Pros
Pay was good. The safest workplace I've ever worked. People are friendly to your face.
Cons
Managers are so tied up in meetings, they can't interact with their crews, so people only see them when someone's in trouble. The customer is too involved in the operation of this business. Talke has adopted their customer's safety program, LPS, which is good, but it has become punitive at Talke. That's not how the program was designed to be used. If you tell on yourself, you are in a "No Fear Zone", but there's always that guy, keepin' it crisp, who will report before you can. Interpretation of the rules, since there are so many of them added regularly, can get you fired. My example: I was observing a contractor who was in a man basket and who was secured by a FALL PREVENTION lanyard. Well, the company policy is that someone in a man basket should wear a self-retracting lanyard (SRL). The Exxon employee told me that he needed to have the SRL, so I explained the shorter fall prevention harness was better, but I was told to have them come down. So we got them the SRLs and put them back to work. The Exxon guy reports it as a life-saving rule violation right away, but I didn't think of it the same way. I was terminated for this event. It was determined, after I was fired, to not be a life saving rule violation. Maintenance workers have long periods of required OT. Sometimes 13 days in a row, 12-hour shifts. Production workers...well, they can't keep them, so they run something they call "The wheel" where people are picked for forced surprise OT. No matter if you take all the overtime, miss a day and find yourself entered into the attendance points system. It's kind of remote, way down at the end of Hatcherville rd. and the last two roads to work can take more than 30 minutes. English is the language there, but most of the time you have to ask people to speak in English so you can also participate in the conversation.