The Wild Bunch

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In about 1972, Phillips hired a bunch of graduate engineers that we eventually named the wild bunch because of the wild and crazy things they did. Only one of the four lasted more than three years before they were fired. Here’s some of the stuff they did.

 

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The Wild Bunch

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After I had been working in the Phillips Borger E&P Engineering Office for about four years, Phillips hired four new engineers and started them out in the Borger Office. Bob. Bill, and John went into the Process Section and Chris was assigned into the Treating Section where I was working at that time. This batch of new whippersnapper engineers became known as the wild bunch.

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The three in the Process Section took a field trip to the Pampa area once per week. They claimed to be working a problem at Gray Plant, but instead they attended the matinée movie at the Mall in Pampa.

 

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Bob, I think that Mall with the good movie is down that way about a mile. Let’s go.

 

 

 

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There was an engineer my age in the Process Section named Eugene that kind of rubbed people the wrong way. The wild bunch found out he had been a captain in the army before he worked for Phillips and they started responding to all his questions with a stern “Yes Sir” and saluting him when they passed him in the hall just to irritate him. Bob took the mouth piece out of his phone and waited until someone called and they rolled on the floor laughing when he started yelling into the phone. Eugene had been on a project to change the mol sieve in the huge natural gas driers at one of our plants and he screwed up and opened the beds hot instead of cooling them first. They had to stick a fire hose in the top of each one to prevent them from melting down as the carbonaceous material on the mol sieve caught on fire and would have damaged the vessel walls. They made steam for 24 hours. The wild bunch heard about this and they called it “Eugene’s Folly”. They rode that poor man daily until he asked for a transfer.

 

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Hello, Hello, I am answering you.
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One weekday night the wild bunch went to Amarillo and partied until 6 AM in the morning. They drove home at over 100 mph and didn’t have time to shave, shower, and change clothes so they came on to work as they were. Bill had a shirt on that said “Bull Shit” in big bold letters across the front of it. The Regional Manager happened to see him in the hall and called him into his office. You could hear him eating his ass out and threatening to fire him all the way down the hall. He sent him home for the day with explicit instructions about his future wardrobe. He was transferred to Bartlesville not too long after that. Bill lasted longer than any of the other wild bunch. He was laid off after about 20 years of service.

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John came in one day after being in the field on a rainy day. The Regional Engineer called him into his office to talk to him about something. He came in, sat down, leaned back, and to his muddy boots up on his polished walnut desk. The Boss man told him to get the hell out of his office and he was transferred out the next week. I heard he was fired about a year after that.

 

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We were working on completing annual Air Emissions reports for which we had to calculate pollutant emissions for all combustion equipment at all of our plants. My boss, Wayne, gave me half of the plants to do and Chris the other half. I finished mine in about a week and passed them to Wayne who reviewed them and sent them in. Chris worked on his for three weeks and gave him to Wayne. Wayne brought them to me and told me they were done all wrong. So I had to start over and redo his plants as they had to be in next week. I was not too happy, but I did what he asked. Wayne was one of the easiest going men I have ever met, but when he got in a counseling session with Chris, he was yelling at the top of his voice and pounding on the table after a few minutes talking to him.

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One of the Bartlesville Engineer Training Executives was out in our office one week and he stopped to meet all the training Engineers. Chris unloaded on him saying he was promised an overseas assignment which never got in a very ugly tone. A week later he was on his was to Norway to work on the Ekofisk Project. Two months later he was fired. Bob was transferred to the England Office and I heard he pulled some kind of a stunt on the Ivory Coast project and was also fired on the spot.

 

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I guess the year they graduated was just a bad year for Engineers.

 

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Thanks for reading The Wild Bunch,
Bill