During my college days, I worked a night cleanup shift on the processing side of a national beef packing plant. My job was to clean the front half of the hamburger line using high-pressure hoses and very hot water.

Since I cleaned the front part of the line, which was quite involved, I couldn’t finish until the other guy finished the back half. [Coworker], who cleaned the back half was rather lazy and felt entitled to have help — that is, having me clean his half almost single-handedly.

I eventually grew tired of having to do most of [Coworker]’s job in order to finish my part of the line. I decided to clean my half and wait him out to get his part finished.

Begrudgingly, [Coworker] thought he was finished with his half and was ready for the USDA inspector to go over “our” line. Since the hamburger line was the most important part of the plant as far as being inspected, the USDA guy failed the back half. That meant that the first shift could not begin the day’s work. The first shift started at 6:30 in the morning. Until I refused to clean most of [Coworker]’s part of the line, the first shift always started on time.

Well, this morning, that didn’t happen. In order to pass inspection, my foreman told me to reclean the back half. It took me almost two hours to pass inspection. You see, once I cleaned the back half, it meant that I had to reclean part of my half up front because when we blew the bits of meat and fat up front to the drains it splattered as we went. Therefore, I not only had to reclean [Coworker]’s back half but partially clean what I had already done.

As we were clocking out, [Coworker] came up to me.

Coworker: “Thanks a lot for sabotaging me.”

Me: “This wouldn’t have happened if you had carried your load.”

Right after [Coworker] clocked out, our foreman called him into the Human Resources office and fired him.

If you’ve ever been concerned about how safe large commercial trucks are on the highways, most are actually pretty safe, but some are death on wheels. This is a story about a truck I encountered that still gives me the creeps.

Years ago, I worked for a tool and construction equipment rental place. We had two large above-ground fuel tanks (one diesel, one gas). We guys in the back would regularly take dip measurements and let the front end know in advance when they needed to bring in more fuel, but one time, the notification slipped through the cracks. Mistakes happen and they were able to order gasoline to be delivered on a Saturday — no biggie as we were open then anyway.

The fuel trucks we got weren’t B-trains (the semis with two trailers that you see filling up the tanks at your local gas station) but the smaller tankers with the tank mounted on the truck chassis — kind of like the trucks you see delivering furnace oil but bigger. For some reason, the only truck available had to come from a city a couple of hours away.

From that city, at about sea level, the highway took an immediate steep, winding path to a summit, then another equally steep winding path down to about about 300 to 400 feet above sea level, and then everything was more or less level. The locals know it as “going over the hump”.

The guy showed up mid-afternoon, backed into where our tanks were, and started pumping fuel. I walked over to say hello and shoot the breeze, approaching the driver’s side of his rig, and what I saw made my heart freeze. Talk to any competent trucker or someone who runs heavy equipment and they’ll tell you that you can tell at a glance if something’s seriously wrong. Work taking in rental equipment returns and it’s the same, as customers will often try to conceal damage, and you develop a spidey sense when something is off.

Forgive me for painting a picture. The truck is a cab and chassis. The tank has a frame underneath it, and in this case, there were four sets of brackets on each side that allowed the tank frame to be secured to like brackets on the chassis of the truck. There were large bolts close to a foot long, with springs in between the brackets (for dampening, I’m guessing, and I confirmed this by looking at the set-up on the intact passenger side). There were two bolts per bracket, so eight per side.

On the driver’s side, there was one bolt that had sheared off and was just sitting there. The other seven were missing entirely. I pulled the sheared bolt out, and where it had broken there was considerable rust; this was far from recent damage. I approached the driver and told him what I had found. He seemed surprised. This idiot had obviously not done a pre-trip inspection nor, from the looks of it, had anyone else for quite some time. And this was a major national fuel company!

The guy told me that when he was coming down off the hump, he’d felt the truck getting tippy on the corners. That wasn’t the fuel sloshing inside the tank; they have baffles to prevent that. It was the entire tank threatening to detach from the truck because it was only fastened on one side! The attitude floored me. It doesn’t take much imagination to think what even a smaller tanker filled with gasoline would do should it tip over, rupture the tank, and have sparks from metal sliding on the road. With luck, only the driver would get barbequed. If he’d had to do an evasive manoeuver on the freeway and tipped, many innocent people could have been injured or killed.

My supervisor had a fix. We had long, thick, grade-eight bolts and nuts. We fastened down the one side as best we could and let him go. I wasn’t comfortable with that as I didn’t think that tanker should have left our yard. I don’t know exactly what happened after that… except for one thing.

On my own time, as a concerned citizen, I had a nice anonymous talk with an equally concerned fellow from the provincial highway safety and inspection branch, complete with the truck number and the details I’ve already told you. To say that this guy had a justice boner would be understating it. All he said is that, based on my information, that depot was going to have all its trucks inspected, and they’d be going through all the pre-trip logs and maintenance records with a fine-toothed comb. I told him to have fun. He said he would.

I am the security supervisor at a large industrial property in the lower valley. The property is over four-hundred acres with about fifteen miles of internal roads. We have to do some traffic control as a result.

I am driving and a guy drives past me in a U-Haul. I catch a glimpse of a green bottle. He hasn’t gotten to the gate system yet, so I call my guard and tell him to deny access and have the driver wait on the side as I U-turn.

I get to the gates and hop out.

Me: “Hi! So sorry, but when you drove by me, I noticed you were drinking from a green glass bottle? What was that?”

The driver holds up a bottle of a popular beer brand.

Me: “See, you can’t be drinking and driving on the property. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Driver: “Dude, it’s private property. F*** off.”

Me: “I know it is. I am the site security supervisor; I speak as an agent of the property. You can’t drink and drive here.”

Driver: “Show me where it f****** says that.”

Me: “It’s in the condo docs.”

Driver: “F*** you! I didn’t read no f****** condo docs!”

Me: “Well, it’s also in your common sense, or it should be. Look, if you let your passenger drive for the remaining time that you are here, then I’ll let you go, but I can’t have you knocking back beers while driving a box truck on a commercial property.”

Driver: “I pay f****** rent here, you [racist tirade for multiple races, none of which I belong to].”

Me: “Rent — which means you are a tenant, sir. As a tenant, you are obligated to follow the house rules detailed in the condo doc. Unfortunately, I can’t give you a pass just because you didn’t read them. Not on this.”

Passenger: “Just let me drive, man. This dude is just a uniform trying to do his job.”

Driver: *Turning to each of us in turn* “F*** you! And f*** you, too!”

Passenger: “Rude.”

Driver: “Let me see your supervisor!”

Me: “You want to see my supervisor because you are drinking and driving?”

Driver: “No, because you won’t let me in!”

Me: “Because you are drinking and driving.”

Driver: “Get him!”

Me: “He’s not in yet, but I can call someone who has a final say in the matter if you want.”

Driver: “YEAH!”

I went back to the patrol truck and called the Honolulu Police Department for a trespass; they arrived in less than a minute because we allow them to hang out on the top side of the property where they have shade to eat lunch and do paperwork as well as access to our bathrooms via a special door code we made for them. They are always more than happy to assist when we need them.

I explained to the dispatcher what was going on, and when the officer arrived, she parked diagonally in front of the U-Haul. We both went up to the U-Haul, and I had to give the guy the rundown on an official trespass from the property for the house rules that he had broken.

We came to find out he wasn’t the tenant — he was merely the employee of one — so the trespass went off easily.

Since it was private property, we couldn’t cite him officially for the DUI, but the second his tires touched the pavement at the end of our driveway, a second cop car pulled out from our closed exit lane and pulled him over.

The officer ended up finding multiple open containers in the cab of the U-Haul. Of course, the driver tried to claim they were the passenger’s, but he blew nearly two times the legal limit.

Since U-Haul was the registered owner of the box truck, the police had to contact them, and I am unsure what the conversation was, but the truck ended up getting towed loaded with product.

The driver ended up getting fired for the DUI and the loss of work/profit. Due to my testimony to the actual tenant, the passenger remained on the job.

Seriously, all the guy had to do was switch seats with the passenger and everyone could have gone home happy at the end of the day.

My dad was a low-level manager at a local auto plant, and he told me this story. Upper management was looking to make cuts, and they identified this one guy that had been there for years, but nobody knew what he did — or at least, nobody in upper management knew. For some reason, they didn’t ask the regular employees.

The guy just seemed to wander around. He wasn’t producing anything or working on a line, so they canned him.

After a week, people started reporting issues with quality and equipment breaking. It slowly got worse until a month had gone by and everything ground to a halt. Management finally started digging into the matter.

Upper Management: “Why is everything breaking?”

Worker #1: “Well, this guy used to come by occasionally and fiddle with something on the regular. Seemed to know what he was doing, but I haven’t seen him in a month.”

Worker #2: “This maintenance guy would show up every day at 2:00 pm sharp and check the belt tension.”

They all were describing the same guy, but no one knew who he was.

Eventually, they found someone who did know.

Worker #3: “Oh. That’s [Maintenance Guy].”

The story came out about [Maintenance Guy]; he used to be a lead on a line that got shut down. He was supposed to be laid off, but his manager saw that he was good with the machines. He knew all the lines and machines in the plant. So, his manager kept him in an unofficial job, basically wandering around the plant wherever he thought he needed to pay attention and correcting little things. In the end, [Maintenance Guy] eventually worked out his maintenance schedule “just so things would run better”.

Eventually, the manager moved on, but he didn’t tell anyone about who this guy was or what he was doing. [Maintenance Guy]’s employee file had the details, but he was just one guy out of many, so unless anyone bothered with piddly little things like employee files, he wasn’t likely to be found.

It turned out that all his little tweaks were either correcting worn equipment or compensating for iffy parts from a previous step.

Management figured out quickly that their increased scrap rate paid for this guy’s salary several times over.

Management argued about how to fix this issue. Should they talk to engineering? Well, nobody knew what needed fixing, or even how to fix it. That was [Maintenance Guy]’s job, and it’s not like he left an instruction manual upon his firing. Should they hire consultants? To what end? Once again, who else but [Maintenance Guy] could advise them on the equipment? Maybe they needed more quality people checking throughout the process? What good would that do when the equipment literally couldn’t run anymore?

Of course, the obvious question was: “Why can’t we just hire [Maintenance Guy] back?”

Everyone in upper management waffled because they didn’t want to be the ones to admit that they had been complete idiots.

They eventually caved, because it became obvious that they had no other options. They gave [Maintenance Guy] an offer that paid more than he was making previously, eating crow the entire time. 

Within a week, he had everything repaired and scrap levels went back to normal. 

And that, Dad explained, is why you never make a decision in the workplace without doing your due diligence on who is doing what in your company, or else you might just fire the guy who knows how to keep things running.

We are a bunch of contractors working for a small machine shop. A walk-in customer has come in asking for a custom part. We run through the details, and he agrees on a cost.

Customer: “What if I needed the part today?”

Coworker: “There’s a rush fee of [total].”

Customer: “That’s fine; just hurry.”

Coworker: “So, that’s [total].”

Customer: “I’ll run to the bank to get the cash. Please just get started as it’s urgent.”

This should be the first red flag, but some customers do pay with cash, so we get started. He comes back and we have the part ready for him, but when he hands over the cash to my coworker…

Coworker: “This is only half the amount.”

Customer: “Yeah, things are tight right now. Just don’t be a d**k about it and I’ll get the rest to you.”

Coworker: “We can’t give you the part unless you pay in full up-front.”

Customer: “My dad gets stuff from you guys and pays you back all the time.”

Coworker: “It’s likely he’s an established client with an earned amount of credit. You’re a walk-in customer we don’t know.”

Customer: “Well, we need to do something because I need the part now. I’ll pay you the rest in a month or so.”

Coworker: “Fair enough. 

And with that, my coworker steps behind the counter, cuts his part in half on one of the industrial saws, and gives him one of the halves!

Coworker: “We’ll give you the other half in a month or so.”

Cost to us: an hour or so of labor and a couple of dollars of material. The look on the client’s face? Priceless.