Mr Fluffy

Temperatures and tempers are rising as we go into the Saudi summer. Last year they recorded over 60 deg c offshore on the rig, which would be uncomfortable even on a deckchair with a beer, so operating a very large diesel driven pump and dragging heavy equipment around for 12 hours at a time really can't be nice.

One of my supervisors has had a particularly problematic hitch, four weeks of mechanical breakdowns with some of our less able locals on his supporting crew. The co ordinator in town is not known for his eloquence and his management style is more punchy, feisty than touchy feely.


A brief exchange of e mails between them this week, quickly escalated a minor problem into this e mail from the supervisor offshore (let's call him Cuddles) and the co ordinator in town (let's call him Mr Fluffy):

From: Cuddles [mailto:Cuddles@yah00.c0m]
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 3:59 PM
To: Mr Fluffy; Person 2; Customer Engineer; Ed Walford; Person 3,
Cc: Everyman and his dog
Subject: RAM IT

Mr Fluffy,

you talk about sarcasm......every rig has to put up with your sh*t every day and your sarcasm in e-mails..so eat it up...

you know something Mr Fluffy ur the problem down here the way you talk to people on the phone and ur sh*tty e-mails...every guys has no respect for you 

 i phoned you twice and got a mouth full of your cr@p also.....

but no more for me, you can shove your job up your f*king hoop

get me off of here now or i go to a boat.....my first e-mail was reject because of the contents, so this is the nice 1 .....ok

Cuddles

A few fires for me to sort out then:

• Cuddles is actually a very good guy, who I want to keep
• Mr Fluffy needs some coaching on his interpersonal skills
• Cuddles included one of the customer's engineers in the mail list....

I contacted Cuddles, did my best to calm him down and told him that whilst I wouldn't accept his resignation, he'd demonstrated the sort of communication skills that would make him a good co ordinator one day.