Hello to everybody here I am a trainee overhead lineman in the UK. I just want to put it out there. What boots does everybody wear. And any recommendations Many thanks Karl

An old Lineman told me this about Safety Meetings: The reason they have Safety Meetings is not to make you a better, safer Lineman. It is to protect them from you when the law suit comes down after your injury. They can prove that they did all they could to train you. Don't depend on them, you have to look out for yourself!

Once you top out… we stop checking you. Here’s what we don’t say out loud… In this trade, topping out is treated like a lifetime clearance. Once you’re a Journeyman, the questions stop. The verification stops. The friction stops. Not because it’s smart… Because it’s uncomfortable. We don’t want to offend experience... We don’t want to challenge confidence... We don’t want to be “that guy” who slows things down. So we assume... We assume the hand still has it. We assume fatigue hasn’t crept in. We assume repetition hasn’t dulled judgment. We assume confidence still equals competence. And assumptions are cheap. They don’t cost anything… until they cost everything... We say we respect experience. But real respect would be holding experienced hands to a higher standard… not a lower one. Instead, we do the opposite... Apprentices get watched. Apprentices get checked. Apprentices get corrected. Journeymen get left alone… Even when their body language says something’s off. Even when the job feels rushed. Even when the plan is thin, and the pressure is thick. And when it finally goes bad… When a seasoned hand makes a “rookie mistake”… Everyone acts shocked. But nobody wants to talk about how long it had been since anyone actually verified the work. Nobody wants to talk about how many times we let “he’s good” replace “prove it.” Nobody wants to talk about how many close calls got brushed off because calling them out would’ve been awkward as hell. That’s not trust... That’s laziness wrapped in tradition. Judgment isn’t permanent. Skill isn’t static. And confidence, left unchecked, turns into arrogance real damn fast. If the only people being evaluated are the least experienced ones… Then, the most dangerous assumptions in this trade are wearing Journeyman tickets. That’s not Brotherhood... That’s abandonment... And every time leadership chooses silence over verification… They’re not respecting their people. They’re rolling the dice with them... BETTER... NEVER RESTS...

Ya'll have seen the Safety Sundays, and I love the conversations they spark. Those will continue, but we can do better. Starting today, a new weekly post will be added to the mix. It will call out... What We Don't Say Out Loud. Let me know what you think... What We Don’t Say Out Loud … Week 1 Here’s something we don’t say out loud… This trade accepts casualties … it just doesn’t admit it. We don’t use those words. We soften it. We dress it up with words like "inherent risk" and "part of the job". We pretend every death is an anomaly instead of a receipt. We hold the funeral. We make the post. We say his name. Then we go right back to rewarding the same behaviors that put him there. Speed over judgment. Silence over friction. Completion over condition. We teach people how to endure pressure, not how to resist it. We train them to keep moving when their gut is screaming to slow down. We condition them to ignore fatigue, doubt, and fear … because those things interfere with production. And it works. Until it kills someone. From the outside, the job looks successful. The lights are on. The storm is cleared. The outage numbers drop. Leadership moves on to the next win. In the field, everyone knows how close it came to falling apart … how many corners were cut, how many chances were taken, how much luck was spent to make it look clean. That’s the blood on our hands we don’t measure. And when someone finally does die, we act surprised. We investigate the last decision instead of the years of pressure that shaped it. We blame the hand closest to the wire and protect everything upstream of it. That’s not tragedy. That’s design. And until the trade is willing to face that … not memorialize it, not spiritualize it, not sanitize it … it will keep feeding good people into a system that already knows the cost… …and has decided it’s acceptable. ~Kevin | Lineman Bull$hit™ Academy

I started in the EE98J program in October 2017...,(please allow me to explain myself... I'm just starting the lineman , pre aprentiship @ the local community college...I don't even have the "right" to even talk...and I hope to always have this reverence, but here am I and here it goes.) His name WAS Aiden McCullough. 22yo. Not even old enough to have lived. (It feels like ripping open an old wound talking about this...it hurts my heart.) What happened was, a semi truck flatbed trailer had 4 spools of 500KCmil weighing a couple of tons ea. Anyway, they unloaded the first one which had chocks. Every spool was required to have chocks, but only the first one did... The second one began to roll and the 1st year, inexperienced appreciate went to "stop" the spool. Milo Trujillo was the first one there...(God rest his soul, but that's another story.) He told me, "1st years have no sense"... I mumbled some BS and then he looked at me directly in the face, and said, "1st years have no sense." They said that anyone could go to the hospital and "visit" so I did, but when I got there, he was dead. The nurse asked if I wanted to say goodbye, but I declined. Now I'm going into something deeper, harder, scarier and I can't even explain to myself why. After reading some of these stories I realize there's no shame in quitting, but there's an "obligation" to stop work if something seems off. You have to know that a job, or a position isn't worth loosing a life. That's what I got.