The Circus Is In Town

My job here in Albuquerque has been a case study in government gone wild. The job itself is simple enough, we are building a GPO. GPO stands for Geophysical Prove Out. It's a test grid with ordnance both real and simulated for geophysists to check their instruments. It's a quality control thing for geophysical surveys. The process is simple. A UXO tech (me) takes a metal detector to a one hundred by one hundred foot grid. I check for any actual unexploded ordnance that may be there already. Than we start digging holes to place the "seeded" ordnance. Realistically it should take one UXO tech and one geophysics technician. On the first day we had the Geophysics division manager for Shaw, two Shaw project managers, the Army Corps of Engineers project manager and geophysics engineer for the corp, a Shaw archeologist, a Shaw health and safety rep, two Shaw geophysics techs, a representative of the Isleta Pueblo Tribe and two Pueblo tribal rangers (with M-16s by the way) and two UXO techs. I may be forgetting someone. It was a mad house. There is normally a work plan you follow with as little deviation as possible. Everyone had an opinion on how it should be done and they were almost all wrong. The work plan remained intact all of two hours. If ever there was a case for smaller government this was it. We were suppose to be here a week. Thanks to the delays, changes, interruptions and outright interference of all the PHD's I'm leaving next Wednesday a full three working days later than scheduled. "I'm from the government, I'm here to help".