Slight Change In Plans

I was scheduled to go to school at Prime on August 11. Yesterday all h*** broke loose at work - seriously, the weirdest chain of events I've ever seen happen at a job. I really wish I could tell y'all the whole thing, because it really is an incredibly funny and sad tale of karma biting one of the biggest *ssh*les I've ever had to work for (not with - get that straight, OK!? lol), but I don't want karma biting me in the *ss because I gloated. Short version is that I've decided to stay another month - it benefits me financially before I go out on the road, and it benefits the company as they look for my replacement. I also get a little more time to rearrange my life before going on the road, so that's good too.

What I can tell you is that I'm not the kind of person who can just walk away and leave my work buddies in a bad situation without helping get them to a better place before I go. The recruiter at Prime said I can start a month later than what I originally planned. And all of this confirmed again that I'm really ready to get out of an office and into a truck. I keep reading about the stress of trucking the first year, but it's got to be easier than the stress of the last year at this job that I know very well how to do.

All I have to do is not hit anything, right?

I personally think things happen for a reason and I admire the fact you are conscientious enough to not leave others in a difficult position. It shows much about your character and professionalism and Prime will be lucky to have you when you do start!

I personally think things happen for a reason and I admire the fact you are conscientious enough to not leave others in a difficult position. It shows much about your character and professionalism and Prime will be lucky to have you when you do start!

I'll second that...not many people show that amount of maturity and intestinal fortitude. Great job and good luck!

You are a rare breed, for this day and age.....I'm sure you will be missed when you leave your present job...and Prime will be glad they chose you. I'm a firm believer in Karma...I figured it out when I laughed at cars broke down on the side of the road once to often. I swear, I was on the side of the road, broke down, once a week if not more, for about 6 months....Cured me !!!

That'll reflect well in Prime's eyes too. There are some things that probably actually are tougher to endure than a good job trucking.

But DARN. I wanted to hear the real dirt on the guy at work.

-mountain girl

Thanks for the kind words. I want to leave yesterday, but I just can't bring myself to leave my team without trying to smooth the transition with everything going on right now.

I can't tell the real story here. I'll try to give you an analogy that might help you understand.

Suppose that you work for a trucking company with a dedicated account that is so big that your office is in a terminal owned by the customer's company. All of the trucks that come into this terminal are owned by the customer, but all of the load managers, DMs, and drivers are employees of your company. The customer has a few managers at this terminal to make sure things run smoothly. You are accountable for making sure the loads get where they need to go on time and efficiently. The terminal manager plans the overall freight traffic and makes sure you are following their guidelines and policies.

You work with the terminal manager to make sure everything runs smoothly and profitably. And really everything does run very well overall, but with a thousand drivers there are always problems that have to be dealt with, like trucks that break down and employees who refuse loads. Sometimes the customer is all over you for things like late deliveries and accidents. That's understandable, right? Your job is to make sure your load managers and DMs handle that stuff correctly.

The problem is that the terminal manager has a habit of publicly humiliating and insulting you and your team for any mistakes. He and his company never do anything wrong. Worse, if he's getting pressure from above, he starts to micromanage you by telling you how to manage your load managers and DMs and drivers. He tells you GPS records indicate that six drivers made U-turns last month, which is against company policy. You research it and find that they did make U-turns when they went down roads with low bridges or that were dead ends. Five were rookie drivers and one had two years experience but had never been to that particular D/C before and the customer's directions sent over the qualcomm were wrong. You tell him your DMs will work with them to make sure it doesn't happen again. Your boss agrees that is the right answer.

Since that didn't have the desired effect, he sends a list of six trailers with air lines that have been damaged in the past year to your boss and your boss's boss, saying it's evidence that you and your team are not doing their jobs. He demands to know why your drivers are allowing air lines to be damaged. Obviously they are not securing their air lines properly to prevent them from rubbing! And before you can even start working on that, you get a new list of thirty deliveries that were late by 5 minutes or more in the last three months, with a comment reminding you about the driver you had to fire because he drove down the steps at Boston Common. (Actually, since he had a million safe miles with you before that incident, you got him a job on another account, but they don't need to know that.)

If you mention that some of the late deliveries were because you're short of equipment since the customer is behind on replacing the tractors they have retired, that only enrages him. He sends data showing tire expenses have increased by 0.6%, and fleet MPG is down to 7.59 from 7.65 last month. What are you doing to correct excessive tire wear and lower MPG? He sends new lists of trailers that were turned in dirty and tractors with sunflower seed shells on the floorboards. Why are your drivers eating sunflower seeds? The guy involves his boss and a VP at your company on the dirty trailer and sunflower seed problems. In addition to taking action to improve tire expenses and MPG, you and your team spend a lot of time trying to make sure drivers are securing their air lines properly, washing out their trailers before turning them in, and not eating sunflower seeds in the tractors - not even when they're logging off duty or sleeper berth.

Then in the middle of this little war created by his ego, the guy shows up at the terminal with a nearly naked stripper and walks around talking to a bunch of people with her on his arm licking his ear and showing what she's got. You make sure that his bosses find out about it, since it's a major violation of policy and a serious security breach. He finds out that he's been caught and raises h*** with you and your team before leaving - hopefully for the last time.

You can see this is going to create chaos. Your replacement hasn't been hired, your boss is exhausted from all the BS this guy has created and the BS to come since his bosses and his underlings will blame us for the embarrassment caused by his downfall.

Obviously, this isn't exactly what happened, and what the "terminal manager" actually did wrong was something completely different and even more serious, but hopefully you get the idea. The day after this happened, I got the equivalent of a list of tractors with dirty ashtrays and bugs stuck in the grille from one of their managers. (Seriously.) That's all they had, since the latest report showed MPG is up to 7.71 and tire expenses have decreased by 0.3%.

So, leave now, or stay just a little while longer to make sure your boss has time to find a replacement and get them up to speed? Easy choice for me.

Still, I can't wait to just be the guy who leaves sunflower seeds on the floor of the cab - not that I would ever do that. I just hope I never drive down the steps.

Thanks for the kind words. I want to leave yesterday, but I just can't bring myself to leave my team without trying to smooth the transition with everything going on right now.

I can't tell the real story here. I'll try to give you an analogy that might help you understand.

Good analogy, and unfortunately all too familiar across a variety of industries in this day and age. Hope your last 4-6 weeks passes by quickly and painlessly.

Bud,

I feel your pain more than you will ever know. Staying with your team is very admirable. I have a thought for you. I'm not a psychiatrist but I have some experience. He has a lot of control over you and maybe you in particular. As a very ill individual, he needs that. He actually has a very sick need to be abusive and a very sick need to hold on to you, in the workplace. Without you, he'll have to work hard to find someone else to beat up on and he may be causing drama just to keep you around for his own needs - subconsciously or otherwise. The need is psychological and he may also need you in order to keep his own job, because without you, there's no one else to blame. He doesn't have a big ego, he has a tiny one. He may not even have a sense of "self" and I'm not kidding. Not that he deserves a whole lot of sympathy, but if he's projecting all that non-constructive, control-freak criticism on everyone else, imagine how badly the little voices in his head are criticizing him. That's one thought. The other, is be careful not to succumb to his drama to the point of being detrimental to your own career, your own health, or your own progress. People like this guy are extremely difficult to break away from because they wreak so much havoc on everyone around them, that they end up controlling them. I don't know what the psychiatric diagnosis would be for a patient like this - and he is a very sick patient - but people like this create such a sick environment that others around them are not only spending all their energy trying to break free of the cycle of abuse, they are also somehow dependent on the guy. I could go on and on, because I recognize this type of personality all too well.

Actually I think, without knowing a whole lot, the statistics of the defaults he rants about, that you gave as an example, sound pretty darned good. Remember that line from Ed Harris in Apollo 13? "With all due respect, Sir, I think this is our finest hour."

There's a line you can use to deflect some of his energy back on him. It's so ridiculous-sounding and so harmless that I swear, it works. For your last few weeks, when he's jumping up-and-down, having one of his tantrums, and declaring that "the sky is falling," cause you know, it's always a freaking crisis with this guy, your answer can be, "So you say." When you hear, "This company (operation, organization, day, project, assignment, delivery, whatever) is going to completely fail!!!!" blahblahblah, your answer is, "So you say." You didn't commit to it, you didn't join in the fight, you didn't acknowledge that what he said was true, you gave him no reaction from you, you just harmlessly bounced it back into his court. And he'll try to toss another one at you. Just watch. And then it's, "So you say." You can stand there and say it with your arms crossed, or hands on your hips, or you can say it as you're walking away, moving on to more important things. It just works. And then he can go sit in his own sandbox and play by himself for a while.

Believe me, when I tell you, I understand and know all too well, the hell-hole you are in. The man is actually pathetic. This makes me shudder and I wish I hadn't been so "gossipy" in my last message. Sorry. Take care of your team for a few more weeks but then if the higher-ups can't figure out a way to fire him (because he's probably really good at some things), you have to get out and take care of you.

-mountain girl

MG, I absolutely agree that he is what shrinks would call "sick." I don't react to him at all other than to agree with whatever BS he's spouting and then go about handling the real issues. Part of the reason he attacks my team is that I don't acknowledge what he desperately wants, which is some sort of indication of fear in the face of all his "power." I actually refuse to sit for him unless he's sitting - old tricks I learned in some college sociology or psych class when I was younger. (See Daniel, college can have some benefits!)

I'm pretty sure we can stick a fork in him - he's done. But the people he has hired all have the same symptoms (what a surprise!) and I need to get my team ready to deal with their shenanigans before I leave. My peeps are pretty healthy folk, mentally and emotionally, and I want them to be ready for whatever comes next.

I'm sure that I'll run across some truckers and DMs and four wheel drivers who have the same issues as this guy. It's rampant in our society, as Freightdog pointed out. Some of them hang out on other forums talking about trucking lol. I haven't found any here though, so I plan to stay. I'm confident that someone at Prime will surely appreciate a driver who brings no drama to his job - and if I'm wrong, there's someone somewhere who will give me a job driving a truck who does, and after paying my dues for a year I can jump ship if necessary. I really hate changing companies though - it's a hassle.

Based on the posts here, I know there are people in the trucking industry who get that all it's really about is moving freight safely and efficiently and having fun and getting paid while you do it. Being the big man and calling the shots doesn't really enter into it. (Sometimes my team calls me "boss man" which I didn't like at all the first time I heard it, but when they told me it was affectionate I was OK with it lol.)

Thanks for letting me vent about this situation. It's better than dumping it on my family or my coworkers, since y'all can just skip my posts if you don't like it. They all have to live with me when I'm grumpy. And now I'm not, so you've helped a stranger today.

Lol I have that same attitude, I actually went 6 years for a supervisor that no one could work for and for 4 years before me they went through 6 or 7 people in my position. I never let his stress rub off on me and whatever he told me I would evaluate and the real important stuff got addressed and the petty stuff I let slide. It really gets under their skin when they can't get under yours.