Landman Hires Full-Time Employee, Immediately Regrets It When Guy Shows Up On Time Every Day
MIDLAND, TX — In a move that local industry experts are calling “a catastrophic lapse in judgment,” veteran landman and self-described “oilfield royalty” Chip Beauregard has reportedly hired a full-time employee and is already regretting every single decision that led him to this point, sources confirmed Monday.
Beauregard, 47, a 25-year veteran of the mineral rights acquisition game, told reporters that he made the “boneheaded” choice to bring on 28-year-old Kyle Hendricks after the kid “looked him dead in the eye during the interview and said he was ‘ready to grind.’”
What Beauregard didn’t realize, however, was that “grinding” to a Zoomer means showing up to the office at 7:03 AM, three minutes early, with a Yeti full of cold brew and a laminated list of questions about the company’s 401(k) matching policy.
“I thought he was just nervous,” Beauregard said, staring blankly at a spreadsheet he hasn’t touched in four months. “I figured after week two, he’d start rolling in around 9:30 with a Gatorade and a headache like a normal person. But no. This psychopath has been here at 6:58 AM every single day for six weeks. It’s honestly kind of terrifying.”
According to sources, the trouble began when Hendricks sent a follow-up email after his interview. And then another one. And then a handwritten thank-you note, which Beauregard initially assumed was a passive-aggressive threat from his ex-wife’s lawyer.
“I hired him because I felt bad,” Beauregard admitted. “He was wearing a tie that was too long, and he kept saying ‘sir.’ I thought, ‘Alright, I’ll give this kid a shot, he’ll learn the ropes, start drinking at lunch, and we’ll be fine.’ But he just… kept doing his job. It’s actually insane.”
The conflict came to a head last Tuesday when Hendricks approached Beauregard’s desk at 8:14 AM — a time Beauregard normally reserves for scrolling through hunting magazine ads and pretending to be on a conference call — and asked for the quarterly due diligence files.
“I nearly spit out my Copenhagen,” Beauregard said. “I told him, ‘Kyle, those files are in the cloud.’ And he said, ‘Which cloud? Dropbox, Google Drive, or the company server?’ I just stared at him. I don’t know what any of those words mean. I pay a guy named T-Bone to handle the ‘computer stuff.’”
The situation escalated further when Hendricks began using industry-specific acronyms correctly. Multiple witnesses reported hearing Hendricks say “NPV” in a sentence without it being a punchline, and he once referenced “surface damages” during a meeting without anyone asking him to repeat himself.
“It’s like he actually read the contracts,” said Rhonda, a paralegal who has worked in the office for 12 years and has developed a Pavlovian response to the sound of a fax machine. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Most guys spend their first year figuring out which gas station has the best jerky. This kid asked about mineral title curative. I almost called HR.”
Beauregard has reportedly tried everything to get Hendricks to chill out. He’s invited him to lunch at the local steakhouse where the waitress knows everyone’s order by heart, but Hendricks ordered a salad and asked for the Wi-Fi password. He’s offered to let him leave early on Fridays, but Hendricks said he “prefers to stay until 5:00 to get ahead on Monday’s workload.” He even tried to initiate a conversation about the time he saw a rattle snake while surveying a well pad in 2017, but Hendricks responded by asking about the company’s ESG compliance metrics.
“I don’t know who raised this kid, but they did a terrible job,” Beauregard said. “I mean, who wakes up and thinks, ‘You know what? Today I’m gonna be competent and reliable.’ It’s unnatural. It’s giving ‘corporate spy.’ I’m half-convinced he’s a plant from the Department of Energy.”
Meanwhile, Hendricks seems blissfully unaware that he is the office pariah for being too good at his job. In a brief interview, he told reporters that he “just wants to build a career” and “maybe own a house someday,” a statement that drew audible groans from three different landmen who were within earshot.
“I don’t understand why everyone is so mad,” Hendricks said, genuinely confused. “I’m just doing what I said I would do in the interview. Isn’t that normal?”
The room fell silent.
“No, Kyle,” Beauregard finally said, shaking his head. “No, it is not.”
As of press time, Beauregard was seen frantically Googling “how to fire someone for being too punctual” and considering hiring a second employee just to “balance out the weird energy.”
Final Thoughts
Having spent decades covering the boom-and-bust cycles of the oil patch, I can say that *Landman* gets the grimy, high-stakes tension right—where a handshake can be worth millions and a dry hole can break a family. Yet, the show’s greatest insight is its unflinching look at the human cost: the men who burn their lives for a resource the world pretends it doesn’t need. In the end, it’s not a story about oil, but about the brutal arithmetic of survival in a land where the only real currency is leverage.