'Jokes on them': Trucker treats themselves to exorbitantly long breaks, waiting out the blinding sunrise after getting scolded for using a sun visor

This trucker put their safety first after management sloppily adhered to a dated rulebook, gaslighting their employee into following protocols that would put them in danger. However, this worker found a clever loophole that helped them catch a few Z's on the job and also caught the attention of the higher-ups.

It's frustrating to have a job where your life (and other's lives) are at stake and management doesn't take safety seriously. It seems like low-intensity jobs, like a barista or retail employee, who always have the most militant managers–you know, the kind who survey every move and every mistake as if this minimum wage job is a life-or-death scenario–but when it comes to jobs that actually need a watchful eye, supervisors are borderline negligent.

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Author image for Jesse Kessenheimer Jesse Kessenheimer
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  • My first job was at Baskin Robbins, the ice cream shop. I was 15 years old, made $10 an hour, and picked up shifts after school with my friend, so it was a pretty low-intensity job. As you can imagine, I dealt with my first overbearing manager, an obsessively crazy lady who would watch us on the security cameras to make sure we weren't on our phones behind the counter or eating any of the ice cream… Which had to have been the most arbitrary waste of time for an upper management position. 

    What do they actually know about this job?

  • But this got me thinking about the workforce. Oftentimes, management positions are relatively arbitrary, playing ‘hall monitor’ with workers who are on the floor actually getting the job done. And like the trucker in this next story, who didn't need their hand-held while they were on shift, the constant scrutiny was actually impeding their safety because it was so misplaced. 

  • Cheezburger Image 10452795136

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

    via welcomia
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  • "I Made Freight Late Because You Couldn't Compromise"

    So a few years ago I got back into truck driving after my daughter was around 2-3 years old. There weren't many companies who would take someone that had been out of the game that long, so I had to settle on one of the bigger companies. What a mistake that was.
    via Riyeko
  • Before this I had no issueas as professional truck driver, with having driver facing (or inward facing) cameras. I don't do anything illegal or stupid behind the wheel, so it didnt matter. It does now.
    via Riyeko
  • This company had stuck the camera that faced inwards and outwards along the area where the visor would cover the windshield. As most things like this happen, it was a "recordable offense" to have the visor not only block our the sun from laser beaming me in the face, but having the visor down blocked the camera.
    via Riyeko
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  • I got calls about it constantly. I asked them what I should do. Don't cover the camera. But the sun limits my vision. Don't cover the camera. I can't stick anything on the windshield to block the sun, this is unsafe. What do you
    via Riyeko
  • want me to do? Dont block the camera. Can you move it somewhere else? No. How am supposed to see during sunrise and sunset hours? Don't block the camera. It came down to them threatening my job (and livelihood) that if I
    via Riyeko
  • blocked the camera one more time, they'd to remotely deactivate the truck and force me out with a local police escort. So. I started to find nice safe places to stop every single early morning and evening when I was
    via Riyeko
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  • driving, where the sun would come through the windshield. My dispatcher (understanding of a man that he is) asked me why loads were being late and why I was stopping so frequently for so many hours. So I told him. Safety
    via Riyeko
  • wouldn't compromise and I can't freaking see out the window with the sun laser beaming me in the face. I'm not crashing into someone because a damned camera is being blocked when i haven't done anything to warrant this kind of ab e. I apologized to him but told him this would continue.
    via Riyeko
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    via Malte Luk
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  • He was able to schedule loads out to where I had the stopping time, but ultimately they fired me anyway after 5 months. Bonus... I was told I was unsafe, stupid, shouldn't drive a truck,
    via Riyeko
  • should find work that fits a woman better, and that I wouldn't be hireable anywhere, even in those sketchy second chance companies where the pay, equipment and safety is cr p.
    via Riyeko
  • Jokes on them. After 2 years of running for a company that treats me like I'm a human being and not some seat warming robot, 4 of their little company trucks have been seen by little ole me in the ditch or median on i29 this year after a two day winter storm. My truck? Still running. Currently waiting on unload.
    via Riyeko
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    via rcarner
  • challenge king What gets me is that there likely isn't any insurance agent that knows anything that's actually asking for driver facing cameras. The vast majority of the time, all they do is create evidence to make it even easier to get a civil judgement against the company. My theory is that safety guys want them to punish drivers and make themselves look more useful, and blaming it all on the insurance Boogeyman.
    via challenge_king
  • nat_r If the trucking company is smart, it's not insurance for the insurance company, it's insurance for the trucking company. Random checks and follow ups on any odd telemetry they get on the truck (sudden stops, etc) can in theory make it possible to catch an unsafe driver before there is any sort of incident that gets insurance involved. I'm sure a lot of places aren't using them in an intelligent manner, but the potential is there in theory.
    via nat_r
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  • mdhewitt1978 My company installed those cameras about a year ago and they go off every time I move around the yard to hook up to a trailer. When it beeps at me I look directly at the camera and smile. It's gone off when I was eating a banana and I got a call from my manager saying that I gave the whole office a laugh when they heard me singing along to my music after it thought I was talking on the phone.
    via mdhewitt1978
  • slcbtm OSHA violation. Find a lawyer to sue the company with class action suit. On behalf of any drivers who recked their rig due to sunblindness.
    via slcbtm
  • justaman 097 As someone that knows the industry well, I'm totally shocked that their safety officer would allow such a stupid placement of a camera. This is a case where management has never ridden in nor driven a truck. Nice job in finding a way to stay safe despite their stupidity.
    via justaman_097
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blue collar employee boss worker Truckers employee manager job work coworkers safety first working semi truck driving employees trucker supervisor workplace bad bosses company blue collar coworker business
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