In the 1990’s, when I was in my 30’s, in the realm of occupational choices, I went from one extreme to another, and had equally dissatisfying results in both cases.
Specifically, I went from working in an office for a temp agency to working in trucking as a union laborer.
In both cases, I saw some ugly trends that made me detest those that work in both industries.
I know, “Welcome to the real world!”
Table of Contents
I. The Temp Agency
—A. My First Assignment : Memorex-Telex
—B. The Second Assignment : Whirlpool Factory Service
II. The Union Truck-Driving Job
—A. Got My CDL and Got Hired…Right Away
—B. The Layoff From Yard Waste…Right Away
—C. The “Re-Hire” To The Mechanics Division…Right Away
—D. The Transfer to Medical Waste…Right Away
—E. How The Position Got Created In the First Place
——1. The Old System
——2. The New System—My Job
—F. Where I Ran Into Problems
——1. The Normal Shift
——2. The MILKED Shift
———a. Mike W.
———b. Don
———c. Kelly…The Trouble Maker
III. Conclusion
I. The Temp Agency
I decided to write this blog when I saw a video on YouTube where the title began with the two words “Permanently Temporary”, which immediately reminded me of my time as a temp worker.
I didn’t watch the whole video, since I was doing other things, but I just put it on for background noise while I was involved in other tasks—I just absolutely hate a dead silent room.
I have to have on some kind of white noise, such as a fan running, or some conversation going on in the background. So, I’ll put on YouTube videos for such purposes when I’m working on the PC.
In any case…
“Permanently Temporary” is a PERFECT name for the reality of the industry.
So, back in the early 90’s, I worked for a temp agency by the name of Pro Staff, which was located in Downers Grove, Illinois, at the time.
A. My First Assignment : Memorex-Telex
My first assignment was at a company called Memorex-Telex, which was a combination of :
[a] Memorex (of the “Is it live or is it Memorex?” fame); and
[b] Telex, which, I think, by itself, manufactured business-oriented P.A. systems—e.g. when a person talks into a microphone at a bank, a grocery store, or a gas station to announce something over the P.A system , THAT was Telex’s business at that time : microphones, amplifiers and speakers for non-music business applications.
Together, though, the two companies were involved in a completely unrelated industry : leasing business computers to major corporations (e.g., governmental bureaucracies; department store chains; major railroads; national gas stations; etc.).
When I took the job, the recruiter painted the position as a “get-your-foot-in-the-door” type of opportunity for a “no one” like me to find room-to-grow employment with major corporations, instead of pointlessly continuing on working for small, mom-and-pops, where employees walked around bent over like a hunch back because the glass ceiling was so low we “couldn’t even stand up” without hitting our heads on the light fixtures—and I’m NOT a tall man.
Despite the phony hope the recruiter was dangling over my head, I was going to be working as a permanent “Temp”, although I was not aware—yet—that my position was designed to be indefinitely ( or even permanently) temporary [from Day One] when I took their client’s assignment at their Naperville , Illinois office.
I worked in the microfiche department that provided account information to both the accounts receivable and accounts payables departments.
The industry was not yet using digital formats like Microsoft Excel’s spreadsheets, text files, or pdf’s or jpegs to store data, but rather printouts generated from microfiche machines—which ours broke down frequently.
Out of approximately 15 people total (in both departments), there was only one employee who was a “temp”: me!
Everyone else was permanent and full-time.
After about eight or nine months in that dead-end position, there were no openings for me to get my foot in the door full time and permanent-–i.e.with benefits.
I had to start thinking about moving on to bigger and better things—which, at that time, I still erroneously believed could be achieved by staying with Pro Staff, but only changing assignments to a new client.
I started to let it be known in casual conversation with my permanent co-workers what my intentions were, and they, in turn, must’ve told two friends, and so on, until management got wind of my intentions.
Then, a man by the name of Doug, who was their “Controller” for that office, asked me if I would be interested in moving over into a position that was strictly for accounts payable—although it would still be through the temp agency and not through Memorex-Telex, and that detail alone was enough to take ALL the shine off the glitter of that offer.
He agreed to give me a few days to think about it, and one of my co-workers in the Accounts Receivable department, Sheryl, warned me that the offer was a ruse.
The position I was being offered would be closed by the end of the month, and the temp agency would have already replaced me in my old microfiche job with another temp, and I would not have my old job to go back to, when my new job got closed out.
That is, I’d be unemployed again! Nice, huh?
Specifically, Memorex-Telex was moving the entire Accounts PAYABLE department down to their headquarters in Oklahoma, and they just needed someone to empty the file cabinets into cardboard boxes for the big move.
Needless to say, I trusted Sheryl way more than I trusted shifty-eyed Doug, so I told Doug I wanted to stay in the Microfiche department.
Whew! Thank God I did! Just like she said , at the end of the month, while I was outside having a smoke with another co-worker, Craig, we saw two men rolling two-wheeled dollies in and out of the building, hauling out the very file cabinets, boxes, computers, etc. of our AP department.
And...the Temp who took that job……was laid off at the end of the day.
That could have been me.
“I can’t believe Doug tried to get me to accept a Position he knew was being ended. Zero ethics!” I thought to myself.
Then, about two months later, on a Sunday morning, while eating breakfast and reading the newspaper, I decided to read the want ads (back when the Chicago Tribune’s job classifieds were LITERALLY 15 to 20 pages thick—NOT counting the rest of the paper) and guess what I saw : my microfiche job!
But…as a full-time Memorex-Telex employee and NOT as a temp!
“WTF?!” I thought to myself in shock when I saw the quarter-page ad, which I brought into the office the next morning to show to my manager, Joyce, and said, “Why is this job in the paper? I’m already doing the job! Just hire me!”
“Floyd,” she said without any emotion or remorse, “You’re welcomed to submit a résumé but we have to be fair and get as many people as possible to try out for the job…blah, blah, blah….”
I wanted to clock her right there—with brass knuckles. “WTF bitch!?”
I kept my cool, though, and went about my day, and talked to that same woman who warned me to not take that position Doug offered me, and she explained to me why it wasn’t being offered to me
“Floyd,” she said with genuine understanding for my predicament, “You’re not going to get this job, and here’s why : when Memorex signed that agreement with the temp agency, they agreed to a stipulation that Memorex would pay Pro Staff a fee of three thousand dollars to hire you away from them. Three thousand dollars, Floyd! But! Do you know what they paid for that quarter page ad in the Trib’? Two hundred and fifty dollars! You do the math. They can hire someone off the street for less than ten percent—less than ten percent!—than the fee they’d have to pay Pro Staff to bring you on full time here.”
“You think Joyce is going to convince Doug to spend three grand, when they can get someone else for less than three hundred?” she continued on.
I was scammed into being permanently temped!
And the story didn’t stop there.
B. The Second Assignment : Whirlpool Factory Service
After being replaced at Memorex-Telex, I was placed in the Customer Service Department at Whirlpool Factory Service ( i.e., the people you contact when you need a house call when a home appliance, such as your stove or refrigerator, goes on the blink), who was using us to phase out the department in its entirety at its Addison, Illinois Branch, as all the technicians were being equipped to work straight out of their homes, and all calls were being handled at some other facility in Arizona (Flagstaff? Phoenix? Not Sure. It just was not going to be anywhere near Illinois!)
There was nine of us when I got placed there; there were five left after I got let go; and I have no idea how much longer it was after that, that they finally closed the whole office down!
Weeks? Months? Not sure.
Small world, though : ten years after that, I made a delivery (to Bosch Tool) for a small mom-and-pop tool company I was working for, and when I got my delivery documents, I saw the address, and it looked familiar. I couldn’t place the location in my head, when I departed the office, but when I pulled into the parking lot at Bosch, I realized I was in the exact same office I was working in when I worked for Whirlpool.
In fact, the will call counter, where I dropped off my delivery was only about 30 feet from where my desk was at 10 years earlier. I’ll never forget that. Small world!.
But, fuck Pro Staff! and all temp agencies…and their complicit employees!
They’re “simply doing their jobs”?
I’m simply voicing my opinion of what scum they are.
They should, at least, expect to be insulted, for knowing in advance that they’re exploiting the workers that they publicly purport to be providing employment “assistance” to.
Shame on them!
II. The Union Truck-Driving Job
I grew up in a union labor household. My father, Earl, retired from trucking as a Local 705 Teamster.
It’s ironic, too, that he named me after a friend of his, Floyd Allen, who was in management at the trucking company he worked at until his retirement : Orscheln Brothers Trucking, which, although still in business, no longer has a terminal here in the Chicago area (specifically, Summit, Illinois—where Archer Avenue, Archer Road, and First Avenie/171 all meet up), but are still in business down in Moberly, Missouri.
The Chicago-area unions proved too costly for Orscheln to operate in.
Initially, when my dad first started at Orscheln, the company was a non-union outfit. But, at some point in time, the drivers voted to go union—in this case, Teamsters Local 705.
Unfortunately, for the friendship between my dad who was then union, and Floyd who was in management, the move toward unionized labor somehow soured their friendship, so, I ended up being named after someone my dad did not like. LOL.
Oh well, shit happens.
Anyway, when he was still working, I think he was making around $11.00 an hour when the minimum wage hovered around $2.00 per hour in the mid-1970’s, but I don’t have a copy of one of his paychecks to verify that, nor did the first three pages of a Google search lead me to any links that zeroed in on that exact answer, but I just seem to remember that he was making somewhere above $10.00 an hour at that time.
In any case, he retired early in his late 50’s and had a pension to rely on in what he was going to hope were going to be his golden years, but brain cancer cut him off in 1989, at 63 years of age—approximately six years after his retirement in 1983, the same year my daughter was born.
I, personally, never had any official opinion—neither pro nor con—on the subject of labor unions.
Philosophically, I couldn’t see being “against” the idea of collective bargaining, if it meant that those whose blood-sweat-and-tears level of skilled labor contributed to the success of the company, and resulted in a paycheck that would allow that worker to buy a home and raise a family.
So, to that extent, I supported unions, as an organization that ensures that the hard work by skilled laborers gets rewarded accordingly. It would be great if more laborers could unionize and increase their standard of living for the work they contribute to a company’s success.
But I would soon learn, that I do not support many union workers, because their work ethic is no better than that of a crooked politician.
In fact, I think the corrupt union worker deserves to be be jealous of crooked politicians who make a lot more money with their corruption than the laborer does.
For example, I’ll see or hear about some $22-an-hour laborer criticize a self-serving, corrupt politician because he voted himself a $30,000-a-year raise in taxpayer-funded income, and yet, the corrupt union worker, will deliberately drag his feet on a project and “invest” 12 hours in a job that takes only eight or nine hours to do, which unethically adds a few hundred dollars to his or her paycheck.
Yet, with 12 months of “shady” time card management, his overtime comes nowhere near the politician’s $30,000 of extra income, and now the laborer believes “only” the politician’s corruption is truly evil.
But the corrupt union laborer claims, “Yeah, but my kid needs braces; my mortgage has gone up a hundred dollars a month; fuel prices are up.” etc, and I want to reply, “Well, boo-fuckin’-hoo asshole! Your bills are not “more important” than that politician’s bills, or my bills, or the bills of the non-English speaking immigrant who runs the cash register at the local McDonalds. Why the fuck should anyone think your reasons for being corrupt are somehow justified, when no one has a “justified” reason for being corrupt. Corrupt is corrupt! Just because someone else is better at it than you, doesn’t endow you with any special rights to bitch about that disparity! You don’t like it? Become a politician and make way more money being corrupt! Until then, shut the fuck up!”
Until I met—and worked with—a union laborer, I never had that attitude.
Now, thanks to being exposed to some, I have no respect and no compassion for those who are corrupt themselves, but complain about others who are better at it.
A. Got My CDL and Got Hired…Right Away
In any case, in the mid-90’s, I decided to get my CDL ( Commercial Drivers License) and try my hand at truck driving.
I was lucky in three ways :
[1] I found a job within weeks of getting my license, in this case, at a now-defunct company, located in the Melrose Park/Northlake, Illinois area, called BFI (or Browning-Ferris Industries), a waste-hauling company, which was later bought out by Allied Waste, which, I believe is still in business;
[2] the job was a union job—as opposed to a non-union gig, where many people work a non-union job for years before finding one represented by a labor union; and
[3] even though I was laid off within three months (since I had the least amount of seniority, I was among the first to be laid off ) I was hired again within two or three weeks in that case, too.
The reason I was laid off so soon was because the job I took was seasonal—i.e. collecting yard waste (grass, leaves, twigs, etc)—which ended at the top of December (just before the beginning of winter), but was expected to be re-hired again in April, when collection of yard waste would again start up.
So, it wasn’t like I was “fired” for any wrong-doing, per se; it was simply a seasonal employment thing—which the company went through every year; and as other employees would retire, die, or get fired, everyone at the lower rungs of the union ladder would rise up a notch or two, and be one step closer to NOT being among the first to be laid off during the next round of “musical chairs”.
I was new; I had not built up any seniority yet; I was a “private first class” in this army; so I was among the first to be laid off this round.
But, like I said, I got lucky again because I didn’t have to wait until April to get re-hired.
Although I got re-hired within two or three weeks by the same company (BFI) I was hired by a different part of the company—the mechanics division, instead of the drivers division.
Was I a mechanic, too?
No, not even close.
But, I could wash trucks ( after they repaired them), and that’s the job they offered me, until April, when I could return to the driving division, and resume picking up yard waste again.
Why did the mechanics division choose me, when there were other drivers, with the same seniority rating, who got laid off, as well?
Simple. They liked my attitude toward the truck I was assigned.
That is, part of the D.O.T. ( Department of Transportation) rules, drivers are required to perform two examinations of their vehicles while on duty :
[1] a PRE-trip inspection (i.e., At the beginning of their shift, BEFORE they drive their trucks on the road) ; and
[2] a POST-trip inspection ( at the end of the day, AFTER their driving duties have been concluded).
During both inspections, the drivers are supposed to check for all electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical problems such as tires that were bald or were low on air pressure, broken springs, no leaks in the air brakes system, all the headlights and taillights/brake lights were fully functional with no broken lenses, and the like.
Although pretty much everyone did their PRE-trip inspections, many did NOT do their POST-trip inspections, and instead, elected to just postpone the Post-trips until the next morning, under the notion that if it’s broke at the end of the shift, it’s not likely to fix itself overnight, and since the drivers were exhausted after a nine-to-twelve hour shift ( back then, our trucks did not have those lifting devices, and all garbage cans were manually emptied into the hopper, and since the number of very-heavy cans emptied was in the hundreds each day, the work was extremely exhausting!) they just weren’t interested in taking the time to inspect their trucks, and fill out the paperwork.
They’d just do the previous night’s post-trip at the same time they’d do the current morning’s pre-trip : in the vernacular of computer terminology, it was simply a “copy-and-paste” procedure.
The problem with that option, though, was that whatever problems they discovered then, could only be addressed at that point in time, when the driver should’ve been on his route, instead of hanging around the mechanic’s building, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, while they waited for the mechanics to fix whatever problems were discovered reported on their pre-trip inspection, when it was actually spotted on the post-trip inspection the night before, and the problem could have been already repaired.
But not me.
At the end of the shift, after all the other drivers parked their trucks and headed straight for the office to drop off their waste-collection papers, I was still out there with my clipboard and walking around my truck doing my post-trip inspection and paperwork.
If I saw something wrong, I noted it, and walked the paperwork over to the mechanics building to report it, and by the time I came back in the morning, my problems were repaired, and I was ready to go, and begin my route.
Jack, who was the head mechanic back then, noticed my diligence and it paid off for me.
B. The Layoff From Yard Waste…Right Away
As expected, the top of December arrived, the trees had all given up their leaves, and virtually all homeowner-based yard work had ceased as mornings of frost and snow had covered the ground.
Yard waste didn’t go to the normal landfill, but rather to a facility that simply burned the foliage in huge incinerators. The facility I dropped off my loads to was just down the street from our facility where we parked our trucks and did our daily paperwork.
It was Friday, I dropped off my last load, and a few of the men at the yard waste disposal site, had said “Goodbye” to me even before I knew I was being laid off. They must’ve known since this was something they witnessed every year going from autumn into winter.
Personally, I knew that I’d eventually be laid off, but I just wasn’t sure of the exact date.
As I parked in the yard, I did my post-trip, and went to the office to drop off my daily paperwork, I had a note in my slot that informed me of my temporary “separation”, with a “see-you-in-April” type of exiting salutation.
C. The “Re-Hire” To The Mechanics Division…Right Away
I had been laid off for about two weeks, and I was expecting it to be about four months.
But, it was only a few days before Christmas, when I got the phone call.
“Hey, Floyd! Jack, here, in the garage. I heard you got laid off a few weeks ago.” he said.
“Yes, sir. I guess I gotta find something until April.” I replied.
“Well, I’ve got an option for ya’, if you’re interested.” he added. “We need someone to wash trucks in the bay after they’re repaired. It pays eleven bucks an hour, and that should help you out until you get called back. Whaddaya think? Interested?”
“Absolutely! Yes, sir.” I exclaimed.
“See you Monday!” he laughed, hearing the joy in my voice.
“Thanks, Jack! See you then!” I replied as I hung up with a big smile on my face.
Even though $11.00 per hour was one dollar more than I was earning hauling yard waste (which was only $10 per hour), I actually made more money driving since I had plenty of overtime on my paycheck, whereas washing trucks never exceeded 40 hours per week,
But, still, $10 per hour, was better than a “stick in the eye” as my parents would often say.
So, I washed trucks for about a month, and then…..
D. The Transfer to Medical Waste…Right Away
Mid-January, while I was getting wet, washing a truck in a bay, I was approached by another manager, Mike H. who asked me if I’d be interested in joining BFI’s medical waste division, hauling the waste coming from hospitals and clinics—loads that, like yard waste, were treated differently in that they were not delivered to a land fill, but rather to a specialized medical waste facility.
Although it was back down to $10.00 per hour, there would be overtime in this position, as well—i.e., about the same, if not a tad more, as my yard waste route—assuming that I didn’t milk the job and take much longer than it actually took, which was—I would soon learn—a very common practice among drivers in that division; and that is where my problems began.
E. How The Position Got Created In the First Place
1. The Old System
Federal law requires that when medical waste is picked up, the paperwork that reflects that pickup has to contain the License Plate number of the truck doing the pickup.
Of course, trucks occasionally break down, and when they do, they have to be towed into a facility to be repaired.
Unfortunately (for the company) the mechanics union had a clause in their contract, that no truck can be worked on if the truck still contains the medical waste in the cargo area.
Thus, the waste had to be removed before the mechanics could work on the truck.
At the same time, federal law prohibits transferring medical waste from one truck to another, in a manner not in compliance with the health-related regulations, and simply changing the license plate number on the Bill Of Lading is, for a host of reasons, not legal.
Thus, a conundrum is created : the truck can’t be repaired with the medical waste in the cargo area; yet, the cargo can’t be legally transferred to another truck.
How can the medical waste reach it’s final destination, if the truck containing the cargo won’t move on it’s own, and the cargo can’t be moved to a truck that does move?
Tow the inoperative truck to the medical waste disposal facility and unload it from the broken-down truck?
I’m sure they’ve figured out by now how to go about dealing with that dual-cancelling situation, but at the time, BFI decided to transfer the cargo off the non-operational truck to one that worked, and, in the manner that they did it, it was deemed illegal, and they somehow got caught by the authorities and they were fined and they lost their license to deliver the waste directly to the medical waste disposal facility.
2. The New System—My Job
The new system was where BFI picked up the medical waste in their straight trucks, and then, had to drive it up north to Muskego, Wisconsin ( a whole new state ), where the cargo was unloaded onto 53-foot trailers, which were, in turn, driven southbound, by other drivers operating tractors with the name Ryder Leasing on the doors, right back into Illinois into a town I think was called Clinton, where there was supposed to be a medical waste disposal facility there.
So, instead of driving it directly south to Clinton, it got transported 90 miles north—in the EXACT OPPOSITE direction—and then returned to Illinois several hours south of its original location, by a different company.
That additional shipping had to have killed the profit margin for BFI, for sure.
That was my job, to haul it up to Wisconsin. I do not know the drivers that hauled it back into Illinois.
F. Where I Ran Into Problems
The drivers who picked up the medical waste from the facilities in the Chicago area worked days.
The drivers who drove the loaded trucks up to Wisconsin, worked nights, and we’d take two loads each shift. Each load contained maybe a hundred plastic (re-usable) tubs and perhaps 20 to 30 disposable cardboard boxes—many of which leaked, and that was gross. You could never tell what disgusting substances were leaking out of the tubs or boxes.
Plus, you didn’t want to touch the cargo with your bare hands, that’s for sure. Especially since there were used hypodermic needles in the lot—and AIDS was still very much an issue.
1. The Normal Shift
Anyway, starting at 5:00 PM and working until done, could range anywhere from 5:00AM to about 6:00AM or even 7:00 AM, during inclement weather-based driving conditions, such as bad snow storms, or heavy rains and flooding, both of which turned the highways into parking lots.
On a very good day (which was rare), once clocked in, at 5:00PM, it might take a half hour to do my pre-trip and delivery paperwork, so I usually didn’t leave the yard until 5:30PM, give or take 10 minutes.
Averaging it out to 5:30, it would take about another 20 minutes to a half hour (of driving in rush-hour traffic on Manheim Road ) to reach the TriState Tollway, to begin the journey up to Muskego. Now, it’s 6:00 PM.
Barring any traffic jams, it took about 90 minutes to travel from Chicago to Muskego, which would make it approximately 7:30 by the time I arrived there.
Once I pulled into the yard, and backed my straight truck up to the rear end of the trailer that I was offloading the medical waste onto, and opened the doors, another 15 minutes had been taken up, and the actual offloading was another solid 60 to 75 minutes, and then, another 15 minutes to do my paperwork and drop it off, so we’re talking 8:45 to 9:00 PM.
Another 90 minutes later I was back in Chicago, so, now it was around 10:30 PM.
It would take another 30 to 45 minutes to do my post trip on the first truck and the pre-trip on my second truck, and grab my paperwork for the second trip, so, I wasn’t leaving the yard until 11:00PM or 11:15PM.
“To lunch, or not to lunch?” : that was the question.
If I did stop some place (there were plenty of places to eat at between the yard and the tollway), that meant approximately another half hour to park the truck, go inside some restaurant, order my food, bring it back out to my truck and eat it in the cab. So, now, it’s 11:30 to 11:45.
15 minutes later, I was back on the highway, and 90 minutes later, I was back in Muskego around 1:15AM.
The “stopwatch” starts all over again with the coupling of the rear ends of the two trucks, the unloading of the cargo, and the filling out of the paperwork. So, now, it’s 2:45AM, or so.
Another 90 minutes later I’m back in the yard in Chicago, and it’s now 4:00 or 4:15AM
Another half hour later, I’ve finished my second post-trip, and my time-card related paperwork, and I’m ready to go home, at 4:30 to 4:45AM.
That’s, essentially, an 12-hour shift.
Four hours of overtime per night.
Time and a half, at $10.00 per hour straight time, meant $15 per hour overtime at 4 hours per shift ($60) multiplied by 5 days per week : an extra $300 per week on my paycheck—and that’s with me rushing through the job; or, at least, not milking the job.
If there was a snow storm, or hard rain fall, traffic on the highway would come to a crawl, and it could easily take 2 hours or more one way to get to Muskego and the same time frame coming back, multiplied by two trips per shift, and it’s easy to see how a driver could find himself pulling into the yard at 7:00AM, on a 14-hour shift!
Lots of overtime during crappy weather.
But, nice weather? I’m done by 4:30 to 5:00AM.
2. The MILKED Shift
But not for some of my cohorts, who were making a much-larger hourly wage than I was. Another driver, Mike W, was at scale, which was somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 per hour—which made his overtime rate of $27 per hour.
a. Mike W.
He’d finish a solid hour to 1.5 hours after I returned to the yard.
His paychecks made mine look like minimum wage.
b. Don
Another guy, Don, was also at scale, but his time frame was about the same as mine—he might pull into the yard at the end of the shift, maybe a half hour later than me, but not much longer after that.
BUT …
c. Kelly…The Trouble Maker
This one guy, Kelly (who reminded me of my oldest brother, Tom, in looks) always milked it every shift.
He could’ve had a load of “only one container per load”, and he’d still stroll into the yard at 6:00AM; and if bad weather was part of the equation, it was essentially a “double” shift for him.
One evening, on my second trip up to Muskego, I saw Kelly pulled over on the shoulder on the TriState (just a mile or so south of the Wisconsin border), but he didn’t have any of his Road Hazard equipment on display (i.e., D.O.T Regulations require a driver, whose truck is broken down on a roadway, to display highly-visible, reflective devices on the shoulder behind the truck so other motorists can see the potential hazard in the roadway).
He had no triangles or flares displayed, so, I put on my flashers, pulled up behind him, put on my air brakes, and got out of my truck to see if there were any problems.
I walked up to his tractor, and tapped on his window before peaking inside, and seeing him lying down sleeping (he had a bench seat in his tractor; so he was able to stretch out horizontally) .
Startled, he sat up and rolled down the window and reacted as though I had a problem for him to solve.
“What’s up?” he asked rubbing his eyes, “What’s the problem?”
“Um, nothing with me.” I replied, “I thought you were broken down, or somethin’. But I saw you didn’t have your triangle out or anything. I was just making sure, you were alright.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” he said with a tone of disappointment in his voice, ” I was just taking a break.”
“Ok, cool. Just checking, Dude.” I said, with a nod, as I stepped down off his tractor’s steps, and returned to my truck, to go on my way.
About a month later, he approached me in the yard before we took off on our first run.
“Hey, listen,” he began, trying to sound “friendly” and not like someone about to make a threat. “It seems like you’re always the first one in the yard each night.”
I immediately knew where this was going. But I figured I had to let him finish whatever he was going to say, just so I didn’t make any assumptions (about what I expected him to say) that would later turn out to be not accurate.
“Ya’ know, you could slow down a tad. It’s not a race.” he added, “We don’t need anyone making any of us look bad.”
Unfortunately, for me, I didn’t exactly heed his warning, as I continued on in my regular routine of finishing my shift between 4:30 and 5:00AM.
Consequently, one morning when I pulled into the yard at the end of my shift, I found all four of my tires flattened.
Fortunately, for me, whoever the culprit was did not actually damage my tires with cuts or punctures, but rather they merely let the air out.
I realized what was going on, but there was no way I could prove who did it, although I knew why it was done.
In any case, upon discovering this inconvenient warning, I walked over to the garage, and the man who was in charge when Jack was not around (I forget the guy’s name) was in his office, and I told him what the problem was, and he sent one of the mechanics with a portable, truck-mounted air compressor, over to my car, and he re-inflated my tires, and I was able to go on my way.
Although I had “received the message”, I was unable to comply with the “milk-the-job” threat in the sense that even though I never hurried through my shift to begin with, even “dragging my feet” resulted in me pulling into the yard ahead of everyone else. I just couldn’t go any slower without stopping at a friend’s house for a visit or something along those lines.
Although my tires were never again flattened, I only lasted at that job for a few more months for reasons that had nothing to do with the threat, but rather for reasons pertaining to my comfort with “mechanical” things, which is a topic I will cover in more detail in a different post.
III. Conclusion
For now, though, the main point of this post was that I didn’t like the intrinsic corruption of Temp Agencies…or Union Workers