As a prelude to my departure, I got wrangled into a field trip tomorrow morning. I had heard of it few nearly a week, but had dismissed the idea because I did not figure it could be made to fit into the halfday I have before I have to get on my plane and fly south. A field trip of mostly road side geology in and around Yellow Knife, to introduce use to the shear structures that dominate some of the rich gold bearing mines, specifically the Giant and Con. The field trip was to be done by 1:30pm leaving me with enough time to catch my 3pm flight to Calgary.
The Con Mine Head Frame
As it worked out our overly eager summer student Ms CW, suggested in jest that I go. This was heard by my immediate boss, Mr. MR, who agreed to give up his seat on that morning trek having seen done that tour before. For me that would have been enough to say I was going. In my mind and likely in MR's mind it was decided that this would be the plan. I fly out with the field trip luggage and all get the tour, get a good lunch in town and part company at the airport and head home. This is still the plan but it starts to get silly at the management end.
We have too much management here, it stems form the ambition of the head office to have the property where the main camp is located to some day become a mine. I can not say when or if this will happen. This leaves us with three layers of management for a place that barely hosts 25 people most days. At the very bottom I can place my self, I can and have over seen portions of the drilling but tend to shy a way from that when others are here. From the Geologic end Mr. MR oversees most of the day to day, After him is Mr. P, who used to do a larger share of the day to day management and now is more involved in dealing with various branches of the government and environmental issues and works on the models that will go into the mind design, mostly spending time at computers swearing at them. And because this we are dreaming big out here we have a supervisor, Mr. DL, who's job would make more sense if we had a mine, here, instead he over sees a handful of labourers and the general logistics of this camp, but has to get his fingers into the geology, which is where the field trip comes in.
So two days ago a conversation in office with MR, and CW and I led to me going on the shear zone field trip tomorrow morning, and I had figured that MR's accent would have been enough to give it a green light. I was wrong, for this morning I had a visit form the ministry and the department of redundancy. I was approached this morning by Mr. DL who processed to tell me, that it has been decided that I am going on the field trip. He tells me this assume I have not heard a thing about this. I get smart and told him I already knew for the last day. As it was the idea had to pass through both Mr. MR and Mr. P, to reach Mr. DL, who had to approach me and treat the idea as if it was his.
So I have spent a portion of the mulling over this silly state of over management, I had seen Mr. DL's habit of having his stubby greasy fingers is every pie on site before but this struck me as the most transparent and due to the anticipation of going home struck me harder then his reinterpreting my imperfect drill management ideas from the first few weeks of my stay here.
