gktsuda1956 wrote:
Hmmm, I've followed this link for some time. Even told a friend about this industry and he and his wife are planning on joining your ranks. Really respect all of you for what you do and live thru (floods, dry dusty spells, mud and rain, heat, rattle snakes, etc). But I am now convinced those oil companies are making out like bandits. The hours you put in for $175 per day. Somebody is getting screwed and it's NOT the oil companies.
It's a matter of perspective and what one chooses to be grouchy about, really. My wife and I are in our 20s, left normal life a year and a half ago to travel and found out about gate guarding while working at Amazon over the winter (Where we also found out how grouchy some people can be) ;)
I can tell you that this is by far the easiest, highest-paying, stress free job *I've* ever had - and before we traveled I had a pretty cush job that I loved as a programmer analyst. For pay, the thing is, there's no expenses here. We're here in our travel trailer, that we pull with our van - all paid for with cash - and we sit around talking, playing games, etc etc... And occasionally bothering ourselves to walk outside and check someone in. Now, granted, it's hot outside, and on *our* site we have to wear FRCs and PPE, worse off than many in this forum even, but we're only out there for maybe 30 seconds at a time! Easiest job ever. There's no politics we really need to concern ourselves with, we don't even *really* have any supervision or normal rules that apply to us.. Pretty stress free.
So because the only things we're paying for are our cellphones, food, and some gas (all write-offs) we have an absolutely tremendous amount of disposable income. We're easily stashing $3k/mn into the bank - which is just about what I made, gross, before we decided to travel. So with that, we've managed to buy ourselves some beautiful land and stick a yurt on it with money from this job, so we now have our own place to live that we own outright. In just another couple months it'll have power, water, septic - all huge expenses, all paid for by this job in no time.
And what has it cost us? We've learned a lot of intriguing things about an industry we're all dependent on. We've become familiar with a nice part of Texas we would have otherwise only passed through and never absorbed any culture from. We've been forced to learn to cook - or starve. We've gotten to write off several new toys and equipment we'll certainly use after this. I've *finally* had time to pursue personal projects - playing guitar, writing a book, programming my own apps - something I falsely thought I'd have time for once I quit my job and started traveling (ha!!!) Our biggest 'cost' has been setting back the rest of our travel plans (OK, ok, our biggest cost has been stressing about tornadoes... we're from CA) ;) And, mind you, we're working for Gate Guard Services - who only pays $125/day.
I do think it's important to note that this job isn't for everyone, as you demonstrate it's easy to find things to gripe about. On top of your list the biggest thing I would add, what would make this job unfeasible for most, is the isolation. If you're lucky you get good cell signal and Internet. Regardless of luck, you don't get to go visit friends or go out on Friday night. So it really just depends a lot on who's going to be working the job and what's important and negligible to them. If we hadn't already been traveling and used to communicating with established relationships only every now and then, that would have killed this for us. But as it is, we couldn't hardly imagine a more ideal way of paying for a lot of standing goals in a short amount of time.
