The Soundboard: Super Bad Edition

I never thought a 16 hour work day could be so fun.

Actually, the first 12 were kind of boring and sucked a tad, but the the last 4 made my week.

For those still not in the know, I work in the ‘Sanitation Engineer’ field (I work for the garbage collection company).

And if you’ll excuse me for a few paragraphs, I am going to brag before getting to my tale of what happened this morning.

Five years ago I started out doing their map work. I do map work because I am very good with geography. When the wife wanted to visit San Francisco in 2000, I studied a map of the city on the two hour flight down and never had to refer to it or ask for directions during the week we were there. I remember everywhere I have ever driven and could go to a city I visited once for one day over 10 years earlier and still know my way around to this day.

Needless to say, I know my home city of Seattle and its surrounding burbs very well. This is an asset in this company when they moved me to work within their dispatch office. I immediately changed a couple small procedures and their productivity immediately increased.

This made my boss very happy.

My work ethics are as follows: ‘No One Will Do My Job Better Than Me’ and ‘I get paid to make my boss look good to his boss’.

They have never failed me and my pay increases reflect this.

I work with Teamsters. They are the drivers who pick up the loads I assign to them and they are very protective of their ‘Brotherhood’. But my style not only made me popular with my boss, it made me popular with them. In fact, I was the first non-Teamster at this facility to get an invite to one of their private ‘at-home’ retirement parties. No small feat seeing as how I am considered management to them (even though I am not in a management position).

A little over two years ago I received an offer to switch to nights by the actual management to see what I could do the drivers on that crew to make them more productive. The day crew of drivers was not happy with this but has put up with the string of replacements that have followed me leaving my previous shift. I think they actually enjoy tormenting them, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, my switching to leading the night crew was such a resounding success that I am still here and still kicking ass.

Over the few years I have built up a reputation outside the company that I also enjoy thoroughly.

Another philosophy of mine is that I demand three things. Love, Respect and Fear.

Love, from my drivers and customers
Respect, from my boss
Fear, from my competition

I have these three things. My vehicle is known by my competition and I get waves from the drivers of those companies when they see me out and about. I will snag an account out from under my competition even though my company’s prices are higher simply because I have built up a solid customer base that knows if I tell them something, it is going to happen.

I have been involved in the construction of just about every major project in the city in the last five years with this reputation, from the new football stadium to the largest bio-engineering lab in the country to the new city hall and police headquarters.

But enough braggadocio, to the story.

I have been hollering for an increase in the amount of work my crew gets and an increase in the size of my crew for a while now. I have these guys working at such a level that they’re able to do twenty percent more work than they were when I started this shift.

Monday, I was notified that my attendance was mandatory at a meeting between the day drivers and the latest installment of the dispatch crew. I arrived early (as usual) and just sort of took my casual spot in the corner (also as usual) and waited for the fur to fly.

And it did.

My mere presence seems to have been enough to get the drivers all riled up and telling stories of miracles I pulled out of the Analog Hat to save the day “way back when�. This made the day dispatch crew pissed, as it would me, but I wanted to see how this turned out, so I played it cool and just sat back.

But that was not to last. Shortly after the managers got the two parties to settle down they called on me for suggestions and my cover was blown. I ever so gently pointed out errors in procedures that the day-crew were making and remedies for how to deal with long winded and demanding customers that someone who has never done this particular job could not have told them. I then ever so smoothly transitioned my speech into what I wanted, stating that if this division wanted to stop barely staying in the black that I would need to get more work and more drivers on my crew.

This didn’t go over very well with anyone in the room until I whipped up some figures I had been working on in my head.

Basically, the hours wasted on the day shift with work that we can do at night, figured conservatively to be one hour per driver per day, the company is losing $1800 a month worth of truck running cost and driver hourly wage.

This opened the manager’s eyes once they figured that they have a minimum of a dozen drivers working on the day shift. 12 x $1800 per month folks, do the math.

I walked out of that meeting with a promise to have our scheduled customer base analyzed to see what more could be shifted to nights and a promise to give me the drivers I need to get that workload done.

I should have been a pimp.

Add to that the fact that I came home and find that Kim du Toit has linked to my post featuring pics of my Boomershoot rifle and I am nearly too happy to go to sleep so that I can wake up and try to do this all over again.

Since I don’t really have time to post much else than this I am going to hook you all up with some more music. This time, something from Soul Brother #1, James Brown.

This track is taken from the Love Power Peace live album, recorded at the Olympia Theater in Paris on March 8th, 1971 (9 months before I was born).

Here you go,

Super Bad –James Brown and the JB’s

Yesterday’s song will be kept available until 12AM Friday morning.