And who are you again?

I was in the airport on the way back to camp when a guy waved at me and said 'hey'. I didn't recognize him although something did look familiar so I said 'Hey' back. I hate to admit it but we rode on the plane together and then on the bus and even after what was probably 4 hours of side-by-side travel I still had no idea who he was. In fact it was only yesterday at work when I found out it was Pat from our crew and the only difference was that he had shaved off his beard. That and the fact that he wasn't dressed in his work gear. This little episode got me thinking about how much we actually recognize the other people from our crew. I mean, we have five senses but we aren't touching or tasting each other (there may be exceptions to this but that is fodder for another article). We rarely smell each other unless someone is a little vile. So that only leaves sight and sound. Of those two, failing a person having a distinctive accent, we humans tend to figure out who a person is by looking at their eyes. As construction workers in a safety oriented environment we are required to wear safety goggles and due to their reflective or dark nature they almost completely obscure the eyes. So what would you look at next in identifying a person? If it were a dead body the cops would look at the teeth but here at work they are often obscured by facial hair or whatever so this feature is about as useless as the person's voice unless the teeth (or lack of them) really stands out for you. The simple fact is that onsite we use a far more simple way of identifying each other. We simply read the name sticker on the front of the helmet. As these are handed out by the office as standard issue (mainly so the tool crib guy Terry knows who you are) it is usually a reliable indicator. And once you 'know' who a person is it must be human nature to stop looking or decifering any further. So having the name sticker on the helmet actually reduces the likelihood that you will recognize each other when outside of work. Even the name is not 100% reliable though. Some people get false name tags made up to catch you the way Bart Simpson used to catch Moe by saying a 'name' that when read quickly sounded like something else. JD's hard hat used to read 'Heywood Jablowme'. Another guy has 'Craven Morehead' on his. I used to have my name on my hard hat but someone replaced it with 'Peter North' who is the pornstar known affectionately as the interior decorator due to his copious quantities of ejaculate. Whatever! Although it is warm out now and so you see much more of a person's face it wasn't that way during the winter. This is an extremely cold place to work with the windchill often dropping it to the minus 40s so people really bundled up. On top of the oversized boots people wore long johns, pants and lined coveralls. They also wore multiple layers on the top usually with a heavy coat. On their heads everyone had on balaclava or face/neck warmers as well as the safety goggles and hard hat. So identification was virtually impossible. People looked bigger and people looked younger. As a result of people looking bigger and younger I completely messed up recognizing a couple of work mates who said hello to me in the camp halls. Every morning I would head out and have a cigarette with these guys who were disguised as knockoffs of the Michellin Man and so I formed an idea of what they would look like in their civilian dress. I can tell you I was wrong! The guy was short, thin and a lot further past 50 than I would have ever guessed! Another guy worked with us in the surge bin and he was a big happy guy. Was I ever shocked when I finally figured out it was cranky old Guy from our trailer. But now the warm weather is here. The layers that we used to wear have melted away with the snow. When we head for work it is in casual dress and our work garb is not much different. That being said I don't always match the person to the worker especially when that person has shaved off a substantial beard.