Today actually was a day worth writing about! It started off smoothly enough, though the weather got steadily worse as I drove north until it became a raging downpour near Des Moines, IA. I stopped for fuel there, quickly ran inside to the restroom, then continued north through the tempest. About half a mile before the I-35/I-80 split, though, I had a problem. Namely, my driver's side windshield wiper snapped off. I don't just mean that the blade came off, either; the arm itself broke. The wiper first started going further and further off to the side, then finally went a little too far, the wiper motor acted up, and it just snapped off against the hood. Amazingly, it's still dangling in place, but it definitely is a trouble item if the weather continues to act up. The rain stopped shortly after it broke, but it was extremely difficult (and, frankly, dangerous) driving with such poor visibility.
For the most part, the rest of the drive was uneventful. There were a few crazy drivers on the road, as always, including one who passed me around a blind curve on a two-lane highway. There's no way he could have seen an oncoming car, much less avoided one, but thankfully the road was clear. I don't see why he needed to do that, either, seeing as the road became a four-lane in just another mile and he'd been tailgating me for at least the last ten.
In any case, I'm currently waiting on a lumper service to unload the trailer. I had been told on my work assignment that it would require no work from me, but when I arrived at the receiving office, they said I either had to pull the 30 pallets off and restack them onto 38 pallets or pay $180 for the lumpers to do it. Needless to say, I was ticked, so I went out and called operations. At first they were trying to convince me to do it, though once I told them that it would require a restack (something else that wasn't listed on the work assignment), they went ahead and approved the lumper service. I'll have to call the first shift tomorrow to get an authorization number; without that, I'd have the $180 deducted from my paycheck. It's a pain in the rear, which is why I hate dealing with lumpers when they do come up. Doesn't anyone else see a problem with a company charging you to have their own freight unloaded?
I also have to worry about time here: my fourteen hour day runs out at 10PM, about an hour and a half from now. This place doesn't allow driver parking - at least according to my work assignment - and I really don't want to have to ask them to make an exception for me. There's a place roughly eight miles down the Interstate that looked to have plenty of parking (though that was about two hours ago); I'll be trying to get there if I have any time left. If I'm out of time and they won't let me stay here... well, then I'm pretty much screwed and have to just hope I don't get pulled over. I'll still have to explain it to regulatory at some point. I really hope I don't have to deal with all that crap and they get me out of here within the next hour or less.
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