Working in Antarctica Sucks
“I have never heard one person say that the most difficult thing about Antarctica is working outside, or being cold.
I have never heard one person imply that Antarctica’s tough physical environment would be the main reason not to return.
I have never heard of one returnee who finally quit because it’s the world’s highest, driest, coldest, or whatever.
People leave because of the bullshit.”
Early in 2019 I decided to take a chance and apply to work in Antarctica as part of the United States Antarctic Program. After several phone interviews and background checks, I was eventually offered an alternate contract. This meant that I was a backup in case someone dropped out for whatever reason. While Audrey and I were traveling in Cuenca as we worked our way around Ecuador, I’ll never forget the feeling of when I looked down at my phone and saw that I had an email: “I have an open Sous Chef position available at McMurdo Station. Would you be interested in coming down from October through February in that role?”
I could not answer “Yes” fast enough.
The next few weeks were a frantic dash to try to jump through all the necessary hoops I needed to in order to Physically Qualify (PQ) to work in the world’s most desolate continent. This mind numbing and frustrating bureaucracy should have been a warning of things to come but I was far too excited to heed any red flags.
Most people that apply to work at McMurdo have dreams of getting to experience Antarctica at the largest research base on the last “untouched continent in the world.” Many would be willing to work for free just for the opportunity to feel like they are part of something bigger and that they are helping contribute to scientific research, expecting the possibility of being in a tent full of scientists shivering while a blizzard howls outside.
Shortly after arriving, it usually takes new people a few days for the grim reality to settle in: this barren, desolate, and mysterious landscape that was once the setting for numerous tales about the triumph of the human spirit, where brave men risked their lives to push the boundaries of collective human knowledge, has become a monotonous, corporate, and bureaucratic shithole where adventure is strictly prohibited.
In order to fully appreciate the Kafkaesque nightmare that is McMurdo station, you must first understand the corporate hierarchy that runs and operates the base on a day-to-day basis.
McMurdo Station is an Antarctic research base located on Ross Island. Originally built and operated by the US Navy in the late 1950s, since 1998 the station is now the responsibility of the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), a branch of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
As government institutions have a habit of doing, the NSF outsources the actual management and operation of the station to a primary contractor. This lucrative contract worth upwards of $2 billion has been awarded to Leidos, a massive defense contractor which, in 2012, took the reins from fellow defense conglomerate Raytheon.
Leidos will then further outsource labor to various small subcontractors such as Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE), Parsons, and Gana-A’Yoo Service Coporation (GSC), among a handful of others. These different corporations run the show down at McMurdo while sharing the same primary goal: making a profit.
So, I can’t speak for other departments first hand since I exclusively worked in the galley, however after making friends and acquaintances with a variety of different jobs, I can safely say that my experience at McMurdo was not atypical.
Most chefs with experience in the corporate setting will tell you that working in a corporate kitchen is, more often than not, a soul crushing experience. By my own admission, I have been blessed to have only worked for private, locally owned restaurants and I imagined that these complaints were probably blown out of proportion. In my mind I figured that a kitchen is a kitchen no matter what or where it is.
I was dead wrong.
Lawrence Palinkas, a researcher from the University of Southern California, conducted numerous studies on what effects of life on a US Antarctic base had on the human psyche. In one of his studies from the Winter of 1991, Palinkas writes,
“Within each station from one year to the next, a high value is typically placed on certain qualities such as self-sufficiency, decisiveness, intelligence, the ability to work alone, good communication skills, assertiveness, and independence.”
While these attributes are typically appreciated by one’s friends and coworkers, they are certainly shunned by one’s supervisors. At McMurdo, acts of “self-sufficiency” and “decisiveness” are seen as attempts to go over your supervisor’s head. “Independence” on the part of an underling infuriates the average supervisor, serving as a grim reminder that the need for their job is increasingly unnecessary. As the apparatus that is McMurdo continues on a path to becoming a well oiled machine, supervisors must find problems to solve in order to justify their job’s existence, so nitpicking becomes rampant.
In my experience, kitchens welcome creative ways to accomplish tasks and solve problems as the belief is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. This is not the case at McMurdo. Everything you do and every action you take needs to conform, in one way or another, to how your supervisor wants it to. The only “decisiveness” welcome is that of your boss whenever they’re around, and if you want to make it to the end of the season, let alone come back in the future, you better play by their rules, no matter how mundane or petty they may seem. What’s more, since your boss’ boss’ boss all work in close proximity to you, prepare to be lectured multiple times, by multiple different people, about the same thing if you have some kind of blunder.
“I have eight different bosses right now...So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know... that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.”
The seemingly never-ending instances of micromanagement begin very shortly after arriving to the ice. Whether you work in the kitchen and are told not to toss pizza dough in the air because “not everyone can do that” or you’re a cargo loader told to re-pallete a shipment of cargo despite the pilot of the plane saying it’s perfectly acceptable, what supervisors deem “correct” or “acceptable” can change on a moments notice based on a whim or on who is caught “breaking with protocol.”
A large bulk of the companies managing the US stations in the Antarctic have headquarters in the suburbs of Denver. Most of the full time staff live and work in the area when they aren’t on the ice. As such, you’ll often hear “Denver” used in some kind of important capacity. Phrases like “I’ll have to clear it with Denver,” or “Don’t look at me, it was Denver’s decision,” are often heard being spoken by one of the numerous corporate stooges on station.
For the last three years, the executive chef at McMurdo has been trying to achieve her magnum opus: getting rid of the blue trays. Located at the front of the food line in the galley are stacks of plates and blue trays for people to use as they pick out what they want to eat. The blue trays not only create more waste water, they also help contribute to McMurdo’s astonishing levels of food waste.
Vogons act as the galactic government's bureaucrats in Douglas Adams’ book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
In any sane and reasonable world, a decision such as getting rid of a superfluous eating surface should be able to be made quickly and decisively. McMurdo is neither sane nor reasonable. Almost no change of any real consequence can be made on any station without direct approval from Denver. It’s a system of bureaucracy so painfully slow it would make a Vogon proud.
Most of the upper-management from Denver spend at most a few weeks a year at any station. The grunts who spend 5 - 14 months at a time down on the ice are often left frustrated when they are told how things should be done by someone who spends the bulk of their time 9,000 miles away.
The hierarchical nature of the McMurdo corporate structure leads to a lot of drama and infighting. In the Summer season when there are more “big fish” on station, some people like to make their presence felt by coming in and demanding certain things be changed. Big fish at McMurdo are little fish back in the real world and being here makes them feel important, so shows of strength and “dick-measuring” are far too common. Most residents of McMurdo resist this bureaucratic show of force in their own way, sneakily doing things behind upper-managements back in order to get things done in a way that’s actually effective. Inevitably, things tend to revert back to normal as soon as the pencil pushers get on their planes back to Denver.
As with most large corporations, there are plenty of rules and regulations in order to ensure the safety of people on base and, of course, to minimize the risk of having to pay out any kind of workers comp. While a noble goal, it’s the illusion of safety that gets most annoying. Job Hazard Assessment (JHA) forms can be found at every department across the station. JHAs are mundane instruction manuals on how to do everyday tasks. Some JHAs I saw were “How to safely operate the salad spinner” and “How to properly dispose of recycled cans.” These forms single out potential risks for injuries while in the performance of said task, such as cutting oneself on a jagged can, and how to properly mitigate the risk, which usually amounts to little more than, “don’t be a fucking idiot.”
While mundane tasks are micromanaged to ensure safety, JHAs also exist for big things that are completely ignored. One such example of this is in the back loading dock where galley members have to lean out over an eight foot drop to dispose cardboard to be recycled.
If you do get seriously hurt in the performance of your duties, and if you’re unlucky enough to find that there was a JHA specifically outlining how you could have done your job “more safely,” you can be written up, and, to add insult to literal injury, if your injury is bad enough that you can’t finish your contract and need to be sent back to the States, your workers comp can be denied.
Sustaining any kind of injury and visiting the medical clinic on station can turn into a nightmare for the average grunt. People working on station are frequently told by higher ups that they are encouraged to visit medical for any injury or illness they seem necessary, but this is simply something they are forced to repeat for legal reasons. The reality is that visiting medical creates a lot of paperwork, not just for you, but for your supervisor. According to reliable sources, Denver often awards bonuses to companies with good safety statistics, so your supervisor is under pressure to keep visits to medical low and injury prone employees may find themselves on the next flight home.
Early on in the season, a dining attendant working at the South Pole station complained of minor wrist pain. The next thing she knew, she was sent to McMurdo so she could do physical therapy. What’s worse, even if you are medically cleared by a doctor to resume normal activity, some corporate stooge with no medical experience at all can overrule the doctor’s recommendation and send you home. The aforementioned dining attendant was eventually told that she would not be going back to Pole and would have to work the rest of her contract at McMurdo despite the doctor saying her wrist was fine.
I was personally a victim to this type of nonsense. Midway through the season I was scolded by management for not disclosing an injury I sustained outside of work when I slipped coming down the stairs. In order to avoid being formally written up, for the rest of the season I was extra cautious and made sure to report any kind of injury that might require medical attention to my supervisors.
I am, by my own admission, a bit of a klutz, and unfortunately I tend to get hurt a lot, so I reported my fair share of mishaps to management even if I never ended up seeking medical attention. I was content that by season’s end I did not get in any kind of official trouble for not reporting any injury. You can only imagine my chagrin when I was told by one of my supervisors, during my end-of-season evaluation, that my “Safety Awareness” needed improvement due to my number of reported incidents.
Again, they tell you to visit medical as needed because they legally cannot tell you that you can’t. If you actually visit medical you will be scolded informally.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Since you live and work with the same people, McMurdo can feel a little bit like college….if you also had to live with your professors. With nowhere else to really go, whether it’s at Gallagher’s, Southern, or the Coffee House, there’s only so many places around base where people can socialize and people in management are forced to interact with the people they supervise in out-of-work settings. Since roughly the same group of people are at the station for about 5-6 months at a time, it’s not like you can go and make friends with people outside of the station so it’s fairly common for supervisors to become friends with some of the people they directly supervise. Although this is not actively discouraged, it does create an unavoidable problem: favoritism.
People in higher positions who have friends in the right places can get away with far more serious infractions than a janitor or a dining attendant. “You have to know how to play the game,” or “it’s all politics” are phrases frequently heard when frustrations inevitably arise from dealing with the constant favoritism and nepotism at McMurdo.
Being chummy with your boss or knowing the right higher up in the NSF can get you a free pass to get away with things most people can’t. These relationships become even more complicated when sex becomes part of the mix. Sex has become a powerful motive behind Antarctica’s recidivism rates and I did notice a few instances of supervisors hooking up with their employees. Although I’m sure this is a huge HR no-no, I never saw anyone get in trouble for it. An unspoken rule in these instances is that both parties are expected to keep things professional, however this rarely happens.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”
Despite the romanticized notion of egalitarianism and teamwork that surrounds McMurdo, some people are certainly more important than others, and some people take advantage of their position. The NSF Station chief is probably the most recognizable person at McMurdo, not only because he wears his “Big Red” parka everywhere (rumor says that it’s to conceal a handgun, the only one on station), but also because his bushy white mustache makes him look like Sam Elliot in Tombstone.
The NSF Station Chief is pretty old, and his diet mostly consists of rice and beans, specifically plain, unseasoned beans. No salt, no pepper, nothing. For no other reason than to keep him happy, we would have beans out for dinner service every day despite the fact that no one would eat them because they were bland and flavorless. The left over beans would then end up in our leftover’s refrigerator where they would either be used in something else or, more often than not, thrown away after a few days, further adding to the nearly 400,000 pounds of food waste McMurdo produces every year. It frustrated me more than it probably should when I would stop and think that we were intentionally making something in a manner which very few people would want to eat it because of one guy out of nearly 1000.
In numerous journal entries from my time in Antarctica, I stated that our species has no business living on that continent. Antarctica is a frozen, inhospitable, desolate, god-forsaken land where we are not meant to be. Even in the best conditions imaginable, we have not evolved to be able to survive in that environment. So why are we there?
Antarctic Support Contracts are sold to potential employees as the opportunity to be part of the noble endeavor of helping our scientists by providing the basic necessities they need in order to be able to conduct their research. Although this may seem true on the surface, if you dive deeper into our species’ history with this continent, the truth is far more sinister.
Our original goals on this continent were never really scientific, all the explorers like R.F. Scott and Roald Amundsen just wanted the worldwide acclaim of being the first to the South Pole and back. They wanted the prestige of going into the most inhospitable place in the world and living to tell the tale. It wasn’t until several decades later that countries decided to colonize the continent for “scientific reasons.”
An inside joke among many at McMurdo is that the only reason the government continues funding the program is to be able to eventually strip-mine the place. By continuing operations at bases like McMurdo and the South Pole, the United States is able to claim an “established presence” on the continent. When the Antarctic Treaty ends in 2048, and all the regulations on how to protect the continent are no longer binding, Antarctica will almost undoubtedly be ransacked.
The tragic irony is that all of the science currently being done to study Antarctica’s topography and mineral composition will eventually be used to find where the last untapped reservoirs of oil are. Even more tragic is the fact that as Climate Change continues in its seemingly unstoppable trajectory, by 2048 the environment in Antarctica will be much more tolerable, so companies will be able to move right in and get to work to finish killing off the planet for money.
“The U.S., with three year-round stations, is maneuvering itself into position for the dispute that will inevitably arise when Antarctic hydrocarbons or mineral reserves are confirmed and the technology to extract them cost-effectively has been invented, at which point cooperating nations with good claims will find the Treaty cumbersome.”
