Trent McIntyre (Yellfire)
SPB: What is the worst job you've ever had?
McIntyre: Almost every job I've had has been what most people would consider to be shitty. One of the rougher ones I had was around 2006 or 2007, when I was about a year or two out of high school, and had just moved to Seattle a year or so prior. It was probably the 4th job I'd had since moving to Seattle. The title was kind of vague, but I essentially worked for a small "marine construction" crew that mainly worked around Lake Union, Lake Washington, and various other places. I started in the summer, and it didn't seem so bad at first, because we worked outside. But the winter was brutal. There was one specific morning, at some point, where I had to get in the water at around 6 AM, and swim under this extremely dark dock. After getting suited up in a dry suit, my task was to wrap my legs around a piling and use an air compressed underwater drill to make some holes for some giant metal straps or something. It was part of a long, ongoing project to fix up the supports that were holding up this giant concrete platform under a boat company. Can't remember all the details, but I was drilling this thing, getting blasted with extremely cold water in the face, at 6ish AM, and really starting to think about how I wouldn't really wanna do this in the long-term. That was when I looked to my right, and saw a giant Norwegian dock rat swimming right past me. There seemed to be several similar rats in the area that I saw throughout the morning. Thankfully they weren't very aggressive. Most of the less desirable tasks were always given to me at this job, ‘cause I was the new young guy. They called me "the monkey" when I first started. They'd be like, "send the monkey" when any shitty task would come up.
One of the other things this outfit used to do regularly, was to refill the flotation tanks that were under houseboats and boathouses, typically around Lake Union. I would assist a dive team from the surface, while they scuba dived underneath these houseboats and boathouses, refilling these plastic barrels or plastic flotation boxes with air. There was one super stormy morning/day, where the water was so choppy that some flotation devices were being ejected out from under some massive boathouses. We were called in to wrangle them up via two small boats and some ropes, bring them back to the correct boathouse, get them back under the boathouse, and then refill them with air, once in the correct position. All while the waters were extremely rough, and under torrential downpour and strong winds. There was one point where they asked me to stand on this flotation box while the diver held it from the side, and then jump up and down on it to get it to go underneath a section of the boathouse. I wasn't heavy enough, so they had me wear weight belts. It ended up working somehow, but if I would've fallen in the water, I would've sunk straight to the bottom with those weight belts on. No one seemed too worried about my safety. I survived though, thankfully.
