Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XXVIII

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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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We had a truck driver scheduled to pick up at 8:00 this morning.  She showed up at 7:10.  No problem.  The boss told her I'd be in around 8:00 to do her paperwork and he'd have her go across the scale, etc., then, but she was welcome to hook on to the trailer (which was ready) now.  She said that wouldn't work--by 8:00 she'd be out of hours, and she needed to get to the truck stop ~70 miles from here.  The boss told her she was more than welcome to rest here as soon as she got the paperwork--drivers often spend the night on our property, and as long as they are out of the way of other trucks coming and going during business hours, we don't mind.  Nope, that wasn't going to work for her.  She said she was going to that truck stop regardless, and she'd be back to pick up the load around 7:00 p.m.  Well, that doesn't work for US, since her load is due in southern California in about as many hours after 7:00 p.m. as it takes to drive there, so that wouldn't allow for any rest time (or fuel stops or anything!) along the way.  She swore she'd get it there in time.  Yeah, right.

So the boss called the trucking company to give them the heads up that this load needed to deliver on time, and if the driver wasn't going to be able to make it, they needed to plan for a relay (driver drops the trailer near the end of her hours, a different (and fresher) driver picks up the trailer and continues on so it can keep moving without much delay).  They swore it would deliver on time.

Guess when it delivered?  I'll give you one guess.  Nope, wasn't on time.

Tales from the Workplace, Part XXVIII

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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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A walk-in customer came in, towing a rather large flatbed considering he was buying just one pallet of product.  But whatever--maybe he was buying other stuff later.  He backed up to our loading dock area and we loaded his pallet on for him.  Five minutes later or so, the owner of the company, who had been outside, came in and said the poor guy had locked his keys in his truck.  That sucks.  Sucks for us, too, if any other customers come while he's in the way, but mostly I was sympathetic.  :-)  Figured he'd call roadside assistance or whatever, so we went about our business.

Another ten minutes or so, and the guy came in.  He just kind of stood in front of my desk.  Silently.

I asked if I could help him, and he kind of mumbled something.  I obviously looked at him like "Huh?" so he said he'd locked his keys in his truck.  Except he only used about every other word from that sentence.  If my boss hadn't already said as much, I still would have had no clue what he was saying.  Anyway, I said that yeah, I'd heard that, and it sucks.  I asked if there was anything I could to do help.  He just kind of stood there.  I asked if he needed a phone.  He didn't know who he would call.  Um, do you have AAA or roadside assistance?  Something sparked in his brain and he started rummaging through his wallet.  He came up with a AAA card.  Great!  He handed it to me.  Uh, not gonna do me any good.  I again offered him a phone.  He looked at me like I had three heads.  "You know, to call AAA?"  Ah!  Yes, he'd like to call them.  But what number should he call?  I pointed to the 800 number at the bottom of the card.  Oh.  Okay.  He continued staring at me.  I gave him my business card and pointed to our address so he'd know where to tell them to go.  And again offered the phone.  "No, I have a cell phone."  Okay, then.  He wandered back out the door.

Another customer did come, but we manged to get them loaded where they parked, without them having to navigate around the pickup and trailer taking up most of the loading area.  Then next time I looked outside, the guy with the keys locked in was gone.  I don't know if AAA came in record time, or if one of our employees ended up helping him break into his truck or what.  But wow.  That was one of the weirdest encounters I've had in a while.  And I see quite a few truck drivers every week.  :-)

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XXVII

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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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As I've explained before, trucking companies charge "detention" fees when the truck driver waits around (at either the origin or the destination, or both).  I'm sure these charges started for a good reason--if the driver has to wait around, it cuts into the hours he can legally drive, or even before the laws were as restricted as now, there are still only so many hours in the day.  So if you hold him up at the front end, then blame him for delivering late, that's not fair.  So I'm sure they started the fees in an effort to keep their scheduling on time.

Now, I have no idea how it actually works (if someone knows, please enlighten me!).  Maybe the driver codes something in a device he has, or tells dispatch and they're the ones who enter it into a computer or something.  I do know the drivers are in close communication with dispatch as to their whereabouts, PLUS they have on board GPS that tells dispatch exactly where they are (well, within the limits of the device) at any given moment.  But I don't know exactly who pulls the trigger on a detention charge.

But lately we've been getting a ton of them.  First, we got notification of a detention charge for one hour at the origin (our location).  Here's the thing--they allow you two hours "free" and only start charging after that.  So they were claiming that the driver was waiting at our location for THREE hours.  But here's the thing.  That driver was in and out of here the FASTEST I've ever seen.  Seriously, it was about 20 minutes from him pulling onto the lot to pulling out of the lot.  He was an expert parker (some of the drivers take over 20 minutes just to jockey the trailer into a spot on the lot).  He didn't dilly-dally (though we did make small talk while I was photocopying his paperwork), he was in and out of here.  The charge said he arrived here at 10:00 a.m., but he arrived during the lunch hour, and toward the end of it.  So weird.  We told the company, and of course have the driver's log to back it up, so they'll remove the charge.

Then a different driver for the same company was running late to deliver a load.  (And do they let US know?  No.  Do they let the customer they're delivering to know?  No.  They tell dispatch and dispatch apparently sits on the information.)  The customer called at the appointed delivery time, no driver there, so we called and found out they were running late.  By like six hours (supposed to deliver first thing in the morning, now it was going to be late afternoon).  THEN, the next morning, we have a message in our e-mails that they were charging detention.  Now, after all the dealings we've had with trucking companies, we're highly suspicious of whether the driver even WAS at the location long enough to warrant detention charges, but of course in this instance, even if he WAS, it was his own fault for running late so that the customer didn't have the right staffing to get the truck unloaded efficiently.  I'm not even sure we bothered disputing whether the driver was actually there that long, just mentioned the re-scheduled delivery time and got them to remove the charge.

Then over this past weekend, a load was supposed to get picked up while we were closed, by the same company as the other two loads mentioned in this post.  No biggie, we do it all the time.  We leave the trailer on the lot with the bill of lading inside it, and let the company know the trailer number they're to pick up.  We even usually leave the back doors open (our cargo isn't that valuable) so the driver can tell at a glance which trailer of their brand is loaded vs. empty.  Well, Monday morning we get a notification that they're going to charge us detention on a load that the driver literally had to just park his empty trailer, grab paperwork, close doors, and hook onto the full trailer and drive away.  No waiting for the trailer to be loaded, no waiting for us to make copies of paperwork, no driving over the scale and having to adjust the load.  It's all pre-done.  Just drop, pick up, and go.  And yet they claimed they were "detained" on our lot for more than two hours.  Wow.  (And yes, he successfully picked it up, so it's not like the trailer had a flat or some other issue that prevented him leaving at all.)

I really do want to know how these charges get initiated, but it's ridiculous that they are generated in instances where they're clearly not warranted and we have to go to the trouble of disputing them.

Tales from the Workplace, Part XXVII

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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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We have had the same credit card processing system since I started with the company.  I don't know any different, so I neither love nor hate it--it is what it is.  You can swipe cards of people who come in in person, or you can go online to run the card of someone that calls over the phone.  Either way, it e-mails a report at the end of the day, and the money hits our account a couple days later.  At the end of the month, we're charged some fees.  In two separate chunks, oddly, but whatever.  

As many of you may know, someone somewhere decided that the US should join the 21st century and the rest of the world in terms of credit card security, and add chips to the credit cards.  (Of course, the PIN capabilities are coming much later, so for now it'll still be chip-and-sign rather than chip-and-PIN but whatever).  We've been calling our credit card processor every few months to ask when they'll be sending us new hardware to accommodate the new cards, and they said they'd have it ready by the October 1st deadline, and just hold tight.  Well, mid-September I called and they said they didn't have it ready yet, but they would "soon," and no biggie anyway, it's just a suggestion and not a requirement.

I did some googling, and apparently what happens on that date is that the responsibility and liability shift.  Before that deadline, if you as a vendor take a credit card payment that turns out to be fraudulent, the banks have to eat it when the rightful owner ends up disputing it.  After the deadline, if the card was an old non-chip card, that will still be the case.  If the card is a chip card and it was scanned via the chip (and not swiped with the magnetic strip), that will still be the case.  However, if the customer had a chip card but the vendor swiped it the old-fashioned way using the magnetic strip, the vendor will be on the hook for the fraudulent charges.  This scares my boss, the business owner, enough that he wanted the new technology (though we've never had a fraudulent charge in 20+ years in business--the only CC chargeback we've had was a scammy customer who ended up losing and we got the funds back after a fight).

So my boss went down to the bank (yes, WENT not called), and they told us that they partner with a certain credit card processing system, and they DO have the chip readers available, so he made an appointment with the rep.  She came, we chatted, it sounded good.  She promised the pricing would be about the same, and I asked for their pricing structure in writing.  

She didn't send that, but she sent a link to some stuff my boss needed to fill out (based on his personal credit), so I sat him at my computer (his "wouldn't open the link") and he filled it out.  Meanwhile, I still haven't received anything in writing.  A couple days later, she asked if we'd received the equipment yet.  Um, what?  Apparently my boss not only filled out his credit information to qualify, he actually SIGNED US UP without getting anything in writing.  Oops.  He didn't seem too concerned about that, though he'd been all hot and bothered about having the chip-reading equipment.

So the equipment arrived, and I contacted the sales rep, who had said that she'd help us hook it up, etc., but she basically told me to call the 800 number if I needed help.  I ended up figuring it out myself, with one call to them to make sure I didn't need a phone line, just internet.  We were up and running.  Did a $1.00 charge to my boss' company credit card, then voided it, just to verify that it worked.  

It's kind of a pain.  The old system, you had to log into the website first regardless of how you were going to process the card.  Then once logged in, there was a choice to either swipe the card or manually enter it.  For someone standing in front of me, I'd click swipe, swipe their card, then enter a couple of fields for the dollar amount and the invoice number, and boom, done.  Print the receipt for them to sign, easy peasy.

Now, in-person transactions are done entirely on this terminal a little bigger (and a lot thicker) than a cellphone.  You hit a button to wake it up, hit a couple more buttons, swipe or insert the card (depending on whether it has a chip or not), enter the dollar amount, wait a few minutes for it to finally spit out the receipt, and have them sign.  Overall probably doesn't take much longer, but my fingers fumble with the keypad vs. using a real computer keyboard, so I prefer the old method, but whatever.

To process transactions where the person isn't physically here with the card, you log on to a website.  Fine.  Slightly different format, but actually asks for less input (last system required billing address, which was weird), so it's all good.  However, the old system let us save customers' card info securely, which was great both for local customers that wanted to be able to send someone else to pick up their product, but authorize payment ahead of time over the phone so they didn't have to give them their actual card.  And for long-distance customers who just wanted to be able to say "run my card," or even authorize us to just automatically run it after invoicing.  The new system apparently does not do that.  It seems from their materials that if you pay enough, they'll let you set up recurring charges, but ours aren't the same amount every time or on a set schedule, so that doesn't work for me.  I've already had a few customers get kind of irritated that they have to re-provide their CC info every time.  So I'm starting to make use of our accounting system's ability to save the card info, but of course it doesn't "talk" to the CC system, so I have to hand-copy the information (can't copy and paste!) it every time.  Ugh.  Plus the old system would e-mail a receipt to our customer after I charge their card, and it appears the new one doesn't.  

Oh, and the online part costs extra.  Of course.  (Old system is just one set fee per transaction, no matter which way it's done, plus of course the percentage fees we're charged.)

THEN it turns out that the two systems (desktop doohickey for processing actual cards and online module for processing them long distance) don't talk to each other.  So they make separate deposits in the bank, and you have to go both places to print off the reports in order to get the details on the transactions that are being deposited.  Plus neither report provides as many details as the old system did.  WHY does it have me put in the invoice number if it's not going to help me out by including that information on the report?  Ugh.

So already I wasn't thrilled with the new system, but part of that is just hating change, and whatever.  I can deal with it, and the boss is happy that he won't be liable if someone uses a stolen card, so it's all good, right?

Until I'm reconciling our bank account and see a $10,000+ charge I don't know about.  Um, WHAT?  It, of course, has absolutely no helpful information.  In fact, the gobbledygook mess of letters and numbers looks very similar to the deposits we take to the bank in person.  Weird.  I call them, and they tell me it's from our brand spankin' new credit card processing company.  Um, I'm pretty sure they didn't tell us it would cost THIS much.  I tally up the charges we did with them, and they're barely over $11,000, so that would mean an effective rate on the processing fees of well over 90%.  Yeah, no.

Do I have a statement from them?  Of course not.  I e-mail the sales rep that we'd worked with, and she says she signed us up for online statements "to avoid the fee of having them mailed."  What?!?  It costs money for them to send us statements?  Of course it does.  She gives me the website to go to, and I do, but the account ID I use to log in to the processing website (which, of course, is an entirely different website) doesn't work.  I e-mail her back and she gives me the correct one.  Which, of course, I'd never seen before.

I finally get logged in to the website and get my temporary password changed and find where to go to see my statement.  Yup, that's the same dollar amount we had hit our bank account.  It has $10,639.00 in "other fees."  Now, we were expecting a few hundred dollars in fees for the new terminal (of course they charge for that up front), for using the website (yes, they charge for that!).  At the last of five pages, it finally details the "other charges."  Sure enough, a couple fees that do look correct, and then $10,000.00 exactly for "App. Fee."  Um, what?  I'm guessing this is an application fee, but I wasn't even informed of one, let alone for $10,000.00.  Ah, I see what the problem is--someone entered a quantity of 100 plus a price of $100.00, and I'm guessing it should just be one fee of $100.00.  I dig out the electronic documents we got after the boss had filled out all his personal information, and sure enough, it outlines the fees, including the quantity of 100 and price of $100 for an application fee.  So this would appear to be an error done by the sales rep.  Ugh.

I e-mail her, and she says yes, it's an error, and she sees it on her end, too.  She's e-mailed customer service, but recommends I call them and then have them conference her in if necessary.  As of the minute I'm typing this, I've been on hold for 50 minutes.  It's on speakerphone (which probably annoys the boss and co-worker, but I'm NOT holding a phone to my ear for that long!), so at least I'm not getting a neck-ache, but still.  Ugh.  Rep says they have very long hold times due to everyone getting switched over at the same time due to the deadlines, but I think they ought to have a dedicated line for things like this where it's their fault and not just me asking dumb questions.  Ugh.

They picked up at 52 minutes, and then after verifying who I was and explaining the problem, I waited on hold another 5 minutes or so while the rep looked into it, then she came back on the line and told me that the sales rep has to generate the refund and get it approved by their manager.  SERIOUSLY?  I waited on hold for nearly an hour for NO reason?  Ugh!  So I left a voicemail and sent an e-mail to my rep saying that, and we'll see what happens.

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XXVI

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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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A truck driver was apparently on one of his last few days with the company, having given notice previously.  He was on a run from our location to southern California, and got within a couple of hours of the destination and apparently decided he was done.  Done driving, done working for that company.  He ditched the truck and trailer and left.  Apparently he told dispatch he was doing so, but they didn't think through the ramifications of that far enough to realize that if the truck and trailer were sitting somewhere other than at the destination, that maybe, just MAYBE, the consignee wasn't getting their delivery.  The day after it was supposed to deliver, the customer finally contacted us to ask about the load, and we contacted the trucking company.  Oh, huh.  Wouldja look at that...the driver abandoned his load, and apparently it's still sitting right where he left it.  Huh.  Who woulda thunk it--it can't just haul itself wherever it needs to go.  Huh.  So they finally sent someone to go pick it up and finalize the delivery, which of course took ANOTHER day, making the load two days late.

Not the truck in question.  Just the photo I'll be using on these posts from now on.  :-)

Tales from the Workplace, Part XXVI

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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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A potential new customer was talking options with our sales person.  Size of packages, types of product, etc.  We load the trucks one of two ways--either hand stacked (the bags of our product are stacked into the trailer however they fit most efficiently; it takes a lot of manpower on both ends, but is ideal for customers who either don't have a forklift or don't mind the labor and want to save money and have the most possible packages per truckload) or palletized (much faster to load and unload, plus easy to deal with on the customer's end, as they can just take one package at a time off the stacked pallets, but we do charge a little extra per package to account for the fact that we have to buy the pallets and outer wrapping, and then of course can't recoup that cost).

The sales person was explaining the difference and the pros and cons to the customer.  Most folks, it's an easy decision--if they have a forklift, they usually prefer palletized loads as it's much quicker to unload them off the truck, move them to where they plan to store them, then either use or re-sell them straight off the pallet.  But some folks just don't have a forklift or prefer handstacked for their own reasons, which is fine too.

This guy apparently wanted the best of both worlds.  He kept asking about weather-proofing.  Well, all our product comes in plastic bags, which are pretty weather proof all on their own, but they can get tiny tears, especially the more they're handled, or it's possible one of the sealed ends could start coming open if it doesn't seal perfectly, so they're not 100% waterproof, and we don't guarantee that they will be.  When we palletize them, they're stacked on a pallet, get a top sheet of pretty thick plastic thrown over the top of the stack, then are wrapped with stretch film all the way around, a couple layers.  So the pallets are REALLY weatherproof, and could probably store outdoors indefinitely, without issue (though we still don't officially guarantee it, as who knows what happens to the plastic once it's out of our hands, we're more likely to state that it's quite weatherproof without an explicit guarantee).

This customer clearly wanted the weatherproof aspects of a palletized load, but wanted the most packages per load, plus the lower price per package of a handstacked load.  He asked if we could send him a handstacked load and include some plastic for him to cover the packages with on his end.  Um, no.  Try a hardware store.  :-)

I mean, even if we did want to do that for him, our top sheets are just larger than a pallet, and our stretch film is meant to be used in an automated palletizer, and wouldn't really work the way he's thinking of.  He needs a large tarp (or one of those RV storage "tents") or something instead.

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XXV

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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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A driver showed up with an empty trailer (yay!) to pick up a load.  We instructed him to drop the empty trailer in the rows of empty trailers out front, any spot was fine as long as it didn't block the flow of traffic, then he should hook onto the loaded trailer and head to the scale.  Well.  He was out there a very long time.  A very, very long time.  We could see him pulling forward, then back, then forward, then back, over and over and over.  Executing a 387-point turn to park the thing, apparently.  At one point, one of our employees (who drives the trailers all around our lot to put them on the loading docks then park them for later pickup, etc.) offered to back it in for him, but the driver wanted to do it.  Yikes.  Isn't backing a trailer into tricky spots (not that this spot was particularly tricky, and the driver had his pick of a few empty spots) part of getting a CDL?  And shouldn't it be part of getting hired to a trucking company as well?  After all, you'll be driving around THEIR equipment, and they don't want you damaging it OR taking up precious time trying to park.

The guy was seriously on the lot for two full hours, for what normally takes a driver 20 minutes or do (drop empty, hook onto loaded, drive over scale, come in for paperwork).  I hope they don't try to charge us detention!

Tales from the Workplace, Part XXV

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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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Matching up someone's resume with the real life experience of having them as an employee can sometimes be amusing.  

30-something-year-old employee whose mommy drove him to work and whose daddy quit on his behalf because the work was too hard (and probably because he wouldn't pass the drug test) after less than six hours of TOTAL employment with us:  

"seeking long term employment"  

Employee who, after one day of work, wanted to file a workers comp claim that we very strongly suspect was bogus:

"Dependable, motivated, hard worker" and "respectful to supervisors" and "shows strong work ethic."

Employee who quit at beginning of what would have been his second day of work because he got his old job back (hey, at least he let us know he was quitting, unlike the first two cowards): 

"demonstrated ability to be dependable" and "enthusiastic employee."  

(Though again, six jobs listed on the resume of a guy that seemed to be fairly young, without any dates listed, should have been our first clue.  We just can't afford to turn folks away who appear to have a pulse when we're desperate for workers.)

We've also posted a white-collar job recently, and received a few interesting resumes in response.  A couple in particular tickled my funny bone, though.

The e-mail the resume was attached to said that the applicant had so much experience "it would fill a book," then attached a resume that was VERY skimpy.  Seriously, not including the contact information at the top, it has 14 lines of text, three of which are references.  There is a "skills and abilities" section that list a few things that almost anyone could truthfully list, without any information to back it up such as what the applicant accomplished in the past.  There is ONE job listed with NO information as to what was accomplished except "all aspect [sic] of online marketing."  There's an education section that just says the applicant graduated high school 30+ years ago.  There are two, count 'em TWO, strengths listed:  comfortable chatting with others, and highly adaptable to situations.  There is one "leadership role" of head deacon at a church.  And there are three references, as I said earlier--two are from church.  Yeah, thanks but no thanks.

At the other end of the spectrum, we received an e-mail that, when printed, was two pages, and it had an attachment--a four-page resume.  Three pages were basically walls of text (with a couple of headings to list the job titles), followed by the fourth page that was nothing except "references available upon request."  So way to go at pagination AND editing down to what's most important to convey.

Luckily, we received one resume that was perfect--seriously, we probably couldn't have asked for a better candidate if we'd ordered one custom, and she's working out great.  So yay!

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XXIV

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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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A driver arrived to pick up a load that was set to deliver two days later at 7:00 a.m., but he asked if he could deliver it the next day, a day early.  No, we told him, they wouldn't have the people to unload it if he arrived early.  He needed to arrive when it was scheduled, at 7:00 a.m. the day after.  He asked if he could at least arrive early and spend the night on the property.  We verified with the customer that that was okay, and they said yes, they have room for him to park the rig, and then he'd be right there when they opened, so that would be great.

On the delivery day, the customer called us at 8:00 a.m. to ask where his delivery was.  Um, the driver didn't arrive early?  Nope, he hadn't arrived at all.  We called the trucking company to ask where the load was, and they tracked it down and said the driver didn't want to wait, so he'd dropped the trailer off at one of their transfer facilities for someone else to deal with (they can do that?!?!).  So the trucking company sent someone out to pick it up and deliver it, but the truck broke down on the way.  (Or so they say.)

So, because one guy was in such a hurry to get on with his life, rather than do his JOB as it was assigned to him, our customer doesn't have the product they ordered at the time they were supposed to receive it, and will probably have to pay employees to either stay or come back later when the truck finally makes to to their property (some of our loads are not palletized, which means in order to get it unloaded within the two-hour window the trucking company allows, it takes more employees than they might typically have on duty otherwise).  I'm gonna make a wild guess that he doesn't get fired for it, either, since the trucking industry has such a shortage of drivers.

Tales from the Workplace, Part XXIV

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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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An employee came in and filled out a job application.  He may have ridden with someone else, we don't always pay attention or see how people arrive at the building.  We decided to hire him, so he filled out his new hire paperwork and got to work right on the spot.  (We're weird like that.)

I called to get a drug test scheduled, and they happened to have an opening that very day (doesn't usually happen!).  So I gave him the slip that tells him he has an appointment today, he asked if he could use the phone to call his mom to ask her to give him a ride there, I tell him he'll be paid for the time, but needs to check with his supervisor to see whether they need him to come back after or if he'll be free to go.  All is well.

A car pulls into the parking lot and parks right outside our window.  This is odd, as most of our traffic involves pickups or trailers, so they can buy our product which is sold by the pallet, but this was a mini van.  Finally we realize why the van is there and its driver hasn't come in--it's the employee's mom, waiting to pick him up.  He comes out at about 15 minutes until his appointment, gets in the van, and they drive off.  Awesome.

Until nearly an hour later, when the clinic calls to ask if our employee is planning to come to his drug testing appointment.  Um, he left here with plenty of time to spare...weird!  So I call the number he gave us on his application and other materials.  It appears to be a home phone, for the "Smith residence," rather than a personal cell phone.  Whatever, I leave a message.

Another half hour later or so, I get a call, from the employee's DAD saying he found the work too difficult and won't be coming back.  Oh, and this guy is somewhere around THIRTY.  Not a high-schooler, not a fresh-out-of-highschooler.  THIRTY.

So let's summarize.  30-year-old employee applies and is hired.  Has to ride to and from work with his mommy.  Fails to appear for a drug test.  His daddy calls and tells us the work was just too hard.  Yeah.  Good riddance.

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XXIII

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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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Well, apparently the driver that arrived without bringing an empty trailer with him last week wasn't an anomaly.  Someone from the same company showed up over the weekend (as they were supposed to do), picked up the trailer we left here on the lot for them (as they were supposed to do), but didn't leave an empty in its place (as they WERE supposed to do, but didn't).  Then Monday, a THIRD driver showed up with just a tractor, no trailer.

What we can't figure out is what on earth the company is thinking.  Whether you live load or do as we do, and pre-load one trailer, and have them swap and empty for a loaded, I can only think of one circumstance in which a company wouldn't need an empty trailer to be brought in when the driver arrives--they're firing the trucking company and this is the last load to ever be picked up.  Otherwise, no matter the method, you've got to have an empty trailer, either to load while the driver waits, or to replace the full one being taken away so you have one to load later for the next guy.  I don't understand why the trucking company doesn't realize this.

So the one over the weekend we couldn't prevent, and had to just ask them to bring another one as soon as they could.  But once again, the boss wouldn't let the driver leave with our loaded trailer this week until they brought us a new one, which just makes our customer's load late.  I guess he's been burned before with letting the driver leave without replacing the trailer, but it sucks for our customer.  Not sure what the trucking company is smoking to not just send a trailer in the first place...so weird.

Tales from the Workplace, Part XXIII

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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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This DOES involve a trucking company, but since it's not a truck driver, I'm classing it as just a regular old workplace story.

It's bad enough that I have to chase down invoices because apparently they rely on drivers to turn in paperwork that generates invoices, but today was a new one on me.

We'd gotten a quote from a trucking company prior to shipping to a new customer.  But when the bill came in, it was way lower than the quote (and therefore way lower than what we charged the customer).  Yay for making a profit on it, I guess, but that's not fair to our customer, and we'd rather have it corrected now than have a surprise later.  So I verified using Google Maps that it's 822 miles door to door (though of course the trucking companies sometimes charge based on a few more miles than that, especially if the trucks have to take a slightly different route than a car would or due to allowing for a couple of times getting off the freeway a bit for gas and/or rest stops) but they had only charged us 691 miles.

I e-mailed the company and told them they'd charged us for 691, but Google Maps showed 822, and asked if they would like to check into that and revise the bill.  I just got a reply this morning: 

"I have gotten this checked over and it is billed correctly."

Okay, if you say so.  Apparently [Trucking Company] has managed to find a shortcut that Google Maps doesn't know about.  Various "as the crow flies" apps online put the distance at ~710 miles, so they must be able to take the REALLY direct route, cutting through the curvature of the earth.  Oh well.  I did the right thing by bringing it to their attention, and hopefully if they DO revise the invoice later, after doing this much research on it, I'll remember it and be able to happily pay the added amount without freaking out.  :-)

*** Update:  They not only didn't revise their bill, they've shipped that route for us again, and once again billed for only 691 miles.  So weird.

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XXII

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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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We had a load scheduled to go to northern California, normally just a one day trip.  However, when the driver still hadn't shown up by noon, we were getting a bit concerned about it getting delivered on time.  Finally, the driver showed up, but just in a truck without a trailer attached.  We pre-load the trailers here on our site so technically that isn't a problem--the driver could just hook up to the loaded trailer and go.  HOWEVER, that leaves us without an empty trailer to pre-load for the next customer, and so on and so on.  So the owner of the company didn't want to let this load go until we had a trailer.  If not ON the lot, at least on its way for sure, and not just an empty promise.  So he told the driver as much, and the driver got on the phone with his company.

An hour or so later, the driver comes back in to the office.  He finally got a trailer lined up for us, and the trucking company asked him to go pick it up.  "It's in Portland, which is what, 300 miles?  So you guys will still be here when I get back, right?"

Okay, let's do the math on that.  We'll be here until 5:00, which is four hours from now.  Do you plan to drive 75 miles an hour AVERAGE between here and Portland, including slowing down for towns, stopping at stoplights, and you know, the whole MOUNTAIN PASS thing?  Not to mention having to actually stop for a few minutes to attach the trailer...  Granted, one way will be with just a tractor and no trailer, and the other way will be with an empty trailer, but the maximum speed limit between here and Portland, except for MAYBE a few minutes on I-84, is 55.  Good luck averaging 75.

I patiently explained to the driver that even the near side of Portland is a 2 1/2 hour drive in a car, so add on however far through Portland he'd have to drive, going slower on the uphill parts of the pass, and likely the downhill parts, too, and he would most definitely not make it back before we left for the day.  So I gave him his paperwork so he'd have it once he did get back to pick up the loaded trailer, and asked if he'd be able to make it to the destination on his allotted hours (I doubted it, but figured I'd ask).  He said sure, no problem, though of course I had my doubts, based on his estimation of what a round trip to Portland should take (which, by the way, he had just come from and also happens to be where he lives, so it's not like he didn't know how far it was in TIME, not just distance).

Sure enough, we got a notification from the trucking company that our load was being delayed.  They said the new ETA was 11:00 p.m.  Hmmm, I'm pretty sure exactly NONE of our customers would appreciate a delivery at that time, even if they live at the site where it's being delivered, but this customer is a retail location and I'm sure they weren't open that late.  Heh.  So of course we had them reschedule it further until the morning.

So, morning comes, and we're going to check with the customer to make sure the load did, indeed deliver, and before we had a chance to call them, they called us.  I was the one who picked up the phone, and said we'd been just about to call them to make sure the load delivered.

"DID it deliver?'

"Well, yes, it's here."

"Hmmm...that didn't sound good.  Is there a problem?"

"Uh, yeah.  There was a little accident.  The driver drove into a light pole and we don't have power."  (Retail location remember, so this is a bit more than a minor inconvenience.  They're probably unable to serve THEIR customers during this time.)

Turns out, the driver had arrived during the night (as the dispatch had anticipated) and parked his rig in their lot.  Fine and dandy.  However, where he was parked wasn't the best place for him to be for unloading, so they knocked on his cab, woke him up, and asked him to move it to a better location.  They gave him instructions to go around the block, approach it again from a different angle, and showed him where to park.  However, he figured he knew better than they did, and attempted to execute a U-turn.  In a SEMI.  WITH a trailer.  And took out the electrical box on the corner.  I don't know whether it affected other properties' power or just the one, but it caused a major inconvenience for them and the THREE fire trucks and FOUR police cars that apparently responded (must've been a boring day in that neighborhood prior to this incident).

I'm sure the trucking company will eventually take care of the customer, monetarily, but it doesn't help them in the short term when they've got a business to run and no power.  I guess the driver did feel quite chastised, and I hope he learns a lesson from this.

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To top it off, a full two weeks after the delivery described above (if you can call it that, though I guess the product arrived, so it WAS a delivery, however inconvenient), we received notification from the freight company that the driver was on site for seven hours, so we would be charged for five hours of detention (I think I've mentioned it before, but they allot two hours for loading or unloading on either end, and if you go over, they charge you in increments of 10 or 15 minutes, and it's NOT cheap).  Normally, they notify us of potential detention charges while the driver is on site, not two weeks later, so I have a couple guesses about why it took two weeks:  giving them the benefit of the doubt, they knew it was their fault at the time, and overrode the computer who said we should be charged, but must not have noted why they weren't charging us.  Now, two weeks later, some do-gooder is going through logs looking for anomalies and sees that the driver was there seven hours but we weren't charged detention, so they created the charges, not knowing that there's a reason we weren't charged.  If I want to take a more negative view, though, maybe they let it sit for two weeks hoping WE'D forget the story and just go ahead and pay it even though the driver being there for seven hours has nothing to do with unloading the product.  In fact, part of the reason he was there so long is that the customer was genuinely concerned about him being on the road and called the company dispatch to report not just the incident, but the potential safety issue.

Tales from the Workplace, Part XXII

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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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We require customers to pre-pay for their first load from us, then if they fill out a credit app and have good references, their second and subsequent orders can be paid for after they arrive (whether by credit card or check--up to them).

We have a new customer who prefers to communicate by text instead of e-mail or phone, so the sales guy has been using his personal cell phone to communicate with her by text.  He said we would need her credit card information before we could ship this order, so to please call the office to provide it.

Apparently she really really REALLY prefers text, as she just texted him a photo of the front and back of the card.

UPDATE:  I'm glad I delay posts, because oddly enough, just this morning (a couple months after I first typed this up), her payment was due for her second order, and she still hadn't filled out a credit app, so I ran her card, but it didn't go through, so I e-mailed her to let her know that it didn't go through and ask if she could call me with updated card into.  She asked if she could text us pictures of the card again, since it worked so well last time.  I said it didn't seem very secure to me, but if she wanted to go for it, it was fine by me. 

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XXI

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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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Well, it's a day for the record books!  For once, this is a rave, not a rant.

We've had three truck drivers grace our presence this morning.  All three understood spoken English, spoke intelligible English themselves, and were polite.  One, a woman driver, wins our best-dressed award, too.  She had a nice blouse on, and had hair that had been recently combed (I'm guessing she had recently showered, too, which if you've been around many truck drivers, even female drivers, is NOT a given!).

One of them even showed himself capable of critical thinking.  His dispatcher had told him he was running late, showed up on their GPS tracking as not having arrived at our location yet, and told him we'd complained that he was late.  He asked us about it, because he'd thought he was supposed to be here at 9:00 and he got here a few minutes before that.  We told him that not only was his appointment for 9:00 as he thought, we did NOT call complaining that he was late.  So the company was lying to him.  Then, on his way out the door, he crossed paths with another driver from the same company, so he asked the other guy if he was having issues with his radio/GPS/communication system, as the company had told him it was company-wide, and the other driver said no, his was working fine.  So the poor driver now knows the company lied to him about TWO different issues.  Wish I could be a fly on the wall in his cab (well, not really, but...).

Wow.  Anyway, three nice, polite, well-spoken drivers.  Amazing.  Wonder what the rest of the week will bring...

[Update from the day after I originally wrote this post.  Not only have we had a couple more drivers who belong in the record books, the SAME trucking company trying to pull the wool over the drivers' eyes did it again--they sent a driver here to pick up empty trailers from our lot.  Except we always have two empty trailers on hand, because we send out one to two loaded trailers with their company each day, and need to pre-load them in order to be more efficient.  If they take the empties away from us, we can't even start loading the trailers until the drivers show up.  Ugh.  The driver, of course, was just doing what he was told, but we did NOT ask them to pick up our empties, and would have been really ticked if he'd just taken them without checking with us.]

Tales from the Workplace, Part XXI

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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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A customer called us a few weeks ago to complain that a truck driver had done some damage on her property--drove into a door (?!?) or something.  We asked her when it had happened.  "Oh, a few weeks ago."  Seriously?  Did she take any photos?  Of course not.  Did she say anything to the driver at the time?  "Um, maybe."  Did she call the trucking company to report it and start a claim?  No, she was calling us.  Now.  Weeks after the fact.  Ugh.  We told her she needed to report it to the trucking company.  While we're their customer, and will call them to give them a heads up, the person who received the damage is the one that need to provide any documentation or evidence, and the one to whom a check, if any, would be made out, so they have to work directly with the trucking company.  And apparently they're surprisingly easy to work with on these sorts of things.  Guess it happens all the time and they're used to it.  Heh.

Anyway, we told our customer service rep at the trucking company, and then forgot about it.  Today, the customer called again and was all pissy that she hadn't heard anything back.  Well, did you call the trucking company to report it?  You didn't?  Then how do you expect them to call you back?  Yeah, we told our customer service person, but that's not the same as the claims department, and we just kind of gave them the heads up that they'd be getting a call, not an official report, since WE DON'T HAVE THE FULL INFORMATION.  That's why we told YOU to call them.

Sheesh.  Told her again that she needs to report it.  Wonder how effective that'll be since it's now been a few months, and she apparently still has no photographic evidence.  I bet the driver "won't remember" it, either, at this point.  Ugh.

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Update:  The customer never called the trucking company, and is likely never going to do business with US again, because she couldn't be bothered to properly report the claim, and that's somehow our fault.  Oh well.  Good riddance, I guess?

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XX

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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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My boss is currently poring through our payables files.  I asked him why, and it's to find what rate we usually pay for a certain customer via a certain trucking company.  Because when he contacted them to reserve a truck, they asked HIM what the rate is.  Seems to me, we should be able to say it's a penny per mile.  If they want to question it, then clearly THEY have the ability to look it up.  So why should we have to?  Sheesh!

Oh, and then when two weeks passed after a load delivered and we still hadn't seen an invoice from them, I called, and after getting a runaround and an "I don't know" that seemed like she thought that should be the end of the conversation, I finally found out that our guy, the same one who asks US to tell him what he should charge us, never forwarded the rate to the billing department, and that's why they hadn't invoiced us.  Um, shouldn't you have a process in place to make sure you invoice your customers in a timely manner?

A different freight company also hadn't billed us a load from a few weeks ago.  When I called them, they said it was because the DRIVER hadn't given them the paperwork.  Um, you rely on the drivers to drive your billing process?  Bad idea!  I faxed them the paperwork I had to hopefully start the ball rolling.

But seriously, why should I have to be the one to prompt them to bill US?  (This isn't just the trucking companies, either--there was another company who still hadn't invoiced us for a packing slip I had from April, so I called to let them know they might want to send an invoice and we'd be happy to pay it.)

Tales from the Workplace, Part XX

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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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We have a customer who has ordered from us twice now.  He apparently runs a store out of his garage or something, and doesn't own a forklift.  So we shipped the first load to "Psycho Pete's Garage," an auto shop a friend of his owns down the street, which does have a forklift.  He somehow got the product unloaded and transported to wherever he needed it.  Not our problem, so we don't know the logistics.  The next load was delivered to a different business with a more normal-sounding name, also a friend of his who actually owns a forklift.  That went fine.  He called us again, interested in buying more product, but this time wonders if we can just ship it to his house.  He saw a moving van pulling around the corner near his house, so he figures a semi tractor towing a 53-foot trailer should be no problem, right?

Now, I'm obviously not going to give out his actual location.  So I looked up a similar location on Google Maps in the town I actually live in.  Please note this is NOT my neighborhood, and not anywhere near my actual neighborhood, so any stalkers, please do not bother the nice people who live in this neighborhood.  It's just for demonstration purposes.  Anyway, he lives in a neighborhood that looks like this:

Except where this guy lives would actually be even more iffy, as it's basically a squared-off U that only has three houses on the inside of the bend and four houses on the outside.  I wouldn't be surprised if you could only barely fit a 53-foot trailer on the short end of the U if you air-dropped it there!  Seriously.  Yeah, dude, not gonna happen.  Moving vans are a LITTLE smaller than full-size semis.

Tales from the Workplace, Part XIX

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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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I'm sitting at my desk at work, which faces the windows that face the parking lot.  A car drives up, drives through the parking lot, circles back around, and finally comes in and parks in an unconventional manner (not parallel to the other cars, but it's a gravel lot so there aren't exactly lines.  Whatever.

The guy comes into the office and says, "I'm running in an election, and was wondering if I could put a couple signs up in front of your business."

Um, I think your little spiel is missing a little bit of information.  Now, I'm pretty sure THIS particular business' owner would say no regardless, but shouldn't you introduce yourself and say WHAT you're running for, and maybe what party if it's a partisan thing?  I mean, some businesses might be willing to host election signs, but I'm guessing that for those whose answer wouldn't be an across-the-board "no," knowing who they'd be supporting would be decision-making fact numero uno, don't you think?  Not to mention just common courtesy to introduce yourself when walking into a business, let alone asking them a favor.  Wow.

Tales from the Workplace, Trucking Edition, Part XIX

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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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I wasn't here for this, so it's hearsay, but apparently the other day, a truck pulled up in front of the building.  It said something like "Chuck's Delivery Service" on the side and was full of Amazon Prime packages.  The guy asked if our business is "Acme Paper Products" (it is not).  The guy asked if our address is "123 Main Street" (it is not).  He figured the package must be addressed wrong, since clearly it was for us, based on it having a different addressee and a different address.  Wow.  There's a real brain trust.  I'm actually kind of surprised he doesn't carry around a can of spray paint to correct all the signs he must see that have the wrong business name and address on them!