Interview with an Equipment Operator
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The stories were recorded at an Indonesian restaurant in Christchurch on 8 October 2002, just after the EO returned from wintering-over at McMurdo.
Can you tell me the story about the first time you went to Pole?
I was there for about ten days. At the time I was a DA [Dining Attendant] in McMurdo. I was sent to Pole to work for this girl while she took R&R in McMurdo. When I got there they shuffled us into the Dome, and my boss at Pole, one of the chefs in the kitchen, walked up and handed me a water bottle and a coffee can.
She said, "You're going to need to drink a lot of water." I asked, "What's this coffee can?" She said, "This is what you piss in. You're not going to have a bathroom--well, you are, but you're not going to want to leave the building every time." They let me have my first day off to be acclimatized.
My first night there a Norwegian ski team came in. One guy had no arms. 
He had one arm with a pincher hook, and the other was a little stub. Their expedition was called The Unarmed Mission to the Pole. Liv Arnesen [the first woman to ski to the Pole] and those guys all showed up around the same time. I saw Liv Arnesen skiing in to the Pole while I was walking in to find out my work schedule. That night the Norwegians invited me to celebrate with them. We got all the champagne in town and we boozed hard. At the time I didn't know the damage to be done.
I eventually left the Dome and went back to my room to crash. I was staying in a Jamesway at Summer Camp. The Jamesways were a little bit nicer than the ones I was used to. I had a bed, a carpet, a wardrobe, and the curtain.
In the middle of the night I woke up to piss, filling almost the entire coffee can with dark urine foaming at the top, some nice Michelob brew. At six my alarm went off, and I had possibly the worst hangover I've ever had in my life. At Pole the hangovers are brutal because of the altitude and the cold and the dryness. When I got out of bed I knocked my piss can over. It was a giant Folger's can. Kwhoosh! It flowed under the curtain and across the hall. Oh God, I thought. Then the guy across the way yelled, "That better not be what I think it is!" It smelled like a burnt Cheerio, it was so strong. I grabbed my towel and ran into his room. I was in the nomad room. He had been there all season. I just dropped in and pissed on his carpet. He was yelling, "You got to put that underneath your bed!" I was saying, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I was in my boxers at the foot of his bed pamping it up with my towel. He was freaking out. I went for some cleaning supplies and tried to spray it, and it was just making it worse. It was foaming up and sploshing everywhere and it reeked. People were walking by and looking at me with disgust and anger.
I cleaned it as best I could. Now I had no towel, so I took three of my t-shirts and went over to the bathroom. At Pole they're serious about the three minute shower. It must have been three minutes on the dot because some guy was yelling, "Hey! Get out of the shower! Now!" My hair is long. I still had shampoo in it. I wasn't even to the conditioner stage. "Turn the shower off now!" he yelled. I finally got the shampoo out. I wasn't going to condition it today. I dried myself off with the t-shirt. The guy with the urine on his floor was there, and he was still bitter about it.
I finally cruised to work, where the Norwegian guys and Liv Arnesen had to work in the kitchen. They were staying outside in a tent, but in order to eat the food and use some of the facilities, [the National Science Foundation] was making them work. They had frostbite all over. They were mummified looking. They just came across the continent. My boss said, "Get 'em going with some of the dishes over there, and then you can help out with some of this prep work." I asked, "What are we supposed to do with what's-his-name? He doesn't have any arms." She said, "Just give him some kind of chore. He's pretty handy. He just skiied to Pole." One of his arms was just a stump, with really bad frostbite on the end. The other arm was completely gone. He had to get some medical attention, which was another reason they had to work.
So one guy would wash a dish, then he'd hand it to the guy with the hook. He would grab the plate with his hook and hand it to the next guy who would dry it off. He was a wreck. They were all a wreck.
They cooked us a Norwegian fish dinner one night.