Two extra minutes of rest in a working day “needlessly cautious”? Is your work so precise that every single minute needs to be accounted for?
I don’t know how long you’ve been in the industry, but I’m confident that all the experienced drivers here will tend to agree that no decent TM or gaffer is going to give you grief for that, and if things are so tightly controlled every minute counts, you might want to be looking for alternative work with the freedom to cover your ■■■■ as you feel is required, because IME if you’re that much under pressure, it is only going to get much, much worse over time, not better.
Going back a few years, I recall my first experience with a new gaffer, he was giving me grief for doing my walkaround check, claiming ten minutes was too long and I should have been out on the road within less than five minutes. I knew then & there that was the beginning of the end for my time with that company and I told him bluntly “It’s my licence, not yours”.
Things went downhill at a steady pace, pressure continued to be piled on, people left and were not replaced, machinery broke and was not properly repaired, leaving more work for those who remained with fewer machines to do the job.
During the first nine months of “new guy” being in charge, 60% of the other drivers left the company one by one, their work getting piled onto the remaining drivers, I left not long afterwards, at that point there was only one driver left who had been there before the new manager had started.
Within the next nine months someone died at one of their sites because safety had been compromised in pursuit of profit. Within the next year the company had gone into administration owing £13 million. The HSE investigation into the fatality is still in process; I’m always on the look out for an update; in my opinion this “manager” should be going to jail.
I’m totally opposed to idea everyone should be working flat-out all the time. The “maximizing working time and minimizing rest time” view that is endemic to the industry is one of the several reasons fewer and fewer people are attracted to the job, especially younger people.
Drivers should be aiming for better working conditions as well as better pay. Doing the bare minimum of rest is not improved working conditions.