I sprained my shoulder this past Wednesday night. At the time, I was on a "critical" run going to western Ohio, with the understanding that I'd be sent home for the weekend after its delivery. Instead, I went to the ER, was checked out, and told to follow up with my normal doctor as soon as possible. Thursday, I had to talk to occupational health and the safety department to ensure them that I was in a condition good enough to drive home. I did, though the safety department insisted that I not come back to work until I've had the doctor ensure that it wasn't going to become a long-term, chronic issue. I was ultimately given a run picking up from a northwest suburb of Chicago and dropping off at a place 50 miles south of Indy so I could go home after I delivered it. That work assignment arrived at the truck around 5 PM.
Due to my assigned empty trailer being misplaced, it took me almost 45 minutes to find the thing. I knew it was going to be late for the pick up at this point and ops was already aware that I was likely to miss it, so I decided to get a quick bite to go from the cafeteria. I was inside about twenty minutes (from 5:50 to 6:10) and, when I returned to the truck, saw a message saying I'd been pulled to cover a more critical run and had a new assignment going to Bowling Green, KY for delivery at 10:30 AM Friday morning. That, in short, wasn't going to work; I was being sent home directly for medical reasons and had other obligations for Friday night already. I called support shift to explain to them why I had been assigned my previous run and why I was not, under any circumstances, going to Kentucky. The subhuman creature on the other end of the phone insisted that I could be sent straight back to Indianapolis and claimed to speak with people who had left the office more than an hour ago. I, in turn, called her everything short of a compulsive liar and repeated myself for a total of about 35 minutes until I was finally put back on my previous load and told to follow up with my board in the morning.
The shipper really didn't seem to mind that I was running late when I arrived an hour after that, around 8:15 central time. I was loaded in about an hour and drove nonstop to my delivery. A quick drop later, I was headed back north to Indianapolis. I arrived there at somewhere around three or four in the morning. I went to sleep, woke up, and found a primary care doctor who could get me into her office Tuesday morning. I sent that information off to ops via Qualcomm, sent the various other messages that have to be sent before I go home, and went on my way.
Yesterday, the doctor's appointment went reasonably well. I did, however, get a prescription for something that lists drowsiness and dizziness as potential side effects, which disqualifies me from driving until I've finished the course of medication on Monday. I called into work around 1:30 PM Eastern to tell them that; the guy I spoke with seemed unhappy that I had to be taken off a load and such but was reasonably understanding about it. I offered to fax a copy of the doctor's note if they wanted any sort of documentation about it but he said that wasn't necessary.
Today I decided to go to the truck and get the rest of my clothing out of it, plus a few other things... only to find out that my truck wasn't there. I know I hadn't written it up for maintenance so I knew that wasn't where it was. So I went inside to the fuel desk, asked where it was, and found out that it was in Kentucky and heading south. Uh. So I tried calling operations to complain about the situation, but they turned the phones off at 3 PM Central instead of 4 like they're supposed to; I called at 4:09 PM eastern and was directed to support shift. It turns out that my stuff was thrown (yes, thrown) into bags by someone else and I was basically told to take those and leave. Someone claimed they called me this morning to give me the chance to do it myself, but this was a single phone call from an unlisted, unrecognized number at 10:53 AM. The time stamp on the paperwork attached to my bags was from around 11:30. Even if I had answered the phone, 30 minutes would not have been adequate time to get up there and do anything, especially with an injured shoulder.
Some people have already decided to speculate that I've been fired but, so far as I know, that is not the case. The company policy is that, if a driver is out of work more than five days, the driver is supposed to clean out the truck so it can be reassigned. I was not, however, informed at any time that said policy would be invoked over my present medical leave, and I intend on filing a grievance over the situation as soon as I can find out where it needs to be directed. Assuming the medication I'm on works I'll be able to resume work Monday morning. If not I will be out on an even longer absence due to MRIs and things of that nature. As a result of a potentially extended absence this blog will probably not be updated much for the foreseeable future.
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