Drivers

I think it’s a visible sign of the frustration a lot of drivers feel at the absence of control and power in their lives.
We all go on about how no body outside the industry knows enough about what we do, well here’s a news flash, no one outside the industry gives a flying ■■■■ about what we do, all they care about is that we do it.
We all have work problems no one will listen to, in fact from what I read and hear these days the problems are getting far worse with big companies exercising ever more ridiculous levels of control over drivers and how they do the job. Having to explain at a debrief a 3 minute stop enroute to have a pee is taking then pee.

The job is being dumbed down so much it’s no real surprise that the longer serving drivers feel this way, they started when the job was very different, they were treated as independant free thinking professionals and were thanked for the extra effort they’d put in to get the job done right and on time. Not now, that control by the driver has gone in the most part . The industry now wants a driver to know he’s firmly at the bottom of the pile with no control (just the responsibility of piloting a truck around safely) and if you could all act accordingly and just quietly accept your serf status then that would be awfully decent of you all.

Despite what many drivers will tell you, the reality is that the boss and customer control what we do. Many have a problem with that so come up with stories of how they told the boss / customer what was going to happen, sometimes these stories are so ridiculous they wouldn’t even make it onto jackanory.
As humans we all need to feel we have control over our lives including our work situation.
As truck drivers we don’t have a lot.

Look at the classic security guard owning the company scenario. He / she knows they’re at the bottom of the pile so exercise what little power and control they can. They can’t really do this to ‘normal’ customers at the site so they’ve learnt they can lord it over the delivering drivers instead to get their power needs satisfied.

We don’t have that clear cut group of people to exercise our almost non existent power over so we do what we can to feel better about our lack of control.
We bully other road users on the road as we are a far more important road user than anybody else.
We tell tales of how we told our company / customer what’s going to happen.
We attempt to exercise control or power over anybody not up at our own level of perfection, it’s a basic human trait, pick on the weak and in our case that’s anybody who makes even the most basic and understandable mistake right up to the most serious.

Many who are unhappy in their work life due to their lack of control will show a strong Schadenfreude effect, I personally know of a few people who take this to extremes. They will continue to badger someone deemed weaker than them until the person being attacked will walk off in disgust leaving the protagonist with a big smile on his face while proclaiming how he “told them alright”.

Of course if there is any shred of truth to anything I’ve said then it certainly doesn’t apply to all drivers or employers. But I think it does explain a lot of the behaviour you see on here and out there in the real world.