Friday, January 23, 2009

1/23/09

Ahh yes, on the couch with a frosty cold Leinenkuegel's. That's what I'm talking about.

That damn delivery this morning was every bit as hard as I thought it would be. After the backing and maneuvering display had concluded, I thought that I would be hopping in bed for a nap while my trailer got unloaded. I had a full trailer of plastic mesh things. There were two guys unloading and stacking them... by hand. My union buddies and their hourly pay were in no hurry to get the job done. That trailer was the only thing between me and my time off. Since I'm not supposed to touch any freight without authorization, my Swedish buddy Sjoe volunteered to pitch in and get it done more quickly. Sjoe doesn't typically work for free, but he knew that I wanted to get home. What a pal. It turns out that he works faster than the guys who know what they're doing. Crazy.

I got my paid deadhead home from Lansing once I was empty. And that's that. 1,637 miles for the week, plus the local pay and layover pay from Laredo. Fair enough.

In boring old man fashion, I'm staying home tonight. I have to head out for a weekend with my family in the morning. Better to lay low tonight. I'm pretty tired.

5 comments:

  1. Joe, who you trying to fool with that comment about not being able to help unload your freight without authorization, seems like they told us in orientation this week if you want to "volunteer" knock yourself out. But I guess I was never smart enough to have one of my friends whitewash MY fence! Poor Sjoe.

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  2. It sounds like you got a different version of the spiel than the one we got when I started. We were lectured about liability issues and worker's comp claims and such. Then there's the other matter, separate and independent, of working for four hours at someone else's job without compensation.

    No worries though. Sjoe wound up with everything he had this morning, plus twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar – but no dog – the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

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  4. [i]Then there's the other matter, separate and independent, of working for four hours at someone else's job without compensation.[/i]

    Well Don, I'd just say "what the hey." As you were already working four hours at your own job without compensation. Why not throw in four more freebies for another entity?

    Barzini

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  5. Well paisan, the topic of getting paid to take a nap will most likely never be a point of agreement for you and me. It seems to me that Sjoe's toils of this week were far more worthy of some form of compensation than my typical nap.

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