Like a lot of drivers, we all have our own lorries.
X is on holiday for another week and as my lorry has to go in for an MOT, the boss said to use his lorry. Fair enough.
Got the keys, went across and opened the cab (18 month old FH)…
Now, don’t get me wrong here, my cab is not exactly “eat your lunch off the floor” but it is (I would like to think) clean and tidy. Not spotless but perfectly acceptable. I have dustpan etc in the cab – and I know how they work. This guys’ cab though was something else. The first thing to hit you was the stench. The second was the absolutely disgusting and revolting state of the place. Empty coffee cups; food wrappers; half eaten sandwiches; dirty washing and pile upon pile of rubbish scattered all over the cab. I then made the mistake of beginning to climb up into the cab only to find my boot sticking to the carpet and (I’m convinced) a palm covered in (trying to be polite) ‘dried nasal pickings’ off the grab handle.
Enough.
I went back into the office and flatly refused to take the lorry out. The Boss raised an eyebrow then went out to have a look himself. Suffice to say that when he returned he was positively raging; to quote “You give someone a £■■■,000 wagon and he turns it into a sh#t-hole.”
Why am I mentioning this? Well, just before I left the yard a couple of the other guys were saying that, as a result of looking in the cab, X was going to get sacked; the Boss’s attitude was ‘If he’s like that with my wagon, how can I trust him with my customers?’
Now, personally, I feel slightly bad because this guy is, apparently, getting sacked (to be blunt, I don’t feel that bad – the guy is an #rse anyway), but it begs a couple of questions:-
Should I feel bad or did the driver (as one of the other guys says) ‘brought it on himself’,
Would love to know on what grounds they are sacking him unless keeping the cab clean forms part of his employment contract they’ll struggle to sack him for it.
xichrisxi:
Would love to know on what grounds they are sacking him unless keeping the cab clean forms part of his employment contract they’ll struggle to sack him for it.
I’m in agreement too as I don’t like sitting in other people’s filth, however it does raise a question I’ve yet to find an answer to.
Although most of us that drive artics where I work (day drivers on shop deliveries) keep the same truck most of the time, the rigids get passed around everyone & as a result, end up disgusting with rubbish & food & drink spillages everywhere (& a few with muddy boots on dash)& managers really aren’t interested. How much right does a lowly driver have to refuse to take a truck out that’s been treated like a skip?
Why would anyone live in filth like that .Sod him maybe he will now understand the importance of looking after other people’s equipment .I hate agency work for this reason alone.Dirty tramps.
Personally I don’t believe a word that comes out most drivers mouths as it’s usually lies and gossip where they tell you what they want to happen rather than whats actually happening. If he does indeed get dismissed it’s not your problem.
Did you do the right thing? Yes.
Why hasn’t it been brought to your bosses attention before now though as it sounds like long term neglect. Surely someone is in the cab downloading the tacho head regularly?
What was the alternative? Drive around in (or worse sleep in) a mobile cess pit?
You were just using HEALTH & safety to a driver’s advantage for once.
I would have done exactly the same…
IF matey does get the boot that’s got nothing to do with you, as you have no say or control how your guvnor runs his business, and it aint down to you to ‘suffer’ just to keep that guy in employment.
Some firms work differently…I got a disciplinary and then sacked…for the same thing…only difference is i wrote a nasty message on the back of a daily defect sheet.telling the driver exactly what i thought…and i didnt mince my words ( the driver was on a rest day, and i wouldnt be seeing him ) anyway next morning he took the note to the weak, young T/M…who then took it all the way to the top…btw, at the disciplinary they asked me what they should do about a drivers B.O. problem, as they didnt know how to handle it…seems to me, to let him stew in his own excrement…and sack me which solves two problems…ha ha
i once took a job with a well known welsh company, I was handed the keys to a Volvo unit on a freezing cold day, the cab was clean enough no rubbish or strange stains, so off I went loaded to Belgium, the cab began to be a bit whiffy by the time I got to dover by Belgium it stank, phoned in and complained, oh we will sort it when you get back to the yard, well as per the normal run of things not back to the yard until I had been week ended in Germany so back on the following Friday, oh cant do anything until next weekend, no thank you I’m not showering then putting on clean clothes that smell like the rest of the truck and they have not even been out of my bag, cheerio.
hotel magnum:
i once took a job with a well known welsh company, I was handed the keys to a Volvo unit on a freezing cold day, the cab was clean enough no rubbish or strange stains, so off I went loaded to Belgium, the cab began to be a bit whiffy by the time I got to dover by Belgium it stank, phoned in and complained, oh we will sort it when you get back to the yard, well as per the normal run of things not back to the yard until I had been week ended in Germany so back on the following Friday, oh cant do anything until next weekend, no thank you I’m not showering then putting on clean clothes that smell like the rest of the truck and they have not even been out of my bag, cheerio.
I hope the experience didn’t leave you Skint & Knackered.
“Please leave these facilities in the same state you’d expect to find them. Camera footage on the outside of these toilets is being examined to establish the comings and goings of staff. When the thing that has been wiping bogies and squeezing spots onto the mirror is caught - they will be disciplined, which may involve a dismissal.”
The boss had been turned down via the Union a few months earlier for a camera outside filming those entering and leaving the gents. If I recall, the argument used was “You put a camera on both toilets, or neither. We already know what the female CMA Union secretary will say though!”
Needless to say, there were no cameras anywhere near the loos ever again, and we knew that the “Notice” as paraphrased above, was just a big bluff, with pretty much no chance of ever getting a “result” of it.
I do remember laughing so hard at the time I read it as a visiting driver though, that I turned on a sink tap too hard, and spashed water everywhere, afterwoulds making a hasty exit.
If the boss was so concerned about the state of his £80k vehicles, he should have someone regularly inspect them when they’re parked up for the weekend.
A fluorescent bacteria lamp will really show the true amount of staph bacteria, door handles and steering wheels are prime breeding grounds.
When i was at Jack Richards many years ago there was one guy there who was truly filthy and with no exaggeration his cab had fleas! Needless to say every driver there refused to even shunt it let alone take it down the road.
An 80-100K £/Eur FH deserves better. This particular driver should indeed be sacked, having said that its most likely how he lives at home and knows no different…
The driver being sacked isn’t anything to do with you, that’s the bosses decision not yours.
If the vehicle was as bad as you say you was right to refuse to drive it and I’ve done the same, a few years ago I did a nights work at Nightfreight in Kidderminster, one of the vehicles I was supposed to drive was in a disgusting state, old discarded takeaway food boxes on the passenger seat and in the passenger side foot-well and stuffed behind the drivers seat, you can imagine what it smelt like.
I refused to drive the vehicle until it was cleaned out, it was a loaded rigid so changing vehicles wasn’t really an option, the night manager came out and cleaned the rubbish out so I agreed to drive it, as it happened the bloody thing broke down less than 5 miles up the road so I ended up not doing the run anyway
To be fair the agency told me that they’d received an apology from Nightfreight and was told that their drivers were warned about not keeping the vehicles in a reasonable state of cleanliness.
A mate of mine got given a Volvo unit for his shift,he got in and it stank of ■■■, dirty day man had crapped his sen, mate complained to boss at agency and was told if you don’t drive it u won’t get anymore shifts in there. Bless him, he took curtains down and sat on them,not nice tho
Fair play I wouldn’t have took it out either,here’s a thought if its disgusting to look at how do you know what your sat in all day think I better leave that there
I may of just asked for another truck but if that was the only one then I would of explained to him that its disgusting and I wont get inside it.
Your not grassing him up; he put you in this position due to being a dirty fudger.
Only had this happen to me once and did similar.
That being said there are too many pansies on this board. Personally, unlike others I don’t get bothered by cigarette smoke or even a slight mess in the cab as long as there is no food waste or signs of ‘human’ waste. I’ve known people to refuse to drive a cab because someone had a cigarette in it.
