On the inside, the dining hall of the Aurora Hotel could be confused for any corporate cafeteria in the United States. People enter and proceed down a serving line filled with a variety of hearty meal choices, and take their seat in a large hall full of rectangular tables. The walls and ceilings are adorned with bright and colorful fixtures. The color scheme features blueish hues throughout the room. It's warm and bright, an exception among the typically drab facilities in Prudhoe Bay.
Even the most casual observer would start to notice that this isn't your typical workplace cafeteria by the attire of those present. While everyone in this room grossed over seventy-five thousand dollars last year, there isn't a single person in "business" or even "business casual" attire. Instead, everyone wears some form of industrial clothing, be it coveralls or bib overalls and heavy work shirts. Regardless of station or company, their clothing is the same shade of dark navy blue and fire retardant. While most people think of coveralls as the clothes most people wear when they do work that tends to be filthy, not a mark or stain is present on these garments.
The dining room is a rather large rectangle. The tables are laid out in rows, stretching the wide breadth of the room. People have their choice of facing the picture windows one side, or the large plasma screen television on the opposite wall.
The few that choose to take in the outside scenery typically do so in reflective quiet. Today the weather outside is clear and cold. It's mid-January and the sun has once again come up, sort of. It is just a sliver of orange light, barely above the horizon. It casts a pink hue on the pure white of the snow-drifted tundra. If it were summertime, this view would be of a beautiful arctic lake. Today, that lake is frozen to the bottom, and drifted over with snow. So much so, that if one were to walk outside, they would not be able to distinguish between standing on solid ground or frozen lake.
Those that sit watching TV usually do so while engaging one another. The big plasma is almost always tuned to Fox News. After all, ninety-five percent of these people voted Republican in the last election; the other five, Libertarian. To ask to watch CNN would be met with some slightly hostile stares, MSNBC would likely garner outright condemnation and that person would probably face alienation for the remainder of their weeks long hitch. Today's big news item is the vote to repeal Obamacare in the House.
"About time we started doing something about this socialist bullshit", a Halliburton hand can be heard to say.
"I'm glad we've started taking this country back for people that work for a living", a BP engineer replies. "I'm sick of carrying the load for all the free-riders and illegals."
I find all of this laughable. Both of these men are Alaska residents and, as such, receive a Permanent Fund Dividend check every year. The Permanent Fund, or PFD, is wealth, in the form of oil royalties, invested for and re-distributed equally to the residents of the State every year. I want to point this out. I want to tell them that if they are so against the notion of socialism and re-distribution, they ought to give the money back from the companies and shareholders it was wrongfully displaced from.
I don't. I know to speak my mind would be career suicide. Instead I sit quietly, enjoying my salad.
I look up just in time to see two model BP employees. Model, in the sense that both of them are women in their mid-twenties and gorgeous by any standard. Their baggy coveralls do little to disguise what lies beneath. They are the type that companies like mine love to put on display. They could be the same faces they put in next year's recruiting campaign to demonstrate their dedication to diversity and show they've opened the doors of what was once a male dominated workforce.
One is tall, with long auburn hair pulled back in a pony tail. The other, slightly shorter with loose flowing shoulder-length jet black hair. I'm not the only one who has noticed them. There are seventy men in this room, aged nineteen to almost seventy. They have all stopped what they are doing and turned to gaze. This many heads wouldn't turn if the CEO of BP Exploration himself had walked in the room.
It's only natural for men to gaze at beautiful women, especially in a remote place where there aren't many. However, I see the older men of this room, long since married guys with families who could easily, be their grandfathers, gaze unyielding at these two. It starts to make me feel uncomfortable.
Everyone else in the room has gone back to what they were doing. The high-spirited chatter about the resurgence of the American Right continues. The sound of plates and silverwear banging together becomes audible again.
Moments later, I look around me and find that the five or six old timers continue to stare at the two women. They are wolfing down huge chunks of heart-disease inducing food, never taking their eyes off these beauties. I can't, no, don't want to imagine the thoughts that are passing through their minds, but I know.
I hear Sean Hannity's nasal voice on the television. It's all beginning to become too much to tolerate. I knew I should have taken lunch in my room today. I start to get the feeling I've, in some way, been party to a massive imagined violation of these two ladies.
My appetite is gone. I take what remains of my lunch, scrape it off my plate and deposit the dirty tableware with the dishwasher in the corner by the exit. The man thanks me for taking the time to get everything off the plate, and drops it into a bucket of soapy water, then goes back to his work. I walk over to the hand sanitizer dispenser on the wall and apply a gigantic gob.
I look back to the room, and see that the gray-haired perverts are still at it. I imagine myself going over and saying something, telling them they ought to be ashamed for the overt eye-fucking they've been giving these two ladies for the past ten minutes. I think of saying something like "there's a better creative outlet for that sort of thing, guys. Ever hear of the internet?"
I finish rubbing the sanitizer in my hands. The idealist in me starts to fade. If pointing out political hypocrisy means getting ostracized, coming in between a senior company man and his fantasy romp with the hot little things just out of the college recruitment program is sure to land me a one-way ticket home. Company men are gods around here. Their word always trumps yours. There are a million and one ways they could find a policy I've violated in just the twenty yard walk from where I stand to the bathroom. I've got a kid to feed and bills to pay.
The sanitizer finishes soaking in.
I whisper "I'm sorry ladies, it's about survival today."
I walk out. I feel worthless.
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