I swear, these guys are trying to run me into the ground. I woke up at 7 PM and found I had a total of fifteen messages on the Qualcomm, which is never a good sign. It turns out that I'd received two work assignments, one of which had been canceled. Of course, the one they took me off of was 400 miles longer; I ended up on a "critical" load that was only 370 miles and that - even if things went perfectly - I wouldn't have made by more than a few minutes. So I got dinner and hit the road, driving 180 miles to the shipper and arriving just before midnight. That's when things started to go wrong.
First, I followed my directions exactly, but they led me to the wrong entrance. There were no signs at all indicating that it was not the main entrance. I tried calling the customer and nobody answered the phone. I called operations, who in turn found another number to call somebody on, set up a three-way call, and only then did I find out that I just needed to go another half block up the road, over a hill. Then I received the paperwork, went with one of the yard guys over to the trailer yard (which is where I was in the first place), nearly lost control of the truck trying to go down a 15% grade on a gravel road... and found that the trailer number on the paperwork was wrong. It matched five out of six digits and had the right product on it, but that meant I had to eventually go back to the shipping office and get it corrected. More pressing was the fact that the trailer had an air leak and it took both me and the other guy to figure out where it was leaking from and a few good smacks from a hammer to fix it. By the time all that was done, I'd spent more than an hour and a half just trying to pick up the load when I could only afford to take half an hour.
The rest of the night was fairly uneventful, which made it rather tricky to stay awake. At least I made it here without causing an accident; that's as much as I can say for my drive up here. The problems only resumed when I arrived at the consignee. Nobody here knew where I was supposed to go. I checked with the main office and the receptionist sent me back to shipping. I checked in there and was told to come around to the front again. I was parked and looking for a loading dock when someone on a forklift came over and led me to the docks, though there was another driver who was blocking things off. Only after a fifteen-minute wait did someone else come over to take my paperwork and tell me to back in. I'm getting unloaded now and it sounds like they're nearly finished. When they're done, I don't have any time left that I can continue working, so I get to park in the facility's driveway and take my break. Seriously, that's where they said I could park the truck. So I'll get nine or so hours of much-needed sleep and hope that I don't find another dozen or so messages in the morning.
On a better note, I was assigned to a new board. More accurately, because of how they're re-organizing things now, they seem to be splitting boards up and I ended up on a different number. I don't know how well (or badly) that will work out since the person I'll be calling is still in training for his new position and won't be ready to take calls until Friday or Monday; I'll be routed to my existing board in the meantime. There is, however, something rather odd about having seniority over my boss despite having only 13 months of experience...
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