So I walk into a small office where I met the secretary to check in to my new job. She gave me some paperwork and took my information for my uniforms. They told me the warehouse in the back is where the technicians stay. They gave me directions where to go and I was off.
I entered the warehouse where there was a few guys walking around. They introduced themselves. Mark G and Mark W where the first two I met. The guy that walked in with me was Brian. He was new too. We finally got settled in and noticed that when in the warehouse that lots of people are just hanging out, playing basketball, wiffleball, sleeping, this was shocking. I was thinking alot of these people are not as serious and strict as they should be as we work with and around the most poison gas on earth, Methyl Bromide.
I was taking on "training" events for the next couple of weeks. The first place I trained at was a place called Pier ##. It was a giant two story building right on the Delaware river. When I walked into this massive building the first thing I noticed was a weird, awful smell which I became to know was the smell of cocoa beans. Also alot of little moths flying around. I thought how is it one of he most delicious things we eat starts out like this. When I looked around I saw huge stacks of bags of beans on pallets on top of eachother 20-35 feet tall. Amazing how long and high these stacks of beans are in here. My first training tip was how to climb these carefully, as a new guy you are expected to be on top of these stacks, I completely loved this. All of these stacks move and crumble as you climb on them, not at all safe as stacks fell all the time, I asked if we should have any harnesses, the top dinosaur guys laughed and said it's impossible to do this job fast, efficiently, and right with that. I said ok being the new guy I didn't want to cause problems. After climbing these huge stacks, the next thing is pulling tarps of massive sizes over these stacks strategically. Wow. This was crazy too, but I loved the challenge as it took pure strength to pull these up. I enjoyed and became very good at climbing these, as well as pulling tarps, so I was always a top guy. One of the worst parts of this was the heat, being fully clothed in long pants and long sleeves in these hot warehouses was tough but right up my alley. After covering these stacks with tarps we take sand snakes(long tubes full of sand) and put 3 rows(mostly 2 rows due to time and equipment) around bottom of tarps to seal them. After this step we are ready to shoot (put gas in them). I was allowed to watch from far away until they "trusted" me to do this, but basically I came to find out the way they did this was very dangerous, but cost and time effective, the reason why every rule or law was bent or broken. They drove pallets of cylinders of Methyl Bromide around with a fork lift and a little crude device made out of a screw on hose. Basically one guy drives the forklift from stack to stack while the other guy(me) jabs the hose thru the plastic while holding the plastic tight around the hose with your hand(sounds like the most unsafe thing to do with the most poisonous gas on earth that causes chemical burns on contact due to it's cold temperature and if inhaled it kills you in 2 hours...hmm) so I asked about these procedures, answer from the bosses..."this is the way we were taught and have been doing it for years as it saves time and money also Mike(our main boss) taught us this...ok I thought... I guess if they have been doing this for years maybe this gas isn't as poisonous as I keep reading...hmmm. So after a day of hold time(the length of time something is under Methyl Bromide) we pull the snakes off. So I ask where is the air tanks. Another boss laughs, "he says we barely fit between these stacks how do you think we can do it with airpacks on?" I asked isn't that dangerous and not the right way, he laughed again while saying "it's the way we have done it for years(coming from a guy that's been at Western for 15 years) and everything is dangerous". So after pulling snakes off in between stacks that barely are wide enough to get thru, without an airpack, when the tarps lift up while walking on them I became very, very, very nervous. The next thing we did was walk back into the same areas again without airpacks and pull the tarps off these stacks, unbelievable, this sounds like Russian roulette with my health, but everyone was fine with it. I seemed to be the only nervous one. Half the time the tarps would get stuck as well, I also grew more nervous everyone assured me it's be done like this forever. 2 hours after we pulled the tarps the gas was suppose to disapate so we could reenter and fold the tarps, apparently an air sample was taken to determine this. So covering beans and shooting them training, scary but done.
