Just ask your supervisor for written permission via text or e-mail to fly VFR in weather that is less than FAA mandated minimums.  You'll be waiting a long time.

"You could've got there" is a common refrain. "If I had written permission to fly below minimums, I easily could've made it" should be the response.

this is not common.

go somewhere else because there's nothing illegal about it. Quit crying and be a man.

Being pressured to fly in weather that is above minimums shouldn't have to happen.

Being pressured to fly in weather that is below minimums shouldn't happen. In this case, it's a safe bet that investigators would take a dim view of pressure to fly. That's where getting it in writing comes in. It prevents post-mishap backpedaling as well as chameleon leadership. Writing gives attorneys something to work with. Legality is ultimately for the courts to decide.

Chameleon leadership is when a supervisor gets to say, "I didn't know he (or she) was taking such risks" after pressuring them to do it in the first place.

I agree with you that people shouldn't work at such places. Only the angle is different. A prospective employee should do due diligence before taking a job at a irreputable company. He (or she) should not wait until they are there for a real schooling. When bad-mouthing a company is limited to onsies and twosies, it can be disregarded. When an entire army of former and current employees bad-mouth it, there's probably substance there.

I just tell them "You are paying me to follow the GOM. I am more than willing to violate that particular document but I'll cost a little more."

They are a FAR. Any company that tries to get you to fly in below minimum weather would also probably not hesitate to fire you and try to find somebody that will. Come up with all the snappy answers you want.

Depends on the company. Our GOM lists weather minimums for VFR aircraft that are above 135.609. So in our case we have to follow the GOM.

I don't get paid enough to fly IFR when it is one inch. >300' and 1/2 mile or i'm not going.

If you were hired as an IFR pilot, and you won't fly when you have the minimums, you should consider another job.

300 and 1/2 is arbitrary. Sometimes it's above approach minimums. Sometimes it's not.

If you were hired as an IFR pilot, and you won't fly when you have the minimums, you should consider another job.

300 and 1/2 is arbitrary. Sometimes it's above approach minimums. Sometimes it's not.

1963 to 2017.  I know, all the chatter, but, I loved it.  Always some other type of flying or machine to operate in positions all over the world. And, like a drone video, it was me on the tip of the spear, so to speak. 

If I had continued with the airline focus adopted early on I'd be darned familiar with a whole lot of runways and airports - woo hoo, eh?  Instead I got to live with a whole lot of different cultures all over the world.  Easy?  Depends on one's attitude.

Minimums?  Always flew to the regulatory minimums and never heard anything more than a few ignorant rants of very dumb management types with whom I had zero concern.  If logically cornered it was a straight forward response concerning the fact if the loud mouthed character in front of me kept it up the situation would be resolved by the company and, definitely, regulatory agencies involved.  

Big deal is put out the ignorant chatter by letting the morons in management behaving badly just utilize their own imagination as to what such an approach might mean to their future.  

Never, ever, give up the technicals of the approach you will utilize.  Have no fear and you a comfortable career will be yours, comfortable by helicopter standards anyway.

 words ignore them, as much as possible, eh?

who gives a sh*t

They'll never come right out and tell you to fly in below-miniums weather.  And they'd never put it in writing even if they did say it.  It's more insidious.  It's the old, "You know....I think you could've made that flight..."  It's the unspoken but tacit pressure to have "done better" to get the job done.  We've all felt it.  Everyone handles it differently.  If *you* find yourself canceling more flight than anyone else at the base, then something is amiss.  Either your personal interpretation of the weather is questionable, or everyone else's is.  Or, everyone else is a scud-running, minimums-busting a-hole...which is probably not the case.  Either way, you should probaably find another line of work.  Or at least a different base.

And to the guy who said, "I just tell them "You are paying me to follow the GOM. I am more than willing to violate that particular document but I'll cost a little more."  WRONG WRONG WRONG.  *Never* tell anyone that you'll voluntarily violate a rule, whether it's one in the GOM or a more-restrictive FAR.  That's crazy.  They don't pay you to violate rules; they pay you to follow them.  If I ever heard a pilot say that he'd violate the GOM for more money, I'd fire his azzz so quick his head would spin.

advice.

The thing new pilots to any job need to understand is the variables to be dealt with are viewed differently by all pilots.  Decision making is personal.  If things don't add up to a go, then don't.  But, keep reviewing and learning.  If someone asks your reasoning, share it.  They may agree or disagree, whatever, but, at that point, realize, again, that decision making is personal and perfectly intrinsic to you.  The company hired you to make your decisions, don't let others make them fly you.  Inside that potential conundrum is where learning can happen, and simultaneously lurks danger.  Take it easy on yourself, learn, progress safely and productively in decision making, you might just live through your career.

Whoosh, right over your head.

Marginal, they don't want to ride a ferry boat, they still want to get there, to start their shift, and the guys waiting there to be picked up are chomping at the bit to get home at the end of their hitch.

tell me you never worked in the gulf without telling me you never worked in the gulf. and no, the guys going out were absolutely not in any hurry to get out there.

Nobody who has ever worked in the Gulf refers to it as a "ferry" boat.  It's a crew boat.  And no oil company worker is EVER in a hurry to get offshore although the reverse is absolutely true and they will lie through their teeth to get you to come out.  "I've got 93 million miles of visibility!"  Yeah, straight up at the sun but nothing laterally and you can't even see Bravo platform."  

this problem was in the GOM.  If so, par for those numb skulls.  Fact is the world does not agree with them so don't stress much about it.  Find your niche.

 should be no for-profit emergency services, hospitals, or prisons.

Service to humanity is not a joke, let's not let greed make it one.