When Jahkira Michelle, a 23-year-old college administrator, made a prank call to her father to tell him she had received six weeks of underwater welding training, she just wanted to hear his honest reaction. She knew what to expect and he said, “Money can’t bring your life back!”
“It would be one thing if I said ‘regular welder,’” Michelle said Assets, “But something as dangerous as going deep underwater from the shore, and I can't actually swim, I expected him not to be on board at all.”
The prank, trending On TikTok, dozens of women are calling their fathers, brothers and partners for a six-figure job offer on an offshore oil rig. The women explain that the job involves spending six weeks as an underwater welder or apprentice and revealing the reactions of their loved ones. Aside from a poignant, bewildered silence that usually follows the women's announcement, reactions range somewhere between protective, supportive and realistic – consistent with the enormous risks of injury and death that rig workers face in exchange for a relatively high salary .
Michelle's father was a welder most of his life, she said. He has worked on construction sites in Maryland for decades and is well aware of the pain and physical strain that the job entails. “He doesn’t like the job,” she said, adding that her father described the job as something that added “ten years” to his life.
“Your body collapses from the hard work with hot metal,” Michelle said. “He wouldn’t want me to have to do that.”
As for her prank, she thinks she lost it on the word “rig.” She was curious how he, a laborer, would react to his daughter, a self-described “girly girl” who wouldn't “even last a day of training” on an oil rig. In his short, two-minute response, Tik Tok users noted how much concern and support he showed her. “I didn't think people could really tell how good our relationship was just from this little snippet of our conversation,” she said. “It made me smile.”
Another Tik Tok user, Olivia Prewitt, a 25-year-old Kentucky native who now lives in Florida and works as a real estate agent, shared Assets that she discovered the trend shortly after “talking wildly about moving to California” to her father. He told her she needed a job that would cover the high cost of living out there.
“As I watched the trend take hold,” Prewitt said, she realized, “He might actually fall for it.”
Her post-grad life wasn't as traditional as that of some other young adults in her hometown in the South, where, Prewitt says, “there is some idea of what a traditional post-grad life looks like.” Part of this life is “getting a job or starting a family right away.”
Her own career path was a little different – she moved to Florida and started working as a real estate agent there, which also gives her time to travel. She is a former Miss Kentucky Teen USA–and is now visiting her friends who are all over the country in cities like Los Angeles, Boston and Miami.
Her father's reaction was very fatherly. A long pause and then, “That's not something you want to do.” She pressed him and said the wage was $185,000 for six weeks, to which he replied, “Oh shit, you're not going to weld.”
At first she only planned to share the video with friends, but decided to release it publicly. It has racked up 4.5 million views and inspired a wave of new pranksters looking to gauge how their family and friends will react. For Prewitt, who also described herself as a “girly girl,” the pranks are funny because “dads, boyfriends and brothers go into protective mode.” Still, she said, she knew her father would support her if she was serious.
Oil rig work was carried out to arouse interest for months-Google Searches for related jobs reached a Five-year highwith particular interest from the southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and Arkansas, which lie near the Gulf of Mexico Over 6,000 oil and gas structures, or rigs. Oil rig welding jobs offer salaries of over $55,000 for just half a year of work, a prospect that is particularly attractive to college-age men who might be tempted by the high pay without the higher education component.
But as the women correctly guessed, the pay is high for a reason. Accordingly, oil rig crews face the highest injury and death rates in the country Arnold & Itkin, a law firm that represents oil industry workers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and PreventionBetween 2014 and 2019, 470 oil workers died; More than 400 of them were deployed and 69 of them died of heart complications. The mortality rate has also increased: In 2019, the rate of fatal accidents among oil workers was about 12%, compared to about 6% in 2017.
The most common causes of injury include fires, falls, fatigue, machine malfunctions, etc Lack of safety culture on oil rigs. In one Reddit threadNearly 100 users shared their most horrific experiences on oil rigs – describing brutal burns, equipment that maimed people, and seeing entire coastlines rapidly deteriorate.
Both Michelle and Prewitt said it quickly Assets that work was something they could never do, but they were just as quick to mention that they knew other women could do it – and that they were curious to see if the trend would also generate some incredibly supportive conversations from families.
Prewitt said she has “no doubt that there are amazing, strong women who are fully capable” of working on oil rigs. But she added: “I’m not one of those women.”
Demand for labor on drilling rigs is largely driven by the “boom-bust” nature of the industry. During booms or times of high oil demand, investors pump money into the industry and trigger overproduction, they say Colorado School of Mines. Bust periods follow when oil prices fall and the industry underinvests, leading to higher demand for cheap oil and driving the price back up to continue the cycle.
Over and beyond There are risks of injury, suffocation and chemical exposure to humans, but it is work that also has a devastating impact on the environment. The oil industry is responsible for this 38% of all methane gas emissions in the country and 3.8% of all greenhouse gases.
Accordingly WildEarth GuardiansA nonprofit organization that protects wildlife and landscapes in the American West, oil drilling is also causing a pollution boom in states like Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, Texas and others.
In Texas, the nonprofit organization wrote“Drilling near schools and homes releases toxic fumes,” and in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, drilling threatens to undermine “years of hard-won progress in reducing air pollution.”
According to a report from IMPLAN, an economic impact data provider, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado combined contribute to over 65% of total U.S. oil and gas production. This year, crude oil production is expected to fall from 1 million barrels per day to 170,000 barrels, resulting in thousands fewer jobs this year.
oil rig ContentsHowever, it also appears in other forms on social media platforms such as TikTok – and quite a few come from female YouTubers. A woman documented it Gym routine on an oil rig while another posted old photos of herself in neon-colored protective gear.
Other workers documented theirs Living quarterswith wooden floors, televisions and sea views, where many people live for weeks to months.
In her video, Prewitt saw questions flooding the comments section asking if the salary was real and if it was a job they could apply for. “If so,” she said, “there’s probably a reason, and I’m not sure it’s worth it.”