I’m Not Very Tough

As a nuclear power plant inspector, I do a lot of traveling to various facilities, and refueling outages are usually good times to observe lots of different activities and work that is outside of the normal routine. When a plant is shutdown for an outage, it gives me the opportunity to go into lots of different parts of the plant and observe activities to ensure that everything is safe and proper procedures are being followed. It’s kind of a weird position because everyone on site is, for the most part, nice and professional to me, even though they probably can’t stand the sight of me because of the job I have to do and the authority inspectors have to raise hell when we see violations. My approach is to always be polite, build rapport, and, most of all, don’t be a dick. It turns out this approach pretty much serves me well in all areas of my life.

Last week was kind of a long week on the road with lots of time spent dressed in protective clothing (PCs) and crawling around containment and other normally off-limit areas of the plant. My coworker Harry was the senior inspector, and he and I ventured into the low pressure condenser on Wednesday afternoon. Once we both climbed a ladder and then crawled on our stomachs to get under some scaffolding, pipes, and structural barriers, we were officially inside the condenser. Harry summarized it perfectly by saying, “Well, welcome to Dante’s Inferno.” This place was nuts. Cramped, loud, metal pipes everywhere, and open spots on the floor that invited a person to fall a very long way into darkness. Harry and I did lots of crawling around on our knees and stomachs while also wearing fall protection harnesses, staying clipped onto something at all times to make sure we didn’t plummet to our death. We were in the condenser for about an hour, and it only took me a few minutes to realize that I’m not very tough. Do you know who is tough? The men and women who were in their welding, grinding, and sweating their asses off for a full eight or twelve hour shift. Those people are tough. They worked circles around me that day, and they had already been doing it for two weeks straight. Not only are their jobs very physically demanding and in an extremely unforgiving environment, but they also require great skill and craftsmanship.

I have a ton of respect for anyone who works hard and earns an honest living. Too much of my work time is spent in front of a computer and not out in the world doing things. It’s a breeding ground for softness that I’m trying to combat by maintaining perspective, training hard, and taking on new challenges like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. More on this later…