Post 2 of 3 In the Perils of the Paper Field Ticket and How to Avoid Them series
Last post, I shared the first installment in this series, The Lost Ticket. Catch up now if you missed it, and then sit back and enjoy the next installment.
The Damaged Ticket
As a mud man, I had the habit of filling out the tour sheet for the drilling crews. My motives were entirely self-serving, but the drillers and derrick hands always appreciated my efforts because it made their jobs easier. Paper work is generally not a strong point with the crews. So I'd fill out the sheets for them, which together with boxes of donuts would earn me goodwill that would be later exchanged for help when it was time to mix up sacks of barite (80 lbs each).
One day, I was filling out the mud properties on the tour sheet when one of the roughnecks came over to the table and put his coffee cup next to my pack of daily mud tickets. I didn’t see the cup (which was Texas-sized, of course) and I knocked it over, right on to my tickets. They were all soaked and most could not be read anymore.
Luckily, the company man had copies of my mud reports, but it did cost me a bottle of Jack and a carton of Reds.
Once again, I was saved by the triplicate copy and the good nature of a company man. And once again, I thought that there had to be a better way.
The Inaccurate and Illegible Ticket
Once a ticket is completed in the field, it has to make its way back to the office in a timely manner and then get rekeyed into the accounting system. The quicker the process and the more accurate the ticket, the faster we get paid.
The task of deciphering and interpreting the poorly written ticket falls upon the back office staff, who have to figure out what went on in the field on that job. Many times, the handwritten tickets are hard to read or have inaccurate information. I’ve written my share of tickets that I couldn’t even figure out myself later, so I understand why poorly written tickets happen.
First, a ticket is only as accurate as the information that the field personnel have when they are out on location. For example, well names can be abbreviated or called by unofficial names. These likely make little sense to the back office folks. Sometimes, if a location is unmanned, there is no one to ask for proper information.
Also, it can be difficult for someone who has battered hands from working all day in the freezing cold to put a pen to paper and write down legible billing information. So a “7” might look like a “1” or a “2.” Ticket amounts can be entered wrong and a well name could get scribbled down and not make any sense to someone back in the office.
These problems aren’t inevitable, but they are common. And frustrating. But also avoidable.
We’ve talked about lost tickets, damaged tickets, and just plain badly written tickets. Any of these sound familiar? If you’ve ever worked out in the field, I’m sure they do. Tell us your stories below! And don’t forget to tune in next post when I share the last of the series.
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