Thursday, April 23, 2009

Thursday

Today was totally ridiculous.
I got up early and was at work early.
I had the truck loaded from the day before, I only had to go in the store, print out my truck reports, print out the ticket for the delivery, walaah, good to go.

Instead, I find in the truck routing system that another order had been dumped in there for this particular delivery - a delivery they wanted me AT the jobsite at 6:00am. Kick it in high gear, pull the order, unstrap the trailer, put the material on, restrap the trailer - etc etc etc. I also had to go to the plumbing branch to get parts that we didn't have. So, arriving at this elementary school at the appointed time amazed me.

So, they have this little area between buildings where they're putting in sewer and water lines. Replete with a gate that was JUST barely big enough to fit a truck into, final touches that I had to drive against traffic and back at an extreme angle because of space limitations on the street. I even amazed myself on this backing maneuver: I got that trailer nailed into that gate without even one single pull-up. Yowsa!!! The foreman called me a "driving wonder", gave me accolades for the feat I just pulled off. Then comes the bad part.

The pipe is the wrong size. NOT because I had the wrong size pipe on the truck according to the paperwork, but - it was ordered wrong. Great. This guy gets sour in a fast hurry. I put an end to that in an even faster hurry: I'll have the correct size pipe out here for you in an hour's time. That put a smile on his face, and yes, I delivered my promise.

The whole day was like that. I made 4 runs on however many deliveries. Every place I went they were waiting on the material. One place I went to they unloaded the pipe and immediately started putting it in the ground.

I am TOTALLY wiped out. Long break. I was also quite hungry and went about the task of forming hamburger patties and cooking them on the grill. The effort was TOTALLY worth it!
But now? The food, of course, is making me sleepy. Dunno about recent days in my life - just don't know what's going on. I'll figure it out.
Have a great evening!
ben

2 comments:

Fin said...

Just got to believe that your company is lucky to have you as an employee.

Even if the very worst happened and you had to be furloughed, the letter they would have to give you should mean you could get a job anywhere.

BenB said...

Hi Fin:
Coming from you, I will take that as an extremely high compliment! I would like to hope I could find employment somewhere else if I were to be layed off from current position - but dang the market is unbelievable and people are begging for jobs right now!
ben

 Thursday night I am finally home. The ending of the ordeal at the TA truckstop did not go without a hitch.  When I got there yesterday and ...