Hands Off, My Loots!

Yargok, over at Wherever I May Roam, made an interesting post a few days ago about explaining your real life job in EVE Terms.  I thought it would be an interesting thing to do…so here goes.

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In real life, I’m an Air Traffic Controller for the United States Air Force…and I love my job!  So, I guess in EVE that would equate to being a Docking Controller for one of the major faction military stations.

My day would start by a screaching alarm clock going off, and subsequently me rolling over my wife and clicking the snooze button…twice.  18 Minutes after it went off the first time I’d finally get up, meander into the bathroom to do the “Three S’s” (plus brushing the teeth), walk into the kitchen and debate what I want for breakfast…then say screw it and go check my market orders to see how many people have 0.01isked me overnight.

While I’m updating my trades and looking over the days skill queue I’ll also be putting on my boots, making sure my Neocom is charged, and wishing I had of actually eaten something for breakfast as I run out the door…3 minutes after I was planning on being gone.  It’s all good though, as long as I rush through the crowd a bit I’ll get to work on time (which…on time happens to be 10 minutes before I’m required to be there…which is actually 15 minutes before my shift starts…so I’ll never actually be late…yet I rush anyway).

Either the elevator is broken, or I can hear someone giggling 9 floors above me as I open the elevator door to the rotten smell of freshly ripped ass…either way, I’ll probably run up the 9 flights of stairs leading to the large glass room overlooking the massive docking bay entrance to the station.  Then I’ll run back down them, grab the Neocom out of my locker since I forgot to grab it out of my bag before I ran up, and head on up again.  The Neocom is a must since it is mostly likely going to be a boring day of watching space turn black…so I’ll need to play some Tower Defense games while I hope beyond hope that some Rookie Pilot in an Ibis will decide to do a few laps around the station.

5 Hours later, after not talking to a soul all day…the Emergency Frequency cracks to life as a Pod Pilot has declared an Emergency and requests priority to dock as one of his engines shut off due to an oil pressure loss.  Mind you, this Pilot is fine, his ship has another 30 or so engines…and only 2 of them are needed to push his ships mass along at any speed he should require…but since he’s just another whining Pod Pilot we’ll humor him, call out the Fire, Medical, and Docking Maintenance Control (who knows…he may nick the docking bay as he comes in…gotta make sure it’s good to go before we let anyone else dock)…and ring out the Crash Net so everyone knows what is going on.

10 minutes later, Mr. Whining Pod Pilot is docked safe, and I am laughing at the excessive amount of paperwork he’ll undoubtedly be filling out for the next few hours simply because he wanted ‘traffic priority’…even though there was no one else in sight for Hundreds of Kilometers.  I then un-pause my Tower Defense game and finish “that one level”…for the hundredth time.

That last hour of the work day is the worst..I know the next shift is coming to relieve me soon, but I swear…wasn’t there 40 minutes left like…3 hours ago?  Has time stopped?…I swear it has!  Finally, just as I’m about to open the emergency air lock and toss myself out into the cold vastness of space, I see the first of them start to shuffle in downstairs (I love that little security camera).

I quickly let the Watch Supervisor know I need to use the restroom…and I run down to the floor below…open the Elevator that I called up earlier this morning…rip some ass, and then giggle as I send it down to pick the next crew up while I walk back up to the “office”.

In they walk with sour looks on their faces asking who the joker was.  Me and the Sup both point at the Trainee that’s been sitting there all day doing nothing since there is no traffic for him to learn off of.  We all give our relief crew a briefing on the extremely busy time we’ve been having watching the stars twinkle…and then I head off back to home, thankful that I have a Swing shift tomorrow and get to sleep in late.