Light at the End of the Tunnel

 

I turned in my notice today. I gave them a week. They only deserve a week. My girlfriend thinks I'm being too generous, that they don't deserve a notice at all. She wishes that I'd wait until the busy season and then just walk out.

She's got a point. They did me wrong. But waiting until the busy season, as quickly as it will actually be here is out of the question. I've already waited enough. The final straw occured back in November. I started looking for another job back then, and was inundated with offers. Drivers are in demand. But I quickly found a position working in a stone mill, not driving at all. I jumped at the chance to get out from behind the wheel. The only problem was that the job wouldn't begin until the spring. One more winter at Stone Belt, one more winter in hell. The worst part was that my employers must have thought that I was all good with their schinanigans, that I wanted to stay. NOT.

Believe me, there are a lot of things wrong with my current job. I've recounted some of the challenges in these pages but what I've described are problems endemic to just being a flatbed truck driver; like having irregular and often long hours, working out in the elements, rain snow or heat wave, and having to deal with traffic. There are many flaws with the company itself, and not all of them trivial; things like bounced pay checks, expensive and poor insurance, inconsistent expectations, and logistical choices that make the job harder, not easier. Oh, I've got a good one, though it is trivial: The yard is across the street from the sewage treatment plant. I don't usually spend a whole lot of time there, but I know it when I do! Welcome home.

There were some good things about the job too, and I've recounted some of those here. Things like driving around Southern Indiana, meeting the people at the quarries and the mills, as well as other places, and keeping active climbing up and down on the trailer, throwing straps and chains and pulling tarps. But the main reason that I stayed with this job was the weekend. I have enjoyed having both Saturday and Sunday completely off. That's rare in a driving job.

And then I discoverd what they'd been doing for the last five years. I took them at their word but something happened that made me investigate and what I found out was that, to make a long story short, they'd been lying to me and cheating me, and everyone in management was aware and complicit. Oh, it's been hard to show up and work for those people these last few months. Afraid that I'd expose them they gave me $4,000 back pay, but that only covers two of the five years. Still, they must think I'm down with it because I really don't know any other way to do my job than well. Then there's the customers who don't deserve a disgruntled employee treating their freight lightly, and of course the safety issue, it's important that the loads I pick up for the other drivers are adequately secured. But I didn't want to start another job somewhere else just to quit in the spring, so I've stuck it out.

It's over now though, if I can just make it through Friday! Light at the end of the tunnel. I'm taking a couple of weeks off and then starting my new job. I'll be starting at the same rate of pay that I now enjoy (not really that great by industry standards for drivers, but I lose nothing), will have a regular schedule working 4 tens and a half day on Friday. Overtime every week and a good start on the weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday off still, I won't have to work out in the elements, and won't have to do crazy stupid stuff like climb around on an uneven load covered with slippery plastic while I try to pull tarps in the wind. The only downside that I can see right now is that it will be boring, a line job, repetative. There are challenges with every job, of course, that's why they call it work.

I'll let you know how it goes.