Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XIII

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I am posting stories from my job, because I think they're funny.  I've done my best to disguise my company name, even the industry, and to keep the people I write about and even some details of the situation anonymous.  If you know me, and know where I work, please don't include details in your comments.  I'll have to delete your comment and reconsider posting these stories.
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So the trucking company mentioned in Part XI, who we hadn't used in a while, couldn't remember why, and now we remember why ('cause they SUCK)?  I noticed another shipment on the schedule that indicated we'd be using them, and asked the boss what was up with that.  He said that (a) he was desperate because none of the other trucking companies could take a load that we needed shipped by a certain day, and (b) anyone can have a bad day so he figured he'd give them one more shot, but if anything went even SLIGHTLY wrong, we wouldn't be using them again.

Well.

They were due to pick up a load from us at 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday.  11:00, and we hadn't seen them, but lo and behold, there's an e-mail in the boss' inbox from them.  Get this:

The original driver (who'd they'd checked with prior to assigning the load) had her eyes dilated yesterday and can't drive.  Um, I've had my eyes dilated, and while different people could have different reactions, for me it just messed up my close vision (i.e. Excel spreadsheets were very hard to read), but I was fine for driving as long as I used dark sunglasses.  Second of all, that was YESTERDAY, and the worst of the effects are over in a couple hours, let alone 12+.  Lastly, why did you say you'd be fine to drive a big rig if you knew you had an optometrist appointment and would have your eyes dilated? 

The dispatcher said they do have another truck a few hours away from us (actually, they named a town that IS a town in Oregon, but also a town in the midwest--maybe that's the one they were talking about), but the original customer who was going to have a load going onto that trailer rejected it because it has "a couple of holes" in it.  Um, I wonder how bad they are?  The fact that our loads are all well secured on pallets and/or in packaging means small holes wouldn't be a problem for us, but are we possibly talking about a rust bucket that might not even make it to the destination in one piece?  

Luckily, we ended up finding another trucking company that could take the load, and are "firing" this one, for good this time.

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