Let me just tell you about this.
Right before Chris came home at Thanksgiving he got a message over his Qualcomm letting drivers know about a bonus they were giving. The bonus was for anyone wanting to stay out on the roads over the Christmas holidays in exchange for $$. I knew we would be driving to my dads house and knew he wouldn't really want to spend his home time driving, so I said go for it!
He would be home for New Years and we get some extra cash! Yes please!
Well, now this is where is gets aggravating. Apparently while Chris was home in November, a message was sent out that the cutoff to get your name on the list for the bonus was December 1st. Since he was at home, he didn't get that message. When he contacted his dispatcher to change his home time, the guy made NO mention that it was past the cutoff time.
Chris stayed out at Christmas. Sat for nearly 3 days. For those of you that aren't truckers, when your truck is stopped, you don't make money. He doesn't get paid by the hour. There is no pay. Period.
Fast forward to last week. Chris called payroll to check on the Christmas bonus we thought he was getting. Payroll informed him that the bonus would be paid this coming week but that he should have gotten an authorization number from his dispatcher.
UGH.
Of course his dispatcher is playing dumb to the whole thing.
What is most upsetting to me is that not that the money, but rather that he missed Christmas with his kids. We celebrated when he got home of course, but it just wasn't the same. We made a sacrifice thinking it would be best for the family, but it feels like a big ol' slap in the face to me.
And because if you got to the end of this post without dying from boredom, you deserve a prize!
Yes I know this isn't a REAL prize. It's a store. But I thought it fit right into this post.
2 people had something to say:
I can't tell you how many holidays The Evil Overlord and I worked through over the years. Promises of bonuses and plenty of freight fell as flat as Kate Hudson.
It took us a while to learn the lesson that you learned on the first go around. There is simply not enough freight to go around on the holidays. No one is on the assembly lines, and no one is loading any trucks.
The only people "working" are the few truckers who have been suckered into believing they'll be staying busy.
In short, only work through a holiday if you were already planning to do so. Not that I have to tell you that now.
Todd McCann
https://twitter.com/ToddMcCann
http://abouttruckingjobs.wordpress.com
It wasn't so much of being promised lots of freight as it was just being told he would get a bonus. We kind of figured he would be sitting for a couple of days anyway. Sitting through the holidays AND not getting a bonus was a slap in the face.
His dispatcher not telling him that the cutoff for signing up was also wrong. Chris let he know his intent for requesting the change and his FM did nothing to let him know he was too late to qualify for the bonus.
His FM is now avoiding him like the plague.
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