[red-beard]

I was starting up a power plant. I was replacing a person who had been working there for months, but was being forced to use up his end of year vacation. Early on I was sick, a cold or something. There was a "birthday party" at one of the local watering holes. Being sick, I didn't drink ANYTHING and I left after only a few minutes. Next day, everyone is so hung over, it wasn't funny. This was pretty typical, the other engineers were long time field guys and were hard drinkers. And I didn't socialize with these people. This was very near where I grew up, so I spent most of my time hanging out with old friends.

At this plant, I found lots of problems. The guy I replaced was NOT trained on this equipment. Some issues were installation, some came from the factory. One serious factory issue meant we had to clean the installed oil and hydraulic piping again, a multiple week proposition. No one liked this idea, but I wouldn't sign-off since this can wreck bearings and block hydraulic controls. This delayed the project by 3 weeks. They wanted to start the unit before year end for a tax credit. Not my problem.

They called up my management and asked to have me replaced and presented a long list of issues, including my getting seriously drunk at the above mentioned party, where I was there maybe 15 minutes, and never had a drink. Basically, they lied about everything and their intention was to get my 4 weeks there given to them for free.

They questioned EVERY decision I made. And when everything was reviewed with my replacement, he agreed with what I'd done. A week or so later, the original guy from my company was back from vacation, and he was buddy buddy with the installing company. Since this was $100M plant and our portion was at least $20M, my companies management threw me under the bus. It was at that point, I had to get out of that job. That was 20 years ago.