When Experience Becomes Permission Experience is earned. So is respect. Neither one gives us permission to become the hazard. Experience is one of the most valuable things we have in this trade. It teaches us how the job moves, where danger hides, what doesn’t look right, and when something feels wrong before anybody else can explain why. It builds judgment, confidence, and the ability to make decisions when the plan falls apart and the job stops looking anything like it did during the morning brief. But experience can become a dangerous son of a bitch when we start treating it like an exemption. An exemption from the procedure. An exemption from the standard. An exemption from being questioned. An exemption from having to prove that what we’re doing is actually safe. That’s where experience stops protecting the crew and starts threatening it. I’ve written about this before and called it the normalization of deviance. That’s what happens when we repeatedly step outside the standard, nothing bad happens, and we slowly convince ourselves the behavior must be acceptable. We skip one step because we’ve done the job a thousand times. We take one shortcut because we know how the equipment usually reacts. We dismiss one concern because it came from somebody who hasn’t been around as long as we have. Nothing happens, so we do it again. Before long, the exception becomes normal. We stop seeing the shortcut as a shortcut and start treating it like proof that we know better than the process. That’s not experience. That’s complacency wearing an old ticket and demanding respect. A lot of serious incidents don’t happen because nobody knew better. They happen with experienced people standing right there. People who understood the hazard, knew the procedure, recognized the exposure, and had enough time in the trade to know exactly what could happen. They just didn’t believe it would happen this time ... or that it would happen to them. That’s the trap. We confuse getting away with something with doing it safely.

Now let’s quit dancing around it. This ain’t just a technology conversation. This ain’t just about digital credentials, online wallets, APIs, compliance dashboards, or whatever other polished language gets thrown around when somebody’s trying to sell the trade a new system. This is about control. This is about trust. This is about whether the Brotherhood keeps ownership of its own standards… or whether we hand that power to an outside third-party vendor from another country that doesn’t understand who we are, where we came from, what this ticket cost, or how many men had to bleed, fight, sacrifice, and die for the conditions we’ve got today. And that’s where I draw the line. Not a soft line. Not a dotted line. A hard damn line in the sand. Because I’m not against technology. I’m not against digital credentials. I’m not against making it easier for a hand to carry proof of what he’s earned. Hell, I think that’s exactly where this trade needs to go. But I am against letting outsiders build the gate around our work and then tell us they’re doing us a favor by handing us the key. There’s a difference between a wallet and a gate. A wallet belongs to the hand. A wallet helps a Brother carry his proof. A wallet says, “Here’s my training. Here’s my certs. Here’s what I’ve earned. Here’s what I can prove.” A gate belongs to whoever controls access. A gate says, “You may enter.” A gate says, “You don’t meet the rule set.” A gate says, “Wait over there until the system decides whether your career, your ticket, your training, and your experience are good enough.” That’s a hell of a difference. And any Union hand who can’t see that needs to slow down and think about where this road can lead. JNCTN may have capability. Fine. Nobody’s saying a slick platform can’t be built. Nobody’s saying a third-party vendor can’t create digital credential tools, compliance checks, access controls, dashboards, and all the fancy shit that looks good in a presentation. But capability ain’t Brotherhood.

When you're working night shift and nothing is open for dinner at 3am...

CHEAP BIDS… HOT WORK… DEADLY MATH Lineman Bull$hit™ Academy Let’s start this new series exactly where it belongs… At the scene of the lie. Not the lie told after the incident. Not the lie buried in the report. Not the lie polished up in a boardroom and passed around like corporate wisdom. I mean the real lie… The one thing this industry has been dragging behind it for years, while pretending not to hear the chain rattling. Here it is… A whole lot of energized work is not being done because it is necessary. It is being done because the math got bad long before the crew ever showed up. That’s it. That’s the disease. And if this industry had any real stomach left for truth… we’d admit right now that one of the biggest root causes behind unnecessary exposure is the unholy marriage between unit pricing and lowest-bid cowardice. The Lie Starts on Paper Before the truck ever rolls… Before the briefing… Before the rubber gets checked… Before a man ever puts his hooks, sleeves, or gloves on… The lie has already started. It starts in the bid sheets. Unit sheets. Cost models. Procurement packages. All those neat little boxes where linework gets broken down into tidy categories for people who never have to actually do it. Pole change-out… Crossarm… Insulator… Transformer… Cutout… Dead-end… Reconductor… X units… Y dollars… next item. Looks clean. Looks efficient. Looks manageable. Looks like the kind of thing a power company can hand off to a contractor and say… “Give me your best number.” That’s where the bullshit walks in. Because linework is not clean. It is not predictable. And it damn sure is not uniform. One pole is roadside on firm ground with room to breathe. The next one is jammed in a backyard, boxed in with fences, telecom, trees, mud, bad access, traffic, and pissed-off homeowners. One piece of work is straightforward. The next one is one bad decision away from lighting a man up. But the paper treats them the same. That’s the first betrayal.

SAFETY SUNDAY THE LINE BETWEEN SURVIVAL AND STATISTICS March 8, 2026 This one comes directly out of a conversation happening inside the Best Practices Classroom in the Lineman Bull$hit™ Skool community. Some of you may have seen me post about this before. Maybe you’ve heard me say it on a jobsite… or at a summit… or standing next to a bucket while we’re talking through the work. But with some of the videos circulating lately… and with a few incidents we’ve seen across the trade recently… …it needs to be said again. Because in this trade… Lessons don’t get repeated because we like hearing them. They get repeated because someone forgot. And when someone forgets… …the price gets paid in skin, bone, and funerals. THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF LINEMEN There are two kinds of linemen in this trade… Those who truly understand Insulate & Isolate… …and those who have simply survived long enough to wish they had learned it sooner. I’ve been around this arena long enough to see both... Long enough to bury brothers who trusted luck when they should have trusted best practice. Long enough to watch crews gamble with inches like the line gave a damn about their confidence. Let me say something that every lineman should understand deep in his bones… The line has never cared. Electricity is brutally honest. It does exactly what physics demands… every single time. And the moment we drift outside the protection of Insulate & Isolate… …it doesn’t hesitate. Not for a second. THE TRUTH WE DON’T SAY LOUD ENOUGH Insulate & Isolate isn’t a suggestion. It’s not a “program.” It’s not a safety slogan. It’s not something you do when management is watching. It is the spine of live-line work. No I&I… no work. No debate. No excuses. No, “this will only take a second.” You can bluff your way through rigging. You can fake confidence during switching. You can bullshit your way through a storm call long enough to look like you belong. But you cannot outsmart electricity.