or the superintendent cared very much. They could not care less. This was not much of a surprise to me. Nor will it be much of a surprise to me when the person who hired me, fails to acknowledge that he told me that I would be paid $20 per hour. This is why I will file a Small Claims civil court case against the owner of the company for the wages that I am owed.

When I file a Small Claims civil court case against the owner of the company personally for wages that I am owed, there will be a permanent record of the case for everyone to see and look up. The owner of the company will be served the court papers at his company office by a Sheriff Deputy, and his reaction will be, “What the fuck is this shit?!” Then, the “I could not care less” attitude will stop, and be replaced with “I wish that I would not have done that.”

The owner of the company can appear personally on the court date and defend himself against my claim for unpaid wages, and hear what happened to me, which is fine with me. Or, the owner of the company can hire an attorney to represent him in court, which will cost him at least $750 in attorney’s fees, plus the unpaid wages that I am owed, which is fine with me. Or, the owner of the company can not show up in court, not be represented by an attorney, and I will be awarded a default judgement for the unpaid wages that I am owed, which is fine with me. In all three scenarios, there will be a record of the judgment against this employer for everyone to see and look up.

If you come to Dickinson, North Dakota, I advise you to be aware that the local companies here in Dickinson will attempt to not pay you the wages that you are owed. I recommend that before you accept a job with a local company here in Dickinson, that you look up the owner of the company on the North Dakota Court Record Repository, “NDCourts” to see what kind of person they are. I also recommend contacting the North Dakota Department of Labor to ask how many complaints the employer has for nonpayment of wages.

How Difficult Is It To Get A Job In Dickinson, North Dakota?

September 20, 2017Uncategorizedgetting a job in Dickinson North Dakota, guide to Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

How difficult is it to get a job in Dickinson, North Dakota? The answer is, pretty difficult. I will give a couple of reasons.

Now, if you read through the details of the job listings for most of the oil field companies in Dickinson, about 90% of them require the applicant to have a Class A Commercial Driver’s License. The large oil field companies in Dickinson, Baker Hughes, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Rock Pile, MBI, and all of the wireline companies require the applicant to have a Class A CDL.

On top of the requirement for a Class A CDL, they want at least a couple of years commercial driving experience, and no traffic violations, accidents, or DUIs.

The oil field companies in Dickinson do not need very many people now. There are hundreds and thousands of oil field workers out of a job now. The oil field companies require that the applicants have a Class A CDL, in part to weed out the riff-raff who in general could never obtain or keep a Class A CDL. The other part is that the oil field companies want any one of their employees to be able to drive their 26,000 GVW trucks if necessary.

I found out today another reason why it is difficult to get a job in Dickinson now. I have been looking at the job posting websites North Dakota Job Service, Indeed, Monster, CareerBuilder, and LinkedIn. I saw an older job listing for a company in Dickinson, that was for a degreed engineer with just a couple of years of work experience. I had done this type of job for several years after I had graduated with Bachelor of Science in engineering.

I applied for this job in Dickinson, because it was an O.K. job, and I have done this before. This job would pay from $38,000 to $48,000 per year in my estimation. Within about one hour of applying for this job, the job posting website sent me an e-mail stating that the employer had viewed my application, and this job posting website offered to show me data on the other applicants for this job.

To my surprise, 55% of the applicants had a Masters Degree, and 55% of the applicants had more than 10 years of work experience. There were applicants from California, Texas, Maryland, Georgia, and North Dakota.

I have written several times in previous blog posts, that it is bullshit and a lie that the economy is doing so well in California and Texas. If the economy were doing so well in California and Texas, you would not have people with Masters Degrees and over 10 years of work experience applying for an almost entry level $40K job 2,000 miles away, in horribly cold North Dakota.

Time’s Money Magazine Just Named Dickinson, North Dakota As 6th Best Place To Live

September 19, 2017Uncategorizedguide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

On September 18 Time’s Money Magazine published a list of the 100 best places to live, and Dickinson, North Dakota ranked 6th. Oh my God! You probably couldn’t find twenty people in Dickinson that would even put Dickinson in the top 50 places to live. You probably couldn’t find twenty people in the state of North Dakota that would put Dickinson in the top 50 places to live.

In some ways Dickinson is one of the worst places in the United States to live:

The ratio of men to women in Dickinson is about 3:1. There is a shortage of women, and a scarcity of attractive women. Of the many states, cities, and towns that I have lived and worked in for the past 48 years, Dickinson has the most unattractive women of any place that I have ever been. These statements are common knowledge here in Dickinson.
Dickinson is one of the least educated places that I have ever lived. Higher education is derided, ridiculed, laughed at, and penalized in Dickinson. In Dickinson, people who did four years in prison are treated better that people who did four years in college.
Dickinson is one of the least healthy places that I have ever lived. It is common for both men and women to be overweight, use tobacco products, and to never engage in healthy exercise. Only about 10% of the people in Dickinson engage in regular exercise.
There is a lack of entertainment, social activities, and things to do in Dickinson. Yes there is the West River Community Center which is nice. There are outdoor concerts in downtown Dickinson in the summer which are nice. But, with the shortage of women, and scarcity of attractive women, most men end up going to bars, and getting a DUI when they go home. I have never seen more people get DUIs, than I have here in Dickinson, which is mostly because there is nothing to do and it is depressing here.
I have never met more depressed, down on their luck, nearly hopeless, suicidal people than I have here in Dickinson. It is difficult to get a job in Dickinson. There are not a lot of things to do in Dickinson. There is a scarcity of women in Dickinson. All of these things, plus the unfriendliness of people in Dickinson, make many people that I have met become very depressed, hopeless, and suicidal.
About 90% of the out of state workers who came to Dickinson for work during the oil boom, couldn’t wait to get out of here. They said it out loud every day.

I have never seen a news article be more wrong than the Money Magazine article ranking Dickinson as the 6th best place to live in the United States. Whoever wrote this article should have to come and live in Dickinson for one year.

I don’t know how the data was manipulated in order to somehow make Dickinson the 6th best place to live. The editor of Money Magazine should interview two oil field workers, two truck drivers, two retail workers, two fast food workers, two black people, two gay people, and two housewives from out of state, and I guarantee that each of these people would say that Dickinson is a difficult and unpleasant place to live.

Background Check On Employers In Dickinson, North Dakota

September 18, 2017Uncategorizedemployers in Dickinson North Dakota, guide to Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, working in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

You read that correctly, Background Check On Employers In Dickinson, North Dakota. I recommend to everyone, that if you are going to apply to work at a company in Dickinson, North Dakota, you perform a background check on your employer.

There is a fairly large company in Dickinson, where I applied to work once in approximately 2014. Though I was well qualified, or perhaps over qualified for the position that I applied for, I did not hear anything from this company after I applied.

Employers anywhere, have their own personal beliefs and preferences for who they would like to hire. Some employers want employees who stay at the same job for many years, other employers want employees who show ambition. Some want employees who are family men, who don’t drink, don’t get into trouble, and have no criminal record. Other employers want men who are risk takers, rough, not afraid of getting hurt, or putting others at risk.

In Dickinson, employers seem to favor local people, and North Dakotans, over people from out of state. This is probably a combination of a feeling of obligation or loyalty to local people, comfort in dealing with people from a similar background, discomfort in dealing with people from a different background, and people from elsewhere having different beliefs, values, and ethics.

I have had the experience in Dickinson, where my life experiences, work experiences, education, beliefs, values, and ethics, were so different from my employer’s, that I had problems. As an example, a company that I recently worked for in Dickinson, had the practice of not paying employees for the hours that they worked. The owner and his wife, would look at employees’ time sheets, and pay them for less hours than they worked, based on their opinion of how much work was completed.

When I sought to file a complaint with the Department of Labor, I found out that there were four previous complaints against this company for failure to pay employees wages that they were owed. I found out from local people in Dickinson, that this practice used to be fairly common in Dickinson. I also found out that this company owner owed a lot more than four employees money, after looking him up on the North Dakota record of active and completed court cases, NDcourts.

The company in Dickinson that I had applied to in 2014, and never heard back, I saw that they had another job advertisement for an engineer in August, so I applied again. I didn’t expect to hear back from this company, because I don’t think that they liked me or my resume. And again, I didn’t hear back from them. I wondered what it was about me, that would make me so unacceptable to this company. I have a good education, a great deal of work experience, and a completely clean background, what is wrong with me as an applicant?

I decided to look up the company owner to see what kind of person, HE is, since he is judging me, and I am not suitable for his company. One of the court cases that he was involved in, involved a dispute over child support payments. At about the time he was starting his company in Dickinson when he was in his early twenties, he became married. He and his wife had three children. By the time he was in his early thirties, he became divorced.

His company was organized as a corporation. As his company was doing well, he paid himself a salary of $60,000 per year. The extra money that his company made, was held as retained earnings. Though the retained earnings grew to $700,000, he continued to pay himself a salary of $60,000 per year. The child support that he paid, was based on his salary of $60,000 per year.

His ex-wife, and his ex-wife’s attorney, tried to explain to the court, that the child support that he was paying, was based on his $60,000 per year salary, but look at how much money his company was making, this isn’t right. I believe that the court in North Dakota decided that there was no law saying that the company owner had to pay himself more money, or receive more of the retained earnings of his corporation. So, his child support payments remained the same.

Ha, ha. He outsmarted the courts, his ex-wife, and his ex-wife’s attorney, in not having to pay more money in support for his children. It’s hamburger helper, macaroni cheese, and Wal-Mart for them.

Exposing Some Bad Things In Dickinson, North Dakota

August 31, 2017UncategorizedCatholic Church in Dickinson North Dakota, Catholics in Dickinson North Dakota, corruption in Dickinson North Dakota, Dickinson Mafia, guide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

I have lived in Dickinson, North Dakota for five years now. Ever since I came to Dickinson, I could tell that there were things going on that were wrong. There were things that were adversely affecting me, my friends, and other people that I met. I wanted to know what was going on, what were the reasons, what was behind all of this. Eventually I created this blog website, and here are some of the things that I wrote about:

The gouging and taking advantage of out of state workers on housing.
The deliberate creating of a shortage and not alleviating the shortage of housing in order to keep prices high to benefit local property owners.
OSHA refusing to investigate the work site death of Eric Haider.
No one being charged with manslaughter over the work site death of Eric Haider.
Public and private businesses violating EEO laws in order to hire friends and relatives.
Failure of the Department of Labor to hold employers accountable for non-payment of wages.
Long history of companies and employers in Dickinson attempting to keep wages low in order to prevent employees from ever getting ahead or being able to leave.
Not allowing prostitution though the ratio of men to women varied from 3:1 to 30:1.
Newspaper reports of multiple occurrences of local men resorting to sex with cows and horses in this area.

One of the causes of the injustices that I have listed above, appears to be the Catholic Church in Dickinson. The Catholic Church in Dickinson has encouraged the Catholics to believe that they are better than everyone else, has encouraged anything that brings money to the Church, and has not discouraged or spoken out against the mistreatment or taking advantage of others.

A second cause of some of the injustices in Dickinson, appears to be the Dickinson Mafia. The Dickinson Mafia are a group of men who own businesses, who hold public office, who are on boards of directors, and who manage some of the large companies in Dickinson. They sought to keep wages low so that workers could never get ahead, would have to work their whole life for low wages, and could never leave. The Dickinson Mafia also sought to control Dickinson by giving jobs as favors or rewards to people who did what they wanted, and not giving jobs to people that were independent, regardless of education, skill, and qualifications. The Dickinson Mafia was greatly responsible for the Nepotism and Chronyism that goes on in Dickinson.

A third cause of some of the injustices in Dickinson, appears to be the failure of the police, the judicial system, and the press to hold people accountable for wrong doing. I have come across situations in Dickinson, where individuals should have been arrested but were not, should have been prosecuted but were not, should have received long prison sentences but did not, and should have been fully covered in the Dickinson Press newspaper but were not.

Some of the really bad bad things that have been done by prominent people and businesses in Dickinson have been covered by newspapers outside of Dickinson, such as the Jamestown Sun, the Grand Forks Herald, and the Bismarck Tribune. This is one way to handle it, and leave the Dickinson Press newspaper out of it.

The Bismarck Tribune newspaper did publish an article approximately one year ago, that described the failure of the North Dakota Department of Labor to hold employers accountable for non-payment of wages to workers. There had been a two year wait after a worker complaint had been filed, before a case worker was even assigned to the complaint. 75% of the Department of Labor complaints were against oil field companies in western North Dakota.

I myself was shorted wages by an oil field company in the Dickinson area, so were some of my coworkers, so were some former employees of this company. I called the North Dakota Department of Labor, and there were four other complaints against this company by former employees for non-payment of wages.

The Dickinson Press newspaper writes glowing newspaper articles about this company and the owner. How can that be? I began asking many local people about this company and the company owner. I wanted to know why was he doing this, how did he think that he could get away with this, and what kind of person is he? I found out more and more.

In high school, in the seventh grade, this company owner raped a boy in the gym locker room. It was a very severe sexual assault. He should have been arrested, convicted, sent to a juvenile detention center, and been registered for life as a convicted sex offender. None of those things happened. I asked why this didn’t happen. I was told because of his family name, who his family was, and because his family had money.

In a previous blog post that I wrote titled, “Summary Of Wickedness And Perversion In Dickinson, North Dakota”, I wrote about a very similar incident to the one that I just described above, where a member of a wealthy and prominent local family was convicted of molesting an 8 year old girl. His prison sentence and restitution was extremely lenient, unbelievably lenient.

In that blog post, I wrote that one of the problems in Dickinson, is that some people in Dickinson think that they are so much better than other people, that they can take advantage of other people with impunity.

As long as the Catholic Church continues to teach that Catholics are better than other people, there will continue to be people trying to take advantage of others, and mistreatment of others in Dickinson. As long as the Dickinson Mafia continues to practice Nepotism and Chronyism, there will be corruption, collusion, injustice, unfairness, and mistreatment of people in Dickinson.

As long as the police, judicial system, and press do not hold all people equally accountable, there will be corruption, injustice, unfairness, underhandedness, crime, and mistreatment of people in Dickinson.

This Is How Methodists Act

August 29, 2017UncategorizedCatholic Church in Dickinson North Dakota, Catholics in Dickinson North Dakota, guide to Dickinson North Dakota, how Methodists behave, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what are Methodists like, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

In my previous blog post, I wrote that I hate White People in Texas. White People in Texas are arrogant, elitist, proud, greedy, self-serving people. I partly blame the version of Southern Baptists that exists in Texas, the “prosperity gospel” believers, that allow them to believe that they are better than other people, which gives them the right to do the things that they do.

I have written approximately eight blog posts about the German Catholics here in Dickinson, North Dakota, that act almost as bad as the Southern Baptist prosperity gospel believers in Texas. The Catholics here in Dickinson, North Dakota think that they are better than everyone else, so if they want to gouge people from out of state on housing, violate federal EEO laws to hire their relatives rather than people from out of state, undermine and take advantage of people from out of state, they feel that they are justified in doing so.

The German Catholics in Dickinson, North Dakota may have no idea that their behavior is not right, because they have nothing to compare it to. Most of my close relatives and distant relatives are Methodists. I grew up in a town with many Methodists. But I also went to Catholic School for four years. Later I went to school with, and became friends with Atheists, Baptists, Episcopaleans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, Lutherans, Mormons, Muslims, and Seventh Day Adventists. I read, and I learned about each of these religions.

In this blog post, I will write about how Methodists act. Primarily, Methodists are moderate, peaceful, conservative, tolerant, and patient.

Methodist Finances:

Methodists seek to have their financial affairs in order, just like every other part of their life.
To not be reckless with money, to not overspend, to live within one’s means.
To not have much debt, and to certainly not have delinquent debt.
A personal bankruptcy to a Methodist, would be a grave moral failure.
To stay employed, to work steadily, to pay your bills, and to save money.
To not buy a home, automobile, boat, motorhome, or airplane as a way to show off.
To make money only in an ethical, moral, right way, to not engage in usury, fraud, deceit, treachery, or taking advantage of others.
Methodists realize as part of their faith and religious beliefs, that no good can come from taking advantage of others, usury, fraud, deceit, treachery, indebtedness, overspending, showing off, and pride.
Methodists have no difficulty seeing the evil in some people accumulating great wealth, while at the same time others in the same community are lacking basic necessities. Methodists would feel shame and guilt in having excessive wealth while at the same time others in the same community didn’t have enough, due to being less able. Methodists seek to make sure that other people don’t suffer needlessly.

Methodist Families:

Husbands and wives should stay married, they took their marriage vows before God.
Husbands and wives should not engage in infidelity, they took their marriage vows before God.
Husbands and wives have a duty to act like a civil, decent, moral, ethical, responsible adult, for the sake of their spouse and their children.
Methodists believe in having zero to three children, and that their children need supervision, guidance, instruction, education, and correction.
Methodists realize as part of their faith and religious beliefs, that they should conduct themselves as a civil, decent, moral, ethical, responsible adult, for the sake of their spouse and children, for the sake of their community, and to try to make sure that their children do the same.

Methodist Culture:

Methodists seek to be civil, decent, moral, ethical, responsible, thoughtful adults. They have read the Bible themselves, and they have had the Bible, what it actually says, taught to them by thoroughly educated Methodist ministers.
Methodists are likely to see the wastefulness, sloth, immorality, and drunkenness in people getting overly entrenched with NASCAR, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and UFC.
Methodist are not likely to want to spend much time in bars.
Methodist are not likely to want to spend much time in casinos.
Methodist do not have any interest in using drugs.
Methodists are not sexually promiscuous, and they do not take advantage of others.

Methodists At Work:

Methodists do not believe in discrimination of any kind.
Methodists believe in performing work competently, and making sure that work is performed competently.
Methodists have an aversion for unethical and immoral businesses practices, so much so that they do not and will not tolerate unethical and immoral business practices, and seek to stop these business practices whenever possible.
Methodists will try to help, assist, instruct, or teach others who are having difficulty in their work, in order for that person to keep their job. If a person is not capable of doing a job, Methodists believe that that person, no matter who they are, should be removed from that job, for the sake of the work, the company, and everyone else.

I just want to point out how significantly the Catholics in Dickinson, North Dakota behave differently than Methodists. In #4 above, Methodists at Work, Methodists would never fill all the private and public management positions with poorly educated, incompetent people like has been done in Dickinson. Methodists would realize that the whole future, economic prosperity, and current functioning of Dickinson has been placed in the hands of not very educated or capable people. How in the world could this turn out well?

Dickinson58601 Living In Dickinson, North Dakota Is Now On YouTube

August 28, 2017Uncategorizedguide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, things to do in Dickinson North Dakota, videos on Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine who read my blog posts, suggested to me that I begin making videos. I didn’t want to do this at that time, there was so much that I wanted to say and write about, that I just didn’t want the distraction of trying to make videos.

Now that I have written approximately 400 blog posts, there are some things that I would like to show using video. My first videos will not have audio commentary or narration, because I want to show some things in Dickinson, North Dakota, just as they are, so that people can look at them and have their own thoughts about them.

Today, Monday 8/28/2017, I uploaded two 40 second videos to YouTube that show Patterson Lake. These two videos are primarily for people who have never been to Dickinson, so that they will know, and can see that Patterson Lake is less than one mile from downtown Dickinson.

I will begin adding more videos on a regular basis. To view these videos, perform an internet search in your browser for “YouTube”, then click on the YouTube website. Once on the YouTube website, in their search box, type in “Dickinson58601 Living In Dickinson North Dakota”.

Here is a link to my YouTube Channel:

Elks Lodge Calamity In Dickinson, North Dakota

August 22, 2017Uncategorizedguide to Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, what is wrong with Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

I have heard from two different people that the Elks Lodge in Dickinson, North Dakota is giving up the upstairs main floor of their building, and will now operate out of the basement of the building. This was shocking, upsetting, and depressing to me, and I am not even a member of the Elks Lodge. The more I think about it, the angrier that it makes me.

What’s next, are you going to get a reverse mortgage on your basement, and then when that money runs out, start having your meetings at McDonalds?

Oooh, Oooh, it’s so hard to make money now, we can’t really afford to keep the upstairs to our building, it’s so hard to keep the building clean and pay the electric, with my arthritis and my hip problems, I can’t climb down those stairs anymore. We aren’t going to live much longer anyway.

What the Fuck is wrong with you! The Elks Lodge members before you bought the land, paid for the construction of a nice modern two-story building, with a large lounge, large bar, large kitchen, dining room, and ballroom. All of this was long ago paid for. From what I have been told, the previous manager “Ray”, built up $700,000 in retained earnings over his tenure. All you had to do was break even with bar and restaurant sales, banquets and events, and only dip into that $700,000 in an emergency.

You can’t take a paid for building, and just break even with bar and restaurant sales? All over North Dakota, bar and restaurant owners not only have to pay for their building, they have to make a profit. And you couldn’t even break even with a paid for building, right in the middle of the biggest economic boom anywhere in the United States that went on here from 2007 to 2014? What the Fuck is wrong with you!

1,000 Elks Lodge members probably contributed at least $100 per year, that’s $100,000 per year, and you still couldn’t keep a paid for building, even with a $700,000 emergency fund? With the last little bit of money you have, you should hire an independent auditor to find out what happened to all the money.

In every city, and every state, the Elks Lodge members are comprised of the car dealership owners, car dealer management, real estate brokers, real estate agents, insurance company owners, insurance company agents, other business owners, doctors, dentists, lawyers, and accountants. All of these types of people formed, built, and kept the Elks Lodge going for 80 years, and now right after the biggest oil boom ever in Dickinson, you can’t even keep your building that was long ago paid for?

Something is wrong with you people. I would be ashamed to be an Elks Lodge member in Dickinson. You belong in a basement.

Supposedly, the upstairs to the Elks Lodge building has been acquired by the New Life Pentecostal Church of Dickinson. This church has fewer than 100 adult members, and most of them are not wealthy people. How can these 100 adults from a church afford to purchase, renovate, and maintain the upstairs to the Elks Lodge building, and the 1,000 professional and business people Elks Lodge members can’t even keep the upstairs to the building that they already owned?

Update 1/12/2018:

I do not know why this blog post article has been viewed by more than 100 people today, because I posted this article back in August, four months ago. Here are some of the Facebook posts from the Elks Lodge in Dickinson:

November 16, 2017 – “PSA: We have set a date to close the top half of the Elks, our last day open this year will be December 16th! We are planning to renovate downstairs of the Elks and will reopen in 2018! We are really excited to see where this new chapter takes the Elks and all of our Members….”

December 14, 2017 – “Hey Everyone, As most of you know our last day upstairs is Saturday (16th) and we are requesting help from anyone who is interested!
We would like to start on Sunday December 17th……The Auction will be December 30th at 10:00 AM here at the Elks. Basically, we need to move the various equipment and furniture into trailers that we plan to keep for the lower level and organize the sale items in the building for the auction sale…..”

January 2, 2018 – “As most of you know we are officially closed for lower level renovations! We will be reopening at a later date in 2018….”

I drove to the Elks Lodge in Dickinson this evening, and I saw several work vans and equipment trailers owned by Simons Homes Siding & Windows parked beside the Elks Lodge building, because work was being performed on the upstairs of the building. Simons Homes Siding & Windows is owned by Robert Simons, pastor of the New Life Pentecostal Church.

From the three quotations that I took from the Dickinson Elks Lodge Facebook page and listed above, it appears as though the Elks Lodge is moving into the basement of their own building, and vacating the upstairs of their own building.

I can not say for certain that the New Life Pentecostal Church will occupy the upstairs of the Elks Lodge building, but it looks like this will happen.

I do not want to express any more anger and outrage than I have already written, about how the Elks Lodge members from the past, could buy or build their own building in the worst of economic times, and then later the future Elks Lodge members would lose a paid for building in the middle of the best of economic times.

I will write an updated article with some other comments about the Elks Lodge in Dickinson.

Dickinson, North Dakota Could Have Had Permanent Growth If….

August 19, 2017Uncategorizedguide to Dickinson North Dakota, home prices in Dickinson North Dakota, housing in Dickinson North Dakota, Information on Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

In this blog post, I am going to try to explain one of the mistakes that has been made in Dickinson that has prevented permanent growth. No, I am not going to write about local people in Dickinson being unfriendly, uncooperative, not helpful, and hostile for the 100th time, I am going to write about something that I have not covered yet.

I will illustrate what I am trying to explain using a real life example of a woman named “Trudy” who moved to Dickinson with her husband approximately two years ago. Trudy and her husband are in their late forties, and they moved to Dickinson because of her husband’s job. They had moved to different towns more than several times during their marriage because of her husband’s job.

Initially, when they moved to Dickinson two years ago, they rented an apartment. They wanted to look for and try to find the right house for them. With the sale of their previous home and their financial situation, they could have afforded to buy the most expensive home listed for sale in Dickinson if they wanted to. But they were really only looking for a nice looking, comfortable, modest home that was the right size for them.

Trudy and her husband did not like paying the very high apartment rent that was the result of the oil boom that began in 2007 in western North Dakota. The rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Dickinson was typically $2,000 to $3,000 per month. Most people recognized that if you are going to pay $24,000 to $36,000 per year in rent, you would be much better off financially by using that amount of money to purchase a home.

Trudy liked Dickinson, and she liked the people in Dickinson. She was looking forward to buying a house and making a home here with her husband. She was looking forward to getting out of their apartment, this was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement.

Trudy looked, and looked for a house in Dickinson. She looked at every on-line listing, she looked at all the printed real estate guides, she went to real estate offices, she drove around Dickinson looking at homes “For Sale By Owner” and to look for any house for sale that she wasn’t already aware of.

Trudy looked for a house in Dickinson for 1-1/2 years. Though from time to time she found a house that would have been O.K. for her and her husband, everything was overpriced. It was as if the home owners and the real estate agents did not think that anyone else was aware that the oil boom was over, and that the oil field was not going to pick up any time soon, and possibly not for a long time. It also appeared that the home owners and the real estate agents believed that there were people “with a lot of money”, that would just go ahead and buy a house for $250,000 to $450,000 without even thinking about it.

Most people that are capable of purchasing a home for $250,000 to $450,000 are financially shrewd people, who are not in the habit of losing money. These people don’t willingly over-pay for anything. But in Dickinson, there seemed to be this wide-spread belief that there were vast numbers of home buyers that didn’t know how much homes were worth, and that the thought never entered their mind, “What could I expect to re-sell this home for in the future?”

Dickinson began to lose its charm for Trudy and her husband. The people didn’t turn out to be that friendly or very helpful after all. They could not find a reasonably priced home, and living in their apartment was unpleasant. There was not a lot to do in Dickinson. Eventually, both Trudy and her husband agreed that they would be happier and better off if they just moved to a different state.

I used this story up above to illustrate that both the excessive gouging on housing during the oil boom, and the current and continuing over-pricing on houses, has made about 90% of the people who came to Dickinson in the past ten years make up their minds that they would never stay in Dickinson. I am not saying that 10% of the people decided to stay, I am saying that 90% of the people made up their minds that they would never stay.

Of the 10% of the people who came to Dickinson in the past ten years who didn’t make up their minds that they would never stay, many or most of this 10% had to leave anyway because they lost their job, or they could not find a reasonably priced house. Trudy and her husband would be in this 10%.

In other words, Dickinson drives almost everyone who comes here away. The population of Dickinson is going to continue to decrease every year, for years to come.

Businesses Closing In Dickinson, North Dakota

August 17, 2017Uncategorizedguide to Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, working in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

I want for everyone, local people, people from out of state, and people who are considering moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, to know what is going on here. The oil boom is over in North Dakota, it was over by the end of 2014. Since then, everything has become less busy with each passing month in Dickinson, North Dakota.

During the morning work rush hours in Dickinson, 6:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., traffic is not heavy. From 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., and 1:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., traffic is very light. After 8:00 p.m. in Dickinson, the streets are almost empty. After 8:00 p.m., there are only three to six people in each of the downtown bars on a week night. After 8:00 p.m., it is the same thing in each of the grocery stores, only about three to six customers.

Outside of town in the industrial areas, there are many commercial buildings and warehouses that have become vacant. In town, there are many commercial and retail spaces that have become vacant.

The Sears store has sold most of its inventory, there is hardly anything left in the store, and they are permanently closing in just a few days. The Family Fare grocery store on highway 22 is closing in just a few days, much of their inventory is already gone.

In downtown Dickinson, there are two family owned businesses that were very rude to me, and several other people that I have spoken to. I spent about $500 at one business, and about $1,000 at the other business, yet the owners were shitty with me when I came to their stores to buy more equipment. I enjoy driving by their stores now at various times throughout the day, and I see that they have zero customers.

I am not going to list every tenant from every retail, commercial, and industrial building in Dickinson that has left, because it would take too long and it would be difficult to include every one. In general, in buildings where there are five or more tenants, it has gone from one vacancy, to two, then three, and so on as the months have passed in Dickinson. What I want for people to understand, is that more and more business will continue to close in Dickinson.

I have had a couple of discussions recently with two men who are my age, late forties, who have lived and worked all over the United States, who came to Dickinson right when the oil boom began in 2007. They lived and worked through the housing shortage, and the worker shortage in Dickinson. One of these men is an electrician who has had his hours reduced more and more, as other workers are let go. One of these men is a roustabout foreman who has had his wage rate reduced by $7 per hour, as other workers are let go. Both of these men admit to there being a scarcity of jobs right now, and every indication that things will get much worse in employment.

All three of us, do not like it when uninformed people in the area say things like, “Things are starting to pick up again.”, “The drill rig count is up.”, “Its starting to turn around now.”, and “People are going back to work now.” These statements are absolutely not true, although the drill rig count may go up from time to time. It is not helping anyone to give them false information, it is actually harming many people.

There are many people who have reduced work, have lost their jobs, or have been unable to get a job, who should do everything they can to plan on leaving North Dakota. They need to look into what things are like in Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, what kind of job can they get there, where can they live, and how are they going to get there.

It is about to get cold again in North Dakota, and there will be a winter work slow down. It is wrong, and it is harmful to mislead people who have lost their job or who have not been able to get a job, into believing that if they wait here, the oil field is getting ready to pick up again, it’s not.

It would actually be better for everyone in Dickinson to know and to say, “The oil field is not going to pick up any time soon. More people will probably lose their jobs. It’s time for people to start thinking about where else they could live, and where else they might go to earn a living. It is not going to be good to encourage people to stay in Dickinson, there will end up being many unemployed people in Dickinson if some of these people don’t try to go someplace else.”

Downtown Dickinson Preservation And Revitalization

August 8, 2017UncategorizedDowntown Dickinson Association, guide to Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Like, women in Dickinson North Dakota, would you move to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

In my previous blog post titled “Downtown Dickinson Association Seeking Executive Director” where I offered some proposals for downtown Dickinson, some of my ideas were better than others. I should not be a nuisance to the Downtown Dickinson Association. I should be helpful and supportive because what they are doing will make Dickinson a better place to live.

If you didn’t think very much about it, and jumped to conclusions, you might think that the Downtown Dickinson Association seeks to gain attention for downtown Dickinson in order to bring customers to businesses and tenants to the property owners. Yes, it does do that, this is part of the plan. A healthy and attractive downtown benefits all of Dickinson in many ways, not just the downtown business owners and property owners.

In most cities and towns that have grown, shopping centers and shopping malls were built beyond the old sections of town. With one massive multi-acre parking lot, people would park their car, enter the shopping center or mall, and walk from store to store. Later, without people really noticing, Wal-Mart and Target began to replace the shopping centers and the malls, because people could buy everything very cheaply inside just one store.

The shopping centers, shopping malls, and Wal-Mart are very formatted and controlled according to what corporations want. There are no shade tress, benches, or tables outside, because they do not want their parking lots to be comfortable, attractive, and appealing. They want there to be nothing in their parking lots to distract, delay, entertain, or amuse their customers, such as a shady spot or comfortable spot where customers going in, might meet and talk to their friends coming out.

Inside the shopping centers, malls, and Wal-Mart, there are aisles and lanes for shoppers, that are not really conducive to stopping, standing still, or sitting. There are designated food courts, that are minimal, and not very comfortable. The shopping environment is very controlled with bright lighting, generic music, neutral decor, standardized layout, uniformed employees, and store rules.

Shopping centers, malls, and Wal-Mart have their purpose, which is to get in, buy as much as you can, and get out, quickly. I don’t enjoy going to shopping malls or Wal-Mart, because they have the barren no-mans land parking lots, and inside they are somewhat bland, generic, dull, uninteresting, crowded, and full of stressed out people who are in a hurry.

As cities and towns grow and expand, there are more and more chain or franchise restaurants that are owned by corporations, shopping centers that are owned by corporations, and apartment communities that are owned by corporations. All these corporation owned restaurants, shopping centers, and apartment communities look the same, and are built the same. To minimize costs, for ease of construction, for ease of maintenance, standardized accounting and management, lease-ability and re-sale ability, everything is built the same.

A relief from the monotony and drudgery of everything looking the same and being the same, the barren parking lots of the shopping centers and Wal-Mart, are the old downtown historic areas. Where every house and yard is different from the one next to it in a thousand different ways, every building is different, and every city block is different. A variety of different businesses, professionals, and services. Wealthy homes, middle class homes, lower middle class homes, all mixed together. Old people, middle aged people, families, and children all mixed together.

In downtown Dickinson, the residential neighborhoods surround the schools, churches, municipal buildings, and gradually give way to the businesses in the center of town. Traffic is not bad downtown, and it is very pleasant to walk or bicycle in the old historic section of town. It is an oasis of green with many kinds of large tall trees, hedges, shrubs, flowers, and lawns. Home to many birds, squirrels, and cats.

In the afternoon the downtown bars and restaurants open. Most of them have seating and tables outside on the broad sidewalks. There are many attractive women who work downtown, you can go and look at them, and leave them money.

In the Spring, Summer, and Fall there are outdoor events and concerts in downtown Dickinson. There are a few locations that have enough space inside to host events and live music in the Winter.

Downtown Dickinson is the most social area of Dickinson due to the blending of residential, municipal, business, bars, restaurants, events, and concerts. All kinds of people, every type of person comes downtown. It is the Downtown Dickinson Association that is not just promoting the businesses and the property downtown, but it is also preserving the character and social aspect of downtown Dickinson.