BREA, California – Back down at my local pub I was once again reminiscing with my fellow retirees about our days in the petroleum industry and the subject of engineers arose. This was a natural follow-up to our discussion of geologists [2P News, February 14, 2022]. Since most engineers, like geologists, are loathe to admit their profession, we discussed how to determine if a person is in fact an engineer. With several more rounds of Boddington’s Ale with some Guinness Extra Stout thrown in, we came up with this list:
You might be an engineer if…
- You’ve been asked if you know how to drive a railroad train at least 100 times.
- You’ve been asked if the “P. Eng.” after your name is short for Penguin.
- Your calculator goes out to 16 decimal places.
- Your spouse hates it when you try to explain what you do for a living.
- You get politics and parlor tricks confused.
- You wonder why an engineer is never the hero in a movie.
- The damned thing keeps exploding.
- Two plus two is exactly four, provided you’re using base-10 numbers.
- You have no idea what your shirt or pants size is.
- The salesperson at Best Buy can’t answer any of your questions.
- You laugh the loudest at jokes about geologists.
- You have a drawer full of old power cords.
- When asked if the glass is half-empty or half-full you say it’s twice as big as it needs to be.
- You think “Dilbert” is a documentary, not a comic strip.
- The field operators hate to see you coming.
- You love to point out the technical inaccuracies in science-fiction movies.
- The only calculator worth having is a Hewlett-Packard.
- All your dress shirts are short sleeve.
Mind you, my group of retirees are mostly engineers with a landman and a geologist thrown in to stir things up. We are equal opportunity scolds. If you can’t laugh at yourself, there are plenty of people who will do it for you.
