Saturday - late

Got up at 4 am, got up to Gurdon, did the offload and then....

I flushed out the line with water, pressured aired it out.  All well and fine. I have a bucket underneath where the line hooks up to the trailer, you do that for the drips that come out, tho it really doesn't do much so how that bucket gets full of water and resin I have no idea.  The bucket was maybe 5 inches up from the bottom with water tainted with resin, making it red, but definitely just mostly water.  

I pulled the line off, it slipped out of my hands, fell onto the bucket and probably a gallon of that water ended up on  the sheet of plywood they have down there.  We are not talking a big deal here.  I got some kitty litter, sprinkled it on there but reported it to the plant manager.  I said it wasn't a huge spill and just red tainted water, had put down the kitty litter.  He shrugged it off, said fine. 

Then I contacted my manager, who blew the thing up WAY out of proportion. He was acting like I had just dumped an entire truckload of glue onto the ground.  NO, this is just water with the hue of resin color.  It's literally nothing.  Well you are going to have to write out a report and send it to me so I can send it to the rep at the glue factory.  

I didn't feel like arguing with him, whatever, I don't really care.  But then the truth came out as to why he was freaking out.  I am not going to name the names of either plant, but one makes wood products and the other makes the glue to put certain wood products together.  The plant that makes the wood products has allegedly been hounding the other plant to get rid of us and that we are on the verge of losing the account. 

I asked why?  Because of so many late loads.  I forgot to ask him, late loads as in a day late or late as in not showing up on time?  Because I am never late unless, on rare occasion, something happens to the truck like a flat tire keeps me from getting there on time.  I don't know, it was the first I had heard that this was even an issue.  But it's typical for trucking companies and many other types of companies as well. They don't want to tell employees that they may not have a job, tomorrow, the next day, the next week, whenever, because they don't want them to go looking for new jobs and just up and quit.

YET, the companies have no problem sticking it to the employees AFTER the contract is cancelled. The phone call comes: "Sorry, but we have to let you go". You don't get advance notice from THEM, even tho they could have if they had wanted to.  Perhaps some people WILL leave and I wouldn't blame them.  Many would stay and ride it out to see what happens. It might even be the impetus for the employees to not only stick it out, but start going well above and beyond to try and keep their jobs. 

So that kind of threw me into a thought process that has been going on since then.  Perhaps not put in applications, but find the companies I might like to work for beforehand so I am ready in case that does, indeed happen. 

I dunno, but I've just put in 6 straight days of work and all 3 of the days I was at the glue plant, I was held up by them well beyond the appointment time, I always show up early there. They do not care how long we have to wait.  Us showing up late in the day to the wood plant doesn't matter at all. They are almost never so low on glue that they are in jeopardy of having to shut down the massive plant.  It's happened once since I started there that I was on vacation and our company had trucks break down and etc to the point that the plant almost ran out of glue.  

The company screws itself, however, with old junky trucks that are continuously breaking down.  And drivers not treating those old junky trucks with kid gloves.  You can't beat an already beat to death vehicle and expect it to just keep chugging along. We have some pretty bad drivers, tbh. 

Anyway, I'm winding down. It's late, I was playing games with the kids but I am ready to go to sleep now. I'm not going to fret over this company losing the contract.  They will either put me on the Ennis run if that happens or they will just tell me there isn't any more work, sayonara.  Oh, and me spilling some red water isn't going to lose them the contract.  

Tomorrow is church, Monday I allegedly have off, if I do, I will do the bush hogging. I am more motivated now than I have been in a while to get the ball rolling on this expansion project.  Let's move along now!