True. You can also see this value system play out all over Africa with their ignorant and brutal warlords. The guy most willing to be ruthless and savage is the one who rises to the top.

Those who choose the path of civility and rule of law get assassinated and forgotten. It's easier to incite a mob of low intelligence than to create a coalition of peaceful people with good intentions and education.

After a few generations of this you have a pot of lobsters pulling anyone down who tries to find a way out.

Our classes were about 30 students per class. There were about 6 instructors total as I remember and they rotated for classroom time. We'd spend about a month with each instructor as I remember. My favorite instructor was an older guy who used to be an actual construction welder. We had one black female in our class and one day the instructor made some crass sexual reference when explaining how to weld an open butt weld with 6010 welding rod. You basically use the rod to go in and out of the root to fill in the gap in pulses rather than just a steady bead which would burn off the edges of the bevels and leave a gaping hole. So, by pulsing the rod in and out it cools each time and fills in the gap. You know, in and out, every guy should understand that.

This ghetto trash bitch went and reported him and got him fired. Best damn instructor in the entire trade school and all it took was for one offended uppity bitch to get him tossed out.

I had one rather acrimonious encounter with her when I tired of student after student bringing their weld plates into the class and placing in a corner until the corner of the class room looked like a nasty jagged scrap yard. Most of the welds proudly placed there by various students were of poor quality and would fail any inspection so what was the point? I noticed it wasn't instructors making this pile of scrap and so one day deciding if the students could voluntarily take it on themselves to create a scrap heap, I could voluntarily take it on myself to make the class room safer and nicer looking. I started carting all the scrap plates to the scrap bin out on the shop floor for recycling.

Ghetto bitch was outraged and claimed I had no right, following me back and forth screaming at me as I carted all the junk out to the scrap bin by the armload. She kept it up as I deliberately ignored her and didn't say a word to her. After that she hated me with a passion. LOL. It did get my point across that no one gives a damn about your welds and we don't need them cluttering up the classroom. Everyone stopped leaving their practice welds in the classroom.

I did go into the steel construction industry, working on projects as varied as ships, to oil industry tanks, water tanks, once a winery installation and welding on a launch platform for NASA.

But, always I struggled with some of the less skilled and difficult to work with types. It's frustrating and dangerous as some of these guys will actually try to kill you on the job as happened to me twice.

However, I learned that if the crew is just a bit lackluster in skills and maybe new to the industry it's a good chance to help out by dropping hints and constantly explaining things to them about how things work or helping set up equipment so we have a good work day. I've been on a few crews where my experience was noticed and I was placed in charge of certain aspects of the project as well as given a few guys to help me.

Unfortunately, I hate being "in charge" of things and cringe at having to tell younger guys what to do. Why do I have to tell a fellow that pulling out his cell phone to browse his text messages during work hours is counterproductive? Or showing porn (really nasty porn) on the job is just a huge violation as well as a waste of time and totally unprofessional? One guy actually thought it was funny to lock a female safety watch into the portapotty. His dad was the supervisor and I hope he chewed him out for at least an hour. I did rescue the woman within seconds and dragged the young guy away to give him some advice on how we could lose the contract, the contractor could get sued and even get his dad fired.

It's one thing to play pranks on a coworker you know, (still forbidden) but quite another to be the son of the supervisor and play a prank on someone from another company and a female as well. Also this particular woman was a bit unhinged anyway and I caught her babbling to herself about conspiracies. Damn, messing with her was like playing with a land mine. I advised the supervisor she was coming unglued on the job and to find a quiet way to ease her off back to her employer. Quietly being the key.

Over time on another crew I began systematically ingratiating myself with my coworkers by bringing them things from the toolroom, giving praise and helping them set up equipment and it worked. The entire crew became more supportive, less back stabbing and squabbling and more cooperation with the foreman and supervisor who I also coached on how to deal with company infighting. Day shift was scheming to sabotage our entire crew. Not nice. In the end, we had a huge if quiet change of understanding between crews and the sabotage and scheming ended. I had caught the day shift supervisor in a clear case of fraud and lying and rather than report him to HR I just let it hang there like a weapon I had ready.

People skills, something they really don't teach in trade schools.

To be honest, I'm not all that smart and have to go over text and pick out the important stuff. Basic ideas stick better than specific facts and when I took welding, it was like electricity and all the new words concerning welding were to me very different and new so I had to pay attention and I did want to ace every quiz and test.

Then, the shop work, to me was very difficult to get perfect weld beads. It's all hand eye coordination, setting the voltage on the machines and adjusting the size of the beads to make sure they came out just right when filling in a bevel. It was very important to make sure your weld passes were uniform and you left just enough under flush on the edges so when you put your cover passes on you had a nice uniform weld all across the seam. Learning to brace my body and feed the welding rod in at a steady rate and follow the previous bead just right, it was all about teaching my fine motor skills to work with my body.

What really pissed me off is that at the Los Angeles testing facility the test seemed very easy, I finished before everyone else but the three questions I failed were trick questions designed so that if you over thought them and weren't paying attention to the wording you would get it wrong. The poor kid I had tutored must have got them right because he was a slow methodical reader and didn't overthink it or get tripped up by the wording. Sneaky people writing tests... grrr!

One thing I did find out during the course is that I'm very good at paying attention to verbal instructions as long as they are clear and concise.

We had one instructor who had us do a combined practical test on following instructions and taking notes that we were to use to make a steel tool box in the shop. I took notes, paying close attention to sizes, angles and welding instructions such as sequence.

One instruction I didn't take seriously was we were instructed to place a bit of .032 wire between the lid and the body when welding the hinges. I got so excited I totally skipped the part about the gap and my lid fit too tight so it didn't smoothly close. I spent the next hour with a file carefully filing down the edges until the lid dropped perfectly in place with no gaps.

I figured since I was way ahead of everyone else with no other issues I could spare the time it took to make my toolbox perfect. Haha. I got top score as it was the only one with no defect at all. Welds were perfect, tray fit perfectly, no warping, lid closed smoothly with no gap at all, handle perfectly placed and all from verbal instructions.

I had that toolbox for years until while moving I left it in my grandpa's garage for a time and someone in our family decided it was too nice to just leave in Grandpa's garage. Which ever one of my relatives snagged it, I wish them well. Haha.

Another interesting thing that happened in that course was during one month we had an instructor from Guyana and a student also from Guyana. They were chummy and the instructor was always giving him top scores on his weld plates. So, I went over to see how his welds looked and discovered mine were much better and the instructor had been picking mine apart on every little ripple to mark me down.

Then on the class tests I noticed he had scored some of my answers wrong, I'd check in the book to be sure and realized he was scoring correct answers wrong for me. Obviously he wanted HIS student from his country to get the top grade and I was pissed off so I reported him to the director of the school. The next day we had a new instructor so I walked around in the staff hallway and found the school guidance counselor was now the instructor from Guyana. I walked by, saw his name on the door and poked my head in to find the Guyana instructor sitting alone at his new desk with a name placard and not a bit of paperwork on the desk. Just sitting there waiting for some poor soul to come in for guidance. I smiled real big and said, "Hi, Mr. ______, How's it going?" It took him a second to recover and say, "Oh, it's going good!". and I ducked back out with a huge smirk on my face. I was super cheerful the rest of that week and had a private laugh to myself.