Overworked truck depot worker calls boss's bluff after being reprimanded for working their scheduled hours like they were told: 'Clearly, you're not going to fire me. You have no one who can do my job'

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    "Clearly, you're not going to fire me. You have no one who can do my job." 0
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    "You said 7am to 3pm"

    I worked for a trucking company, they made sucrose for different food plants in the area, Turkey Hill, Pepsi etc. My job was to wash the inside of the liquid sucrose trailers so they could be reloaded, this was done by hooking them up to an automated wash system. I drove the lot, picked up an empty trailer, took it to the 2 trailer wash bay building, hooked it up
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    and ran the cycle, then parked the washed trailer in the loading staged area. I was hired as a temp to replace the previous 1st shift guy who injured his knee, when I was hired him and a guy who kinda knew the job taught me how to do it, but there was the only one official 1st shift person who knew the job, the other guy just could kinda fumble his way through it. Then there was a second shift guy who
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    knew the job as well.The job required you to be extremely active, you worked in a room that would sometimes seem like it rained from all the steam condensing on the ceiling because you were washing 2 at a time with 190+ degree water for a 20 minute session. I ended up being hired full time from the temp agency (the company actually bought out my contract because I was doing so well and the 1st shift guy ended up retiring due to his injury)
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    About a year later the second shift guy quits out of nowhere, so they hire a new guy, and now I have to train him. This guy is, less than good at the job I keep telling management that but you know, they're management. Eventually he ends up dropping a trailer off the lift truck before putting the lift down, bending the landing gear and doing $11,000 in damage.
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    Anytime there's an accident, they require a drug test, he tested positive for cocaine and was fired. I ended up having to do 1st and 2nd shift by myself since I was the only person who knew the job. It wasnt that bad because 2nd shift didn't have as many trailers, so a 10 hour day and I'd usually be done. Eventually they hired a new guy, very very big fellow and this... didn't seem like a fit for him.
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    About 3 months in the loaders come over cuz there's no clean trailers staged, they found him passed out on top of a trailer. They honestly thought he had a heart attack or something, but it turned out he was just drunk, so he got fired. Guess who's back to working both shifts?
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    At first it wasn't too bad, I could get 4 trailers done in an hour, so 32 in an 8 hour shift if I'm busting . There was literally no way to do it any faster since there's a 20 minute wash cycle and you still have to pull 2 trailers in, and hook them up. Normally there were about 25 trailers for 1st shift and 8 to 10 for 2nd shift. But then a company that took 5+ dry trailers a shift for 1st and 3 to 5 a shift for 2nd,
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    tripled their order for wet trailers due to these onsite processing plant going down. I went from 10 hour days to working from 6am to 11pm for like a month straight, in the summer, in a building that got about 10+ degrees hotter than the ambient air was... I kept telling my supervisor, my plant manager and the company manager that I couldn't keep this up, I kept being told I had to do my job, "do as
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    you're told." Well time I worked from 6am to 1 am Thursday and back in at 530am Friday... That was the day I caused $5000 in damages. I backed a trailer out without unhooking it first, ruining the hoses, and pulling a pump off the mounts. So now I had to get drug tested and since the last two guys failed, on the drive there my manager asked me if I was going to fail. I said it depends what they test for. He said they test for everything, I asked if that included caffeine and exhaustion. He just
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    The next morning I went in at 7 once again, and got to work. The supervisor and plant manager get in at 9, and 9:05 they're in my office. I get escorted to the office of the owner's son where he proceeded to chew me out for a solid 45 minutes. I just sat there and let him rant. Turns out once I left my supervisor and plant manager had to do my job, and
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    you know since they were supervisors and plant managers obviously they were trained in the position and knew exactly what to do! /s They managed to do 4 trailers from 5pm when they realized I left, until midnight... This is the same amount I could do in 1 hour
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    So once his rant was over I said, "well, clearly you're not going to fire me." He was taken aback. I continued, "you have no one who can do my job, you didn't take me seriously when I said I couldn't do it alone anymore and so I decided I'd show you how important I was. I've got a kid, and a life outside this job, the pay is great but I'm not going to kill myself to get it and put in 90-110 hour weeks in the dead of
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    summer. You said 7am to 3pm when I got hired, that was "what I was told" so that's what I did. Here's what's going to happen, you're going to give me a raise and 3 weeks paid vacation, you're going to let me pick the guy who takes 2nd shift, if you can't find someone willing to take 2nd I will train them on first and transfer to 2nd when they're fully trained, but I'll get the shift differential on top of my raise if I do that."
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    He looked at me like I just robbed him, but then after a solid 5 silent minutes, he agreed. See each trailer that didn't get washed the night before, was assessed a late fee by the company who it went to, anywhere from $500 to $5000 and just last night I had cost them $21,000 in fees. I think he realized that would quickly be a problem if they had no one to wash any trailers
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    We ended up pulling over the guy who kinda knew how to do the job from first shift that helped train me when I started there, he took first shift and I went to second. I ended up being the highest paid employee the wet department (and any department that wasn't management or QC actually) in only 2 years of being there, when there were guys who had been loaders for 15+ years. I stayed another year or so but eventually it was more nonsense and I had my fill.
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    TI;Dr Company somehow thought only having 1 person per shift trained to properly do a labor intensive job in a closed, humid building pumping 190° water through liquid truck trailers. They then hired not one but 2 different substance abusing poor physical fits for the second shift position. After the second hire was fired for passing out drunk on top of a trailer, I was again forced to work both first and second shift. One of the
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    companies we delivered to tripled their order and the job worked me to the absolute bone with 90-110 hour weeks during hot summer months. Multiple complaints did nothing but tell me to "do as I'm told." When I was hired I was told 7am to 3pm was my shift and my job was to do all the trailers for my shift plus 2 for second shift. Since complaints fell on deaf ears, I decided to do as I was told clocked out at 3pm after finishing first shift trailers plus two. Shut my phone
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    off and had a good time at the fair that night. Next day I'm taken into the office, yelled at for 45 minutes and told they only got 4 trailers done after I left (an amount I could do in 1 hour.) Told them that sucked and since they weren't firing me they could give me a raise and paid vacation, or I'd quit. Facing a $500-$5000 fine per late delivery, they agreed to my terms.
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    Curtis40 Management hire the most naive and gullible people, they can find, work them till they drop, then blame the employee for failure when the inevitable happens. Repeat cycle. Repeat cycle. Repeat cycle.
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    AltharaD It's so good when you know your own worth. those working hours you were doing were insane. Actually insane. I'm glad you made bank and got out.
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    Dcwiker05 OP We got paid weekly and what's bad is I quickly learned it was actually more profitable for me to clock out at 90hours and go back to work, than it was to work 110 hours on the books.
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    Obviously I never told anyone I was doing this, but man it was frustrating to see. Taxes screw me like that, after my job already screwed me like that. It was definitely a good feeling, and the best part is, they had inadvertently kinda given me the idea about 6 months prior. One of the companies we
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    washed excess trailers for tried to recruit me to work for them directly. Being a good employee I went to put in my 2 weeks. I was immediately taken to the plant manager and basically asked what could be done to keep me. Looking back I definitely could have demanded more at that first encounter lol.
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    wi3rdny We're those your temp position hours or your permanent position hours. ALSO, sorry you got worked to death. And unless you were salaried, how could they not see how much you were making in overtime, a lot of companies complain about that. I hope you, girlfriend, and kid had a lovely 3 week vacation somewhere nice.
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    Dcwiker05 OP I worked the temp position for roughly a month. The original temp hours were 9 to 5 so that I could work with the 1st shift guy, as well as the 2nd shift guy and see how the changeover was handled. After about 3 weeks I was moved to 7 to 3 and told that would be my hours, then a week later they officially hired me and made that my permanent hours and position.
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    They saw the OT I was making but they just apparently didn't care. They didn't want to onboard yet another person to train and then lose them to something ridiculous like the last two I guess. I don't know for certain, but I got the impression these guys were direct hires and that the temp agency stopped working with them at some point for whatever reason.
  • 28
    We took a trip up to Connecticut for this all Subaru car show that takes place up there, and then just kicked back and enjoyed the rest of the time camping. It was awesome.

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