Well ain't that just fancy.
New manager calls for a meeting yesterday morning - Monday mind you - at 7:30 am.  What came out of his mouth was totally unexpected.  We are going to be cutting back hours to 8 for everyone ..... blah blah blah.  I just listened for quite a while until he got to the: " If ANYONE has a PROBLEM with THIS, I want to know about it RIGHT NOW".  You see, my mind instantaneously went through a whole realm of things when he first started talking and making his announcement and I had already made all of my conclusions long before he was done with his monologue.

I spoke up instantly. Yeah, I have a problem with it.  Remember, this is the dictator that everyone is afraid of, that won't say much of anything to because of his reputation.  I could care less about his reputation and if he's going to treat me like a pile of dog****, I will find myself a new place of employment.  I simply said: so, you are cutting our pay?  This set him off.  Of course.  I don't care about that, either. He's talking cutting my pay by over a grand a month, I'm not going to keep silent.  I will fight for my pay until I either get it or am forced to move on.

He set off.  Well what do you want to do, Ben? OBVIOUSLY inferring that I should just quit and leave.  I'll have nothing to do with that at HIS intonations, I will talk to his management about this situation - as I already did anyway before he became manager - before I quit.  I didn't reply to him, I just looked him in the eye.  He then repeated 7 times "I don't want to argue with you", notwithstanding the fact that I was saying nothing to him.  I remained firm after all his attempts to intimidate me.  Once he started figuring out I wasn't bowing to him, he then attempted to try to talk to me on a "little bit" lower level. I simply told him I came out here taking a huge pay cut, the hours I have were compensation for it, it was agreed to, that's that.  Well, you have a 50 hour situation? No.  Do you have a contract? No.  I have a verbal agreement with Matthew (Matthew won't lie, he's a bonafide Christian and he will own up to whatever he said to me before I moved out here).  50 hours per week .

Not that I want to work 50 hours per week for 8 hours pay, but that's  what I agreed to so I could come out here, marry a woman that ....well we need not go there ....and that's that.  He toned down after I applied logic to his emotion - this individual is run by emotion.  At work, I am run by dollar signs.  If I am not going to make a minimum amount, goodbye.  Taking away 40 plus hours per month of OT is not going to work - at all.

So let's fast forward to todayI went into the "ex-manager's" office and got into a conversation with him about what this man had stated the day before.  He immediately said yeah, he didn't understand the situation with what you came over here in but we are going to have a conversation about that today.  Okay.  Fairly short conversation, I turned around and - tried to leave.  The new manager, I dunno if he was eavesdropping (and I don't care) came barreling around the corner, said to me and the other driver that showed up to go back into the office, we are going to have a conversation about what "he" said.  He being the other manager.

Then we had it out.  I'm not going to back down to some extremely self-centered, high-minded dictator who thinks the world of himself and in love with the sound of his own voice try to stand there and intimidate me, which is exactly what he tried  to do..  Several times he tried to stop me after asking me a question so that I would answer the way he wanted me to answer.  No, I would just come back and answer in my own word.

Well, he says, I'm sensing some friction here between us. No s*** Sherlock, I wonder why.  I was prepared to lose my job yesterday. I truly didn't care. They aren't paying me NEAR enough money to put up with that kind of garbage, an authoritarian who thinks he can just speak a word and we all come running and bowing.  Not my style, I don't @$$ kiss, just ain't going there.  We went back and forth, I wasn't holding anything back, I tried to keep any hint of anger or angst out of it, but it really came down to money and hours.  I'm not going to take a thousand dollar per month pay cut, period.

I'm not going into the details of his ridiculous words because it just isn't worth it.  I expressed myself quite nicely and now it is all in their hands.  Cut my hours, don't cut my hours, raise my pay, don't raise my pay.  They don't seem to act very fast about anything. This dude is the good ole' boy idealogy.  A lot of people there have been working together for 20, 25 years.  The "newbies" - which is me and the other driver, not including the new temporary driver, - are pretty much left out, likely not to get any favors excepting my old manager was pretty good to us and this feeling not likely to subside any time soon.

Well whatever. It's now Wednesday morning - time to be off to the wonder land of work!