Tonight marks one week since I threw down the gauntlet. One week since I lit the signal fire and said, “If you’re tired of the watered-down, glossed-over, corporate-approved version of this trade… step into the arena with me.” I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t know who would answer. I damn sure didn’t expect this... But here we are… 250 souls... 250 linemen, apprentices, operators, safety hands, leaders, and hard-earned scars. 250 people who grabbed the guidon and said, “Yeah, I’m in. Let’s build something real.” Skool didn’t go live as a “group.” It went live as a challenge. A line in the sand. A dare. A call to every man and woman who’s tired of watching this trade drift away from the values that built it. And tonight, seven days later, the Brotherhood proved something powerful: There’s still plenty of fire out there!!! Plenty of people who want truth, not theater. Leadership, not titles. Safety that saves lives, not safety that checks boxes. Culture built in mud, storms, and steel — not in PowerPoints. To the 250 who stepped in: You didn’t just join. You committed. You picked up the guidon and said, “I’ll help carry this.” And that means everything!!! We’re only getting started. The work ahead is big. The mission is bigger. The impact — if we stay locked in — will be felt across the damn industry. So here’s to Week One. Here’s to the first 250!!! Here’s to the Brotherhood!!! Together We Rise!!! Lineman Bull$hit™ Skool. The arena is open. Let’s build.

A couple of months ago my company had a pretty bad accident in Wichita. Long story short, crew had broken cross arm, JM was unpinning the neutral in his leathers, cross arm broke and phase landed on his back. They have put a committee together made up of both management and BU guys to talk/implement cradle to cradle. We have never had it before. All I know is at face value you can't do anything without gloves and sleeves on. I'm sure this is not correct. My question is on my crew, our rule is whenever your going up with the intent to work primary or work in the MAD, or you can reach, extend, or fall into the primary MAD, you have your shit on. I'm sure some is up to how the company interprets it also. Just wanted to hear you alls thoughts/ what your companies do. Thanks

Before you dive into this, I need to set the stage... My next post — the one about how we turned Safety into a department instead of a core value — the one I intended to drop today — needs context. That post is the heart of the whole damn problem. That’s where the wheels first came off. But before we get to that mess, we need to talk about: How we drifted so far off the path in the first place. We didn’t just bureaucratize Safety… We didn’t just hand it to the wrong people… We rebranded loss prevention and risk management as “Safety,” and expected the boots to salute it like gospel. This is the prequel… the throat punch… the opening salvo... Because you can’t understand how Safety lost its soul until you understand how the suits rewrote the definition to fit their optics instead of our reality. Let’s quit pretending we don’t know what happened here... Somewhere between the bean counters, the lawyers, PR, and whatever “strategic initiative” committee was meeting in a room with catered muffins and designer coffee, somebody decided to pull off the biggest word-swap in the history of this trade: They slapped a “SAFETY” sticker on loss prevention and risk management… and expected us not to notice. They didn’t change the work. They didn’t change the culture. They just changed the label — and acted like that was leadership. And now everyone’s standing around, shocked that the field doesn’t trust a damn thing with the word Safety on it. WHAT SAFETY USED TO BE (BACK WHEN IT STILL MEANT SOMETHING) Safety used to be the old hands teaching you how not to die. Not how not to ding a truck, not how to avoid cracking a tail lamp, and sure as hell not how to protect someone’s preventable-incident KPI. IT MEANT HOW NOT TO DIE. It was blood-and-bone knowledge: • How to hear danger before you saw it. • How to shut shit down when something felt wrong. • How to pick up the guy next to you… when his knees shook. • How to walk away from a near miss with a lesson… not paperwork and punishment.

The story is posted in THE BATTLEFIELD OF THE MIND Classroom. https://www.skool.com/lineman-bullshit/classroom/182302e9?md=61dc0fc3a2db4154b5d1d16ce7419b39

It was approximately 15 years ago and I had been in the apprenticeship for a while and thought I was catching on quick and becoming quite the line hand. A storm rolled through that was big enough for the boss to make an “all call” and I got paired up with an older troubleman that was a couple years away from retirement. As the evening progressed we completed many “cut and run” or “make safe” outage tickets and received a ticket for a “tree on wire” outage. We arrived on scene and located the tree pinning the wire down to the ground. The troubleman must have seen the disappointed look on my face when he told me we were going to call for a tree crew. I mentioned I would like to turn at least one persons power back on before the storm was over so he gave in and said that we would take care of the tree ourselves instead of calling for a tree crew. He allowed me to help carry some of the equipment into the right of way then made me stand very far back out of harms away. He proceeded to very slowly and carefully cut away all the branches and the part of the trunk that was overhanging the line. Finally after cutting for what seemed like a better part of an hour he made one final cut which released the wires that were pinned down causing a piece of the tree that was probably 6 or 8 feet long to launch into the air. I stood wide eyed and in disbelief at the raw power of lines under tension. Thankfully he knew that I wasn’t as ready as I thought I was and kept me out of harms way or my story would have definitely turned out far worse. We became good friends in the years to come and I learned a lot from him before he retired.