Monday - afternoon
The oldest was in a very bad mood this morning. Out of character and amazingly, the roles were reversed. The youngest was as happy as a bug in a rug, of which he normally is difficult to wake up, slow to get out of bed and often times moody.
So much for a total of 9 days off for them.
The alarm went off this morning and I was in a very deep sleep. I could have slept for several more hours. Took a while to get into the swing of things, but I was good to go by the time I got to the washout.
The plant, however, a different story. There was a crane service there that had blocked the loading bay with a bunch of scaffolding stuff and they had parked their vehicles in such a way that made it difficult to back in there while avoiding their trucks and trailer. It took a while for them to get a forklift out there and and move that scaffolding stuff, why they would put that junk in an active loading bay? No idea.
The loader was in a bad mood, very visibly scowling and not having a good day. I said a quick prayer for him instead of condemning him. I was sitting there an hour and 10 minutes before he even started loading the truck. But, I was out of there in about 2 hours, nothing to really complain about, I just go in there with the hope that I might have a quick load and get out. It was 2:00 by the time I got home, not terribly late.
I texted the dispatcher about the truck needing repaired after I looked at how much work they dumped in there. 12 consecutive days worth of work, I am not going to drive that long without getting the thing fixed. My manager called 2 minutes later after that text. We have 25 something or another and you can just get into that truck while they fix yours.
These people have no clue how much trouble it is to switch trucks. Or the huge inconvenience it is to do so. MOST drivers in the trucking industry despise slip-seating, which is the practice of a trucking company to not have assigned trucks for the drivers and they are constantly moving from one truck to another. This is a little different, switching temporarily to get my truck fixed, so much for sitting around and waiting for them to do it.
As much as I hate the sound of that, I hate the sound of switching trucks even more. So I'm supposed to drive over there after delivery tomorrow, it will add hours to the trip. It adds another hour and forty-five minutes to the drive time, plus switching stuff out between trucks, plus discussing with the lead mechanic what's wrong with it and please fix it all and fix it correctly this time. The AC, specifically, was given what amounts to a band-aid last time and called it good.
But I can't keep driving this truck like this, so I just have to suck-it-up-buttercup and take it over there.
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Many hours later. I am considering getting up even earlier than normal to get up to Gurdon early enough to get out of there - earlier than normal - and get moving towards El Dorado. I really would like not to have tomorrow drag on literally ALL day long concerning work factor.
