Drenched in Blue!

A company with a name that may take more than three guesses to hit upon the right pronunciation and is a misnomer, Schlumberger (not a Mc.D. alternative) happens to be a world leader in OFS (Oil Field Services). I am not campaigning for SLB.

But what keeps SLB apart from rest of the companies is its work culture and never ending list of safety rules and policies. Employees here walk into the office as if on some river side picnic; from Bermuda shorts to bathroom slippers… you may go as comfortable as you want to be. And dare you call even the manager but by his name!

Cool is the word around here… and Blue (read balooo) goes the color!

At one point you happen to be fiddling with your laptop keys and at other cleaning grease/rust from some tool. SLB people don’t spend money on gyms; the work here makes sure that within 2-3 months of working one can boast of biceps, triceps, even six pack! The well site experiences capacitate you to survive in all types of extreme and hostile surroundings. One day you use your five starred bathroom or enjoy an exquisite spa, the other two days you are searching for a covert place between bushes in some field (while on job).

To all aspiring real time heroes/ heroines : apply for SLB field engineer post. JFE, SFE, GFE, FSM will be your designation as you get promoted (this happens really fast!). No sooner did you enter the premises, the obsession for three letter abbreviations, hits you hard; and if you are not good at remembering full forms, tch tch! You better become one!

SLB spoils you for choices as to where to spend the colossal amount of money you get for salary in a short period of time that you get off from work! Love for each other drives the engineers to work even on weekends (there is generally no one back home)!

It has been 27 days since my association with SLB, yet the post which is so warranted, comes this late for the want of a ‘kick’ ( ref. ‘Inception’) which was received while we interns were struggling to catch the very movie on time. Having been kept waiting for the company car to drop us for a 5:30 show for more than 30 minutes (this generally doesn’t happen, i.e. car getting late), we decided to go by an auto which would take ten minutes to get us there. It was already 5:25.

We had hardly moved some yards when our senior employee who had our tickets(we were going to join them) called up, only to ask us to get down from the auto, which we managed with great difficulty given water logged roads. Now SLB has a PROPER driving policy, going by which employees aren’t supposed to travel in public vehicles for they don’t have seat belts! K

A car was on its way to us. We were waiting (5:30 now). We mounted the car and the driver chuckled: ‘you had better used the auto… you would have reached quickly’. I was praying that we reach before intermission.

Reason being: an SLB car has max speed limit of 65k/h and sudden breaks/acceleration can bring the driver to a warning letter! Even the bikers overtake Innova on an empty highway as we graciously and safely once covered 150 kms in glorifying 5 hours!

Well, fixing our seat belts, without which the driver won't even start, delayed us all by 2 more minutes. But all’s well that ends well! We managed to grab our seats by 5:50. Besides the 150 bucks ticket, the movie was worth taking all the trouble for.

P.S. : There is much more to Schlumberger (SLB) than what you just read.