Welcome to what has been dubbed the “Kramer Chronicles!” (The name has been changed.)

At my work, we have multiple drivers for our semis. Two of our drivers retire and we bring in a couple of new drivers. Both of these drivers are pretty young and don’t have much experience, but that’s not really an issue because everyone has to start somewhere.

One of them has learned to be cautious when driving, especially with the snowy winter we’ve been having in Minnesota this year. He drives a bit too cautiously at times, but he hasn’t had any accidents or gotten stuck. His slower driving and cautiousness have helped him learn, and he’s doing well.

The other guy is pretty much the opposite. He may be young and inexperienced, but he continues to drive faster than he should, especially in crummy weather, and he’s caused a lot of damage.

Here are some of the issues and some things Kramer has said to me about them.

1) He backed into a car in the parking lot. It wasn’t even parked in a spot that would be considered in the way when semis back up into docks. He caused over $10,000 in damage.

2) He went down a weight-restricted road — he said his “GPS told him to go that way” — even though the road didn’t lead to the customer’s facility. Once he realized he wasn’t on the right road, let alone a weight-restricted one, he came to a T intersection and almost jackknifed his trailer trying to make a wide U-turn. He ended up damaging part of the trailer and the back end of his cab from the turn due to his poor judgment. This was around $5,000 in damages.

3) He told us he almost got stuck going under a bridge because his “GPS” sent him a different way from the last time when he was making a delivery to a customer that he had done multiple times before. The top of the trailer was scraped across the entire length of it as he drove under the bridge. No holes were made, but the top was all scratched up.

4) During a regular maintenance check one morning, he noticed that his antifreeze was low. (A cracked hose was found and fixed later.) He removed the cap where the oil goes in the engine and started to pour antifreeze into the engine. He noticed a second or two after he started pouring antifreeze that he was adding it to the oil and not into the tank where the antifreeze actually goes. Thankfully, no harm came from this eff-up.

5) He needed to gas up one day. We have two gas station companies for which we have gas cards for our drivers. This way they can easily fuel up anywhere they are in the metro area. He came into the shipping office in a bit of a panic. He told me that he was trying to fuel up at [Gas Station #1] nearby because he was getting really low on diesel, but the card wasn’t working at the pump, so he came here to let us know so we could get him a new card. He then left and headed out to the next closest gas station — [Gas Station #2] — and tried fueling up there. He got back and told me that we didn’t have to get a new gas card for him because when he was trying to fuel up at [Gas Station #1] he didn’t realize he was using the [Gas Station #2] gas card; that was why it wasn’t working.

6) A couple of weeks ago, we had upwards of sixteen inches of snow fall over two days. It took a bit for things to get back to normal in terms of good road conditions. Fast forward a week. It hadn’t snowed since the previous week, and roads, parking lots, and driveways were clear. Kramer delivered a load of material to a customer with no issues. The next day, he had another half a trailer of material to deliver to the same customer. He called into work because he had gotten “stuck in their unplowed parking lot” and couldn’t get out.

After a few hours of him digging himself out and the help of a passing tow truck that helped pull him free, he returned to work. He was telling everyone that the parking lot hadn’t been plowed and that was why he’d gotten stuck… but how did he not get stuck the day before when he delivered? Eventually, the truth came out: he had misjudged his turn by a lot, and he’d driven right into a snowbank and gotten stuck.

7) A week later, it had been snowing some, maybe a total of three or four inches throughout the day. Most roads were pretty decent with just some slushy and slick spots. Kramer was returning from a delivery. He was coming down the hill toward our parking lot entrance, and he was going too fast to safely make the turn with those road conditions. Instead of just going past our driveway and further down the road to safely find a spot to turn around and come back, he tried to turn into the parking lot. He couldn’t turn in properly and ended up burying the front end of his cab into the snow bank on the far side of the driveway with his trailer blocking the entrance of the parking lot.

Our maintenance team had to go out with the bobcat, shovels, salt, and sand to help dig him out so he would no longer be blocking the driveway entrance. He told people that his “load shifted in the trailer and it caused his truck to slide.” Upon checking the outside cameras, it was very easy to see that he had been driving too fast to make the turn into the parking lot safely, yet he’d tried to and gotten stuck.

I told our manager that this was bad on Kramer’s end in one of two ways. Either he wasn’t driving safely and was putting others and himself at risk or he wasn’t strapping his loads correctly, which posed danger to those on the road around him. Either way, he should no longer be driving for us.

These are just a handful of stupid things Kramer has done and said over the eight months he’s been here. Based on what management has mentioned, I’m 95% sure he won’t be driving for us much longer once this workweek ends.

A coworker of mine was sent to a remote site to help with a project. He caught the red-eye flight to the location, the site manager picked him up and drove him to the site, he changed into work clothes and punched his card into the site proper… and the customer called the site manager to say that the job was postponed indefinitely.

Well, it happens. So, the site manager gave him some menial tasks such as supervising another team while he dealt with the repercussions of the cancelled job. He came back a couple of hours later.

Site Manager: “I have you covered for tonight. You can have dinner at my place, sleep in the guest room at [Other Coworker]’s house, and tomorrow, in the morning, you’ll catch the flight back home.”

Then, the site manager’s phone rang, and he had a very angry discussion with someone at the other end.

Site Manager: “They want you back by this evening no matter what. They changed the booking to this afternoon’s flight, which more than doubled the price. I have a meeting with the customer this afternoon that I must attend in person, so I have to take a guy off the team to drive you back to the airport.”

My coworker changed into civvies, and then another coworker drove him to the airport and he took the evening flight, getting home well past midnight. On the following day, he was assigned… to PTO.

A potential client from a huge corporate meat plant called me.

Client: “I need you to design tickets for an event.”

Me: “Great! What’s the event?”

Client: “I want to sell tickets to a football game, but this game is only in our minds; it’s pretend. You know how Mickey Mouse is only pretend?”

Me: “Yeah, I underst—”

Client: *Cutting me off* “It’s like that; it won’t actually happen. It’s a game between the ‘University Of [Meat Plant]’ and the [Actual NFL team].”

Me: “Do you have permission to use that—”

Client: *Cutting me off* “The event will be on August 32nd, and everyone will buy tickets to the game, buy T-shirts, the works! Since it’s an impossible date, the other team won’t show up, which means they will forfeit AND WE’LL WIN!”

Me: “No.”

Client: “Why not?”

Me: “It’s literally a scam, you don’t have permission for all of this, and you cut me off every time I sp—”

Client: *Cutting me off* “Please?”

Fifty years ago, I worked a summer job in a factory in New Jersey. We didn’t actually manufacture anything. The widgets were made in the UK and shipped to us so they could be labeled, “Packaged in the USA.” We sat on an assembly line and boxed blister packs of the widgets.

One day, the machine that formed the plastic started acting up and oozing out gases. We called over one of the managers who were known as engineers — although I tend to doubt they had degrees.

Coworker #1: “Something’s wrong. The machine is spreading gases that make our eyes hurt.”

[Engineer] nodded and turned to [Coworker #2].

Engineer: “Do your eyes hurt?”

Coworker #2: “Yes.”

[Engineer] nodded again and turned to [Coworker #3].

Engineer: “Do your eyes hurt?”

Coworker #3: “Yes.”

And so on. When he reached the end of the line, he went back to [Coworker #1].

Engineer: “See? Everyone’s eyes hurt.”

And he walked off.

Many years ago, I started working for a minor company, and pretty much everybody warned me that [Coworker #1] (among others) was a major moocher. “Don’t ever loan him money!”

After a month or so, I’d confirmed that, and I’d also learned that [Coworker #1] was a MAJOR pest.

The next time he hit me up for a loan “until payday”, I “reluctantly” let myself be convinced.

He should have known better.

I started reminding him of the loan several days before payday. On payday, of course, he didn’t have the money. By a week or so after payday, he flinched when he heard my voice, and he was actively avoiding me! It was marvelous!

A couple of months later, a female coworker that [Coworker #1] had a crush on came over to my machine, obviously irritated. [Coworker #2] seemed rather surprised that [Coworker #1] didn’t tag along all the way over there. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest!

She made some disparaging remark about him, so I asked if she wanted him to go away.

Coworker #2: “YES!”

Me: “No problem!”

I stepped around the corner.

Me: “Hey, [Coworker #1], about—”  

[Coworker #1] disappeared so fast, I swear there was a sonic boom!

[Coworker #2] was staring when I came back around the corner, laughing.

Coworker #2: “How did you do that?!”

Me: “Magic! Say the magic words, and the annoying little git disappears every time!”

I eventually explained things to [Coworker #2], and she thought it was hilarious.

And it turned out that there was someone else who had done the same thing I had. We were amazed that [Coworker #1] never paid either one of us off to make it stop.