Waterfront Friends

I went to Starbucks today and met some longshoremen I know, including a Superintendent who just got suddenly fired from Centennial Dock and is probably coming back to work as an ordinary longshoreman. When I asked why he got fired, he said it was his refusal to perform fellatio on a certain waterfront executive whose genitalia he described, indicating the size with his fingers. He continued the metaphor, alluding to others who sucked AND swallowed. He is really quite a nice fellow, and not a person I even consider crude, but that is the way people talk in our industry. After a bit more conversation, I said that my son had cautioned me that I would have to modify the way I express myself when I try to make new friends who have never worked on the docks.

One of the dockers has a relative who failed the written test for prospective longshoremen - this despite being the proud holder of a B. Com degree! Lots of candidates have not passed the written, mainly because they can't do metric conversion and long division. I think our schools are doing a disservice to their pupils and to the country by letting students advance who have not mastered grade school mathematics. Many kids who can learn this stuff do not, just because there is no real consequence for not getting it. Perhaps there should be a standard math test and those who don't pass it have to do an extra remedial class or something.

In case you think this is not important for longshoremen, consider the following simple problem: The Safe Working Load of the lifting gear is 5000 lbs, so how many 35 kg objects can it safely pick up at one time? This sort of thing has to be figured out quickly, on dark, rainy docks. And lots of accidents have happened because people got it wrong.