When Jahkira Michelle, a 23-year-old faculty administration employee, prank-called her dad to say she landed an underwater welder apprenticeship for six weeks, she simply wished to listen to his real response. She knew what to anticipate and he delivered: “Cash can’t carry your life again!”
“It will be one factor if I mentioned common welder,” Michelle informed Fortune, “however one thing as harmful as going deep underwater from the shore, and I can’t truly swim, I used to be anticipating him to not be on board in any respect.”
The prank, trending on TikTok, includes dozens of ladies calling up their fathers, brothers, and companions about touchdown a six-figure job supply at an offshore oil rig. The ladies clarify that the job entails spending six weeks as an underwater welder or apprentice, and revealing their family members’ reactions. Except for a poignant, confused silence that normally follows the ladies’s announcement, the reactions sit someplace between protecting, supportive and lifelike–a lot consistent with the large dangers of harm and demise that oil rig employees face in trade for a comparatively excessive wage.
Michelle’s father has been a welder most of his life, she mentioned. He labored at development websites in Maryland for many years and is greater than conscious of the ache and bodily stress that comes with the job. “He doesn’t just like the occupation,” she mentioned, including that her father describes the labor as one thing that’s added “10 years” to his life.
“Your physique breaks down from all the heavy labor, utilizing sizzling metallic,” Michelle mentioned. “He wouldn’t need me to have to do this.”
When it comes to her prank, she thinks she misplaced him on the phrase “rig.” She was interested by how he, a blue-collar employee, would reply to his daughter, a self-described “girly woman” who “wouldn’t even final for a day of coaching” on a rig. In his temporary, two minute response, customers on Tik Tok seen how a lot concern and help he confirmed her. “I didn’t assume that individuals may actually see how good our relationship is simply from that little snippet of our dialog,” she mentioned. “It made me smile.”
One other Tik Tok consumer, Olivia Prewitt, a 25-year-old Kentucky native who’s now based mostly in Florida working as a realtor, informed Fortune that she found the pattern shortly after she “had talked about transferring to California on a wild hair” to her father. He informed her she’d want a job that will help the excessive price of residing on the market.
“As soon as I noticed the pattern take off,” mentioned Prewitt, she realized: “He would possibly truly fall for this.”
Her post-graduate life has not been as conventional as another younger adults in her southern hometown, the place, Prewitt mentioned, “there’s an thought of what a conventional post-grad life seems to be like.” That life contains “instantly beginning a job or household.”
Her personal trajectory was a bit totally different–she moved to Florida and began work as a realtor at a job that additionally permits her time to journey. She’s a former Miss Kentucky Teen USA–and now visits her pals who’ve ended up everywhere in the nation in cities like Los Angeles, Boston, and Miami.
Her father’s response was very dadlike. An extended pause, after which, “That’s not something you’d wish to do.” She pushed him, saying the pay was $185K for six weeks, to which he replied, “Aw shit, you ain’t gonna do no welding.”
At first she solely deliberate to share the video with pals, however determined to publish it publicly. It has racked up 4.5 million views and impressed a wave of latest pranksters eager to gauge how their household and pals will react. For Prewitt, who additionally described herself as a “girly woman,” the pranks are humorous due to how the “dads, boyfriends, and brothers leap into protecting mode.” Nonetheless, she mentioned, she is aware of that if she had been critical her dad could be supportive.
Oil rig work has been garnering curiosity for months–Google searches for associated jobs reached a five-year excessive, with explicit curiosity from the Southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Arkansas, that are close to the Gulf of Mexico and its 6,000-plus oil and gasoline buildings, or rigs. Oil rig welding jobs supply a wage over $55,000 for simply half a 12 months’s work, a prospect particularly engaging to college-aged males who may be tempted by the excessive pay minus the larger training element.
However, as the ladies accurately intuited, the pay is excessive for a purpose. Oil rig crews face a few of the highest charges of accidents and deaths within the nation, in accordance with Arnold & Itkin, a legislation agency that represents oil trade employees. In accordance with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, 470 oil employees died between 2014 and 2019; greater than 400 of them had been on the job and 69 of them died from cardiac issues. The demise charge has additionally been growing: In 2019, the speed of oil employee fatalities was about 12%, in comparison with about 6% in 2017.
The commonest causes of accidents embrace fires, falls, fatigue, equipment malfunctions, and lack of security tradition on rigs. In a single Reddit thread, practically 100 customers shared their most terrifying experiences on oil rigs—describing brutal burns, gear that maimed folks, and witnessing whole coastlines degrade shortly.
Each Michelle and Prewitt had been fast to inform Fortune that the work is one thing they might by no means do, however they had been equally fast to say that they know different ladies may–and that they’re curious if the pattern may even reveal some extremely supportive conversations from households.
Prewitt mentioned that she has “little doubt that there are superb, robust ladies totally succesful” of oil rig work. However, she added, “I’m not a kind of ladies.”
The demand for oil rig labor is essentially based mostly on the “boom-bust” nature of the trade. Throughout booms, or durations of excessive demand for oil, traders pour cash into the trade and set off overproduction, in accordance with the Colorado College of Mines. Bust durations observe, which sees decrease oil costs and underinvestment by the trade, which triggers extra demand for reasonable oil and shifts the worth larger once more to proceed the cycle.
Past the dangers of harm, suffocation and chemical publicity to folks, it’s a job that additionally wreaks havoc on the surroundings. The oil trade is chargeable for 38% of all methane gasoline emissions within the nation, and three.8% of all greenhouse gasses.
In accordance with WildEarth Guardians, a nonprofit that protects wildlife and landscapes within the American West, oil drilling additionally produces air pollution booms in states like Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, Texas and extra.
In Texas, the nonprofit wrote, “drilling close to colleges and houses is releasing poisonous fumes,” and in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, drilling threatens to undermine “years of hard-earned progress in reducing air air pollution.”
In accordance with a report by IMPLAN, a supplier of financial influence information, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado collectively contribute to over 65% of the whole U.S. oil-and-gas manufacturing. This 12 months, crude oil manufacturing is predicted to lower from 1 million barrels per day to 170,000 barrels, which can lead to hundreds of fewer jobs obtainable this 12 months.
Oil rig content material, although, has been cropping up on social media platforms like TikTok in different types too–and fairly a couple of come from ladies creators. One girl documented her gymnasium routine on an oil rig, whereas one other posted outdated images of herself kitted up in neon protecting gear.
Different employees have documented their residing quarters, with picket flooring, televisions, and sea views, the place many individuals reside for weeks to months at a time.
On her video, Prewitt noticed questions flood the remark part, asking if the wage was actual and if it was a job they might apply for. “Whether it is,” she mentioned, “there’s most likely a purpose and I’m undecided it’s price it.”
