It must be me.

Posted on 22-12-2004

It’s a good thing we’re taking a break between Christmas and new years’ because everyone tells me I have an attitude problem. Today, I was told I had an attitude when I asked a driver to move his truck off the fuel island. He was there after I fueled and updated my logbook while I waited for him to move. The guy behind me waited for him too. I finally went in, got my receipt and he passed me with food he had heated in the truck stop microwave. By the time I got back outside, he was still sitting there. I asked him to move and he said he would be even longer. I ended up backing up from the fuel island. A week ago I asked a team if they could move from the fuel island but they were busy eating their cereal and ignored me as I stood next to their truck. I was probably yelling too because they wouldn’t even roll down the window to speak to me. Then, Cindy was waiting for a shower and a truck kept being paged over the loudspeaker to move from the fuel island. The guy next to her said that was his truck, he thought he could get in and out real quick.

Did I miss the memo about how parking on the fuel island is okay? Can someone forward that to me? When did inconveniencing everyone else not become selfish and rude, but acceptable?

Today seemed like my day to piss everyone off. I was going a little above the speed limit (for trucks) when I put my signal on to pass a slow car. The left lane was clear when I moved over. I get halfway into the other lane and a Z28 gets over in the left lane to go around. I see him, but he’s going so fast, I stop halfway in the left lane and he goes around me on the left shoulder. As he’s getting off at the next exit he slows down enough to let me know, I’m number one! He was going really, really fast and dangerous and I’m the one that gets flipped off?

I was also informed that I take advantage of people. This, from a person we take out to dinner at least once during our stay which I think is only right, since we stay in their spare bedroom that has Cindy’s furniture and TV, where the cats sleep and I’m pretty sure they keep the litter box when we’re not there, even though I’m allergic to cats. But I’m taking advantage of them. I guess it’s because I’m kicking the cats out of their bedroom the couple of days a month that we’re there.

Then I’m told on the CB to “get over it”, when I’m complaining about the guy in front of me emptying his piss bottle onto the fuel island, right where I’m going to step in. This was the same truck that ignored me while they ate on the fuel island. A lot of my coworkers disgust me beyond nausea and they are the same ones that complain no one will let them park on their property. It’s the reason when I’m delivering to a mall I have to show proof to the tin star security guard that I actually have a delivery there.

I haven’t been driving for very long compared to some of these old guys, but even I’ve noticed more people parking on the fuel island for a long, long time. Parking illegally, from either laziness or they can’t park or back their trucks or both. Someone, please help me on that one! We stopped to get fuel at a Flying J in PA last night and you could barely get to the fuel island from all the trucks parked illegally, not actually on the fuel island, but in the way so you couldn’t get to the fuel island, when there were plenty of parking spaces in the back of the lot.

While I’m on pet peeves, what’s up with voice mail? It’s not one person, it seems like it’s everyone that I have to deal with that’s in an office. Why do I bother to leave a message when the person isn’t going to call me back? I get tired of waiting and call that person again when they answer the phone. I have to start my entire story again, when if they would have heard my message, even if they didn’t call back they would know why I was calling. I suppose they think if they call back, I might be driving and they don’t want to distract me and cause me to wreck. Everyone gets a pass on that one! I’m only leaving a message to hear my own voice, so don’t bother to call me back. Am I the only one these things happen to?

Maybe I do need break to think about my attitude.