When Jahkira Michelle, a 23-year-old school 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: “Money can’t bring your life back!”
“It would be one thing if I said regular welder,” Michelle informed Fortune, “but something as dangerous as going deep underwater from the shore, and I can’t actually swim, I was expecting him not to be on board at all.”
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 in step with the large dangers of damage and demise that oil rig staff face in change for a comparatively excessive wage.
Michelle’s father has been a welder most of his life, she mentioned. He labored at building 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 like the profession,” she mentioned, including that her father describes the labor as one thing that’s added “10 years” to his life.
“Your body breaks down from all of the heavy labor, using hot metal,” Michelle mentioned. “He wouldn’t want me to have to do that.”
When it comes to her prank, she thinks she misplaced him on the phrase “rig.” She was interested in how he, a blue-collar employee, would reply to his daughter, a self-described “girly girl” who “wouldn’t even last for a day of training” on a rig. In his temporary, two minute response, customers on Tik Tok observed how a lot concern and help he confirmed her. “I didn’t think that people could really see how good our relationship is just from that little snippet of our conversation,” she mentioned. “It made me smile.”
One other Tik Tok person, Olivia Prewitt, a 25-year-old Kentucky native who’s now primarily based in Florida working as a realtor, informed Fortune that she found the pattern shortly after she “had mentioned moving 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.
“Once I saw the trend take off,” mentioned Prewitt, she realized: “He might actually 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 is an idea of what a traditional post-grad life looks like.” That life contains “immediately starting a job or family.”
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 mates 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 anything you’d want 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 mates, however determined to publish it publicly. It has racked up 4.5 million views and impressed a wave of latest pranksters desirous to gauge how their household and mates will react. For Prewitt, who additionally described herself as a “girly girl,” the pranks are humorous due to how the “dads, boyfriends, and brothers jump into protective mode.” Nonetheless, she mentioned, she is aware of that if she had been severe 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 specific 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 yr’s work, a prospect particularly enticing to college-aged males who is perhaps tempted by the excessive pay minus the increased schooling part.
However, as the ladies appropriately intuited, the pay is excessive for a cause. Oil rig crews face among the highest charges of accidents and deaths within the nation, in response to Arnold & Itkin, a regulation agency that represents oil trade staff. In accordance with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, 470 oil staff 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 price has additionally been rising: In 2019, the speed of oil employee fatalities was about 12%, in comparison with about 6% in 2017.
The commonest causes of accidents embody 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, tools that maimed folks, and witnessing total coastlines degrade shortly.
Each Michelle and Prewitt had been fast to inform Fortune that the work is one thing they may 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 also reveal some extremely supportive conversations from households.
Prewitt mentioned that she has “no doubt that there are amazing, strong women fully capable” of oil rig work. However, she added, “I am not one of those women.”
The demand for oil rig labor is essentially primarily based 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 response to 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 increased once more to proceed the cycle.
Past the dangers of damage, suffocation and chemical publicity to folks, it’s a job that additionally wreaks havoc on the setting. The oil trade is liable 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 near schools and homes is releasing toxic fumes,” and in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, drilling threatens to undermine “years of hard-earned progress in cutting air pollution.”
In accordance with a report by IMPLAN, a supplier of financial affect information, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado collectively contribute to over 65% of the full U.S. oil-and-gas manufacturing. This yr, crude oil manufacturing is predicted to lower from 1 million barrels per day to 170,000 barrels, which is able to end in hundreds of fewer jobs out there this yr.
Oil rig content material, although, has been cropping up on social media platforms like TikTok in different varieties too–and fairly a couple of come from ladies creators. One lady documented her fitness center routine on an oil rig, whereas one other posted outdated pictures of herself kitted up in neon protecting gear.
Different staff have documented their residing quarters, with wood 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 may apply for. “If it is,” she mentioned, “there’s probably a reason and I’m not sure it’s worth it.”