So much change. Since the last post, I have moved my sites — TWICE. My old host where I had been was closing and I moved somewhere else against my better judgement… Really, when your Spidey-senses tell you to do something, you should do it. After a lot of stress and trouble, I moved where the old host suggested. They’re great!
Work
The Spidey-senses also tend to be relevant with things like work too… Since the last post (I really thought it hadn’t been that long), I had changed jobs — to a company that I LOVED. Great pay, decent runs, not sending you out in unsafe weather (how quickly that has changed)… Sadly, the company was part of a larger, growing conglomerate — the largest mail contractor in the country. However, something that had so much promise had a such a very horrible execution. When I started, at our terminal there were over 40 drivers… now there are 7. A whole lot of runs… some the PO changed/killed, but some, many, were lost due to poor management. What kind of person thinks that letting mail sit for 15 hours is a good idea. At other companies I have been, they’d have torn a huge piece of skin off this guy’s ass — actually he’d have been fired. Bad commo is another thing — no one can reach said manager between 5p and 8a… who does that? Anyway, that and the overt favoritism just made it bad. And, I would say speaking to people in a condescending and high-handed manner doesn’t help. They are in shock that the unions are coming in all over the country at most terminals… Leia said it best: “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin (in this case “Darth Vader”), the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” Such truth. They want it like the old days where they could treat drivers like shit and they’d accept it. Fuck that! There are a lot of driving jobs out there and you don’t have to accept ones that yell, try and get you to do unsafe shit or try to claw back money they’ve given you.
The job musical chairs was also too much — sick to my stomach every day about losing my job (and I wasn’t alone) and it finally happened and I had to move to another terminal an hour and 10 minutes away. Had to join the union —guess what, I was wrong about them… the APWU is great. Their recruiters that Jeff and I had talked to years ago, they were “not great” and cause more harm then good… but the union itself. Great. I ended up with a better run though, but the company, in it’s usual disdain for their drivers, had decided to lower the pay there at that “terminal” by $8 an hour >:-o WTF right? I’m moving on. Not just because of this company who has such contempt for their drivers — the ones who do the job that brings in the money — everyone else being just support staff… they don’t get that shit. Higher management has been known to say “Drivers are a dime a dozen” — sure they are pally, but you get what you pay for. Imagine, a company that had 5000 drivers now reduced to a shadow of that. Fuck it — I’m movin’ on. I will say, the manager have now… he’s done right by me and I think he is a good guy.
I should say, there is another part to this… the Postmaster General that Donny put in there, Louis DeJoy, he is a goat fucker. He left XPO to come here, yet he just doesn’t get the Mail. He thinks it’s a business, when in fact it’s in the Constitution. I have to have a badge and a background check, but he’s having them put the mail on the load board and all these foreign outside carriers run it; late, without screening, not being able to speak English and causing accidents, etc. (one article about it is in freightwaves: Lax oversight of trucking contractors plagues postal service). Of course, we’re wrong about that now, don’t ya know.
Corruption and Scumbaggery
You can read a bit about the above-noted corruption, the PO and the Postmaster General’s part in it… DeJoy’s Conflict of Interest.
Reenacting
In reenacting, I have retired from WWI — in 2021, it was. Two good friends had passed and it wasn’t the same. That’s the gist of it. I’m still doing Roman, for now and playing at building a British Revvy War impression. Gives me something to do and be excited about.
RiB