On The Move

You should have heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Trucker household the last two days...and THAT was just Mr. Trucker. I think he'd rather have a root canal with a rusty butter knife and no anesthesia than pack up and move. His procrastination gland was acting up something fierce yesterday; consequently we didn't finish loading the U-Haul and had to sleep on the floor. I'd rather have that root canal than sleep on the floor. Ugh!

Today, I had to have a laser procedure on my left eye, so we took some time out for that and finished loading up. It's hard to believe we have so much stuff after we already once went through the process of "downsizing" from a four bedroom house to a little two bedroom apartment. It only makes us more determined to pare, pare pare. We really want to embrace a minimalist lifestyle once we come off the road for good. I think it goes without saying that we'll be living minimally in the truck!

I had my first two comments, which thrilled me no end! Of course one of them was my big brother, does that still count? But the other comment was anonymous and filled with the cynicism that could only come from someone who's been around the block a few times in this trucking industry game. My commenter pointed out that he'll be surprised if Mr. Trucker's employer actually pays him for his week of vacation (which is also, as I pointed out in my last post, his last actual paid week working for them). Well, we have yet to see if they'll pay him, which they darn well better! However, they have managed to screw us over in another matter.

Apparently, if you don't give two weeks' notice when leaving one trucking company to go to another, it goes down as a black mark on your DAC report, some "blacklist" that trucking companies keep on drivers to keep you from committing some big no-no and then trying to just go work someplace else. So, we give two weeks' notice, the final week of which is Mr. Trucker's legitimate paid vacation, which he has coming to him, and which was scheduled prior to his giving his notice. Furthermore, Mr. Trucker took time on Monday, the first day of his vacation, to drive 30 miles to the terminal to hand over his keys and his Driver Reference Guide and be "processed" out, thinking he was being a nice guy and letting them have their truck early, rather than waiting till the following Monday, which would have been his last official day of employment. Mind you, none of this time is paid, as trucker's generally only get paid for the miles that truck is in motion.

So what does said company do? They put him down as terminating on Monday the 21st and cancel our health insurance as of that date, even though he is on the payroll until the 30th. We didn't find this out until today when we arrived at the eye doctor to have my laser procedure, the second of a two part procedure (the right eye was done two weeks ago) and by the way, this is NOT Lasix, but a surgery for a pre-glaucoma condition. When Mr. Trucker called the benefits department at his company, they confirmed that they are no longer deducting for his health insurance and that it cancelled on the 21st, the day he is listed as exiting. This is just wrong! He gave a two week notice, as expected, and his last day will be the 30th, so he just happened to turn his truck in early as a favor to them. It made us think he shouldn't have given notice at all, but then he would have gotten the big black mark on his DAC report, so it's like they screw you either way!

I'd love to write more, but I'm riding in a bumpy U-Haul, as we take our stuff up north, and the light is fading fast. We will store our belongings at our "cottage", and I use that term in a very loose sense, as it is nothing more than an OLD beat-up trailer with windows that don't seal, a floor that slants, and little critters living in it...but the garage is big and well-built. Basically, a typical Wisconsin cottage: A wonderful garage filled with boats but a trailer for living in.