CHAPTER 21
(Facing The Kochy Monster Once again)
Prior to quitting Stan Koch and Sons Trucking I had made attempts of setting up employment with Crete Carrier. I had seen a good number of their trailers and had spoke with one of their drivers claiming to be on the "Criminal List". According to the Internet Crete Truck drivers were reporting annual wages a lot higher than the other companies and I always noticed that their equipment seemed new. The recruiter that Crete Carrier had set me up with was named Mike. Unfortunately Mike let me down and was sure to blow smoke up my ass which really pissed me off as Koch Trucking left me in purgatory for three days on their Harding street lot before I quit. They still to this day technically owe me three days layover pay and reimbursement for my flight ticket home but it didn't pan out that way of course. Nope quite the opposite. In fact, by the time I flew home to my mailing address there was mail from them begging for money for Cobra insurance. What a joke. But I have found pissed off employers ALWAYS have a history of doing that. If your last four weekly paychecks are getting low that you're forced to quit why on God's green Earth would you want to be wasting money on unnecessary things like Cobra insurance when you're weekly income had just been shut off? Stupid.
I could still replay the phone conversation with Mike on 06/22/2017 in the back of my mind.
"Hey Blake listen I ran everything through my boss I think everything looks good and I can get you a rental car so you can transfer over here out in Iowa."
"Okay great Mike."
"Most of the paperwork is done I just need to ask you a few more questions."
"Okay sure."
"You do have a Hazmat endorsement right?"
I thought surely this was about the most stupid question Crete carrier has EVER asked me. Wasn't the answer to that already listed in my application? Weren't they gonna just dump hazmat loads on me anyways whether I had that endorsement or not? Does Crete Carrier EVEN carry Hazmat loads?
I obviously had no choice but to surrender an honest reply.
There obviously would be no way for me to cover up a lie like that. In fact I even once told my brother the cop that how much time he could save running background checks on truckers trying to figure out if they were hot or not. No Hazmat? Hot.
Hazmat logo on DL? Not. Why waste time running reports?
"Why no Mike I don't have a hazmat endorsement. I can't say that I've ever seen you guys hauling hazmat loads."
Mike lied like a fully trained recruiter would. "All the time Blake, all the time. We haul hazmat loads all the time."
I played dumb despite knowing Mike was ostensibly bull shitting me. Was flour and noodles suddenly considered hazardous materials?
"Hey listen Blake. Everything looks good in your DAC and I really like to hire ya but I can't."
I was utterly confused. I told Mike I paid the extra $20 for flight insurance and my ticket could easily be canceled so I could pick up the rental car and head out to Iowa. Somebody back home over a thousand miles away evidently felt threatened by my new persona smiling "Bob Miller" which I thought was a genius way to hide from the payroll ladies preparing me for marriage and what life would be like if a "Mrs" stepped into my life and relieved them of duty.
"Well if my driving record looks good why can't ya hire me? I'm definitely not staying with these CIA wannabe people playing all these peek-a-boo games."
"Blake you previously stated earlier that you don't have a hazmat and for that very reason I can't hire you. I'm sorry but I'm out."
"Well okay then I guess I won't be canceling my flight."
It was all bullshit. Crete carrier was bullshit. Hazmat loads? Really?
09/09/2017
Obviously once again I was out thousands of dollars despite making a good move by moving out to Fort Wayne IN. While I was in Fort Wayne IN I eventually found a better hotel for just $25 extra a week with better hobo thwarting security. Western Express suckered me into going back to PA for their orientation but I was lied to about my pay and they tried to force me into doing flat bed. My dad has worked in a guard shack for the past seven years and says "the flat bed drivers are always the skinny ones". I pretty much know why. I don't care if it pays an extra $15,000 a year I ain't standing in the pouring rain alongside the highway with motorists zipping by splashing puddles at me while I try to tighten down those loads. Hell no. Not this lonely democrat! That's why they call it a "Dry" van that we haul.
It has been three months since I separated from Stan Koch Trucking and now I am sitting in their orientation once again as a re-hire and dubbed a "Re-Tread" by the company. There's only two reasons that I'm here again with the Kochy Monster. Diesel powered APUs and none of that Per diem nonsense that quells any possibilities of suitable retirement. I still know that these people are privacy encroaching assholes but Schneider Trucking still won't allow this Cinderella Man to squeeze into one of their pumpkins. And to make matters worse? This insidious company is still over $1,000.00 in unpaid wages from June!
But I'm a trained soldier. With all the job searching I have been doing over the years I know when to talk and when to shut up. I also know that these BillyBig Rigging companies have paperwork to support their "At Will Termination" to protect themselves when the boss man gets an ingrown hair tickling his butt the wrong way and goes off on a firing spree. Because I'm a re-hire I'm constantly peppered with questions by the new hires seeking employment with the CIA loving Kochy Monster. Naturally a Military friendly company and the safety director Dave is of course turning orientation into a boot camp.
The little man no bigger than a tic tac that lives inside my cranium does all the directing for me to get me through orientation without sticking out like a sore thumb. Blake, I know these people stole lots of money from you. I know they encouraged your privacy being invaded Blake, but use your brain as you are being watched. Stay positive Blake. Even if that means you have to lie and say nice things about those space invaders.
And that's exactly what I did as the new drivers asked many questions about what the Kochy Monster had in store for them. Were they a good company? Were they bias towards convicted felons that had already paid back their debt to society? What kind of loads did they have?
I was acing the orientation and lying to all the new hires as the Kochy Monster would want me to do to sucker them into employment with these CIA people. I told the new hires the loads were ALWAYS good and home time was NEVER late. What a downright lie but I was desperate for hire!
It was day three of orientation and I was getting very close to climbing into one of their trucker cycles once again so I could set the thermostat to Blake mode (60 degrees). The orientation Director Dave was starting to get on my nerves a bit by his jowl twitching that he always did to signal me that I was saying something stupid that could subsequently red flag me. But due to the fact that I believe firmly in the first amendment I was starting to feel a certain way about it and I'm sure the nationwide nine9 acting agency would agree with me. I didn't care if the orientation class was getting creeped out as I rehearsed my upcoming lines as PennyWise the Clown from the newly revised upcoming "IT" movie. Unlike these other boring tobacco spitting sleeveless weirdos I had a life on the side.
Dave wanted to know what I had been doing for the past three months since I left them. Did I stand in front of a mirror each night wearing women's underwear and rehearse my lines for my acting career? What was Blakey up to for those three months off the grid? Was he still selling sand castles in the desert and doing ninja warrior kicks all night long in a hookers backyard trying to impress her with his Gi-Joe pants?
I quoted my PennyWise lines in front of the orientation class with no shame. No way in hell was Bill Skagard gonna steal the role of PennyWise from me! I was paying my monthly agency fees!
I said it just as creepy as PennyWise had in the first "IT" movie. "Would you like a balloon Eddie?"
Nobody was impressed. I said it once more for good measure but as I looked at the polo shirts around the room I realized it was all bad timing. My recruiter had flown me out back to Minnesota at a bad time. Some of these Billy Big Riggers had the potential to become super truckers. I wasn't among a bunch of sleeveless,toothless, can't find my last paycheck from Mickey Dee's crowd like 2016. I should have asked my recruiter to wait until the next pajama crowd came through so I would look more desirable for hire. No slipping through the cracks this time. Oops. Oh well.
Our show pony orientation was completely unfair because I didn't have my $40.00 Chaps shirt to woo the Kochy Monster's personnel. I had in actuality took TWO flights on the day they flew me back to Minnesota. Two flights from coast to coast!
Previous to returning to the Kochy Monster I had spent three weeks in Las Vegas and was out there to witness Floyd "Money" Mayweather to go 50-0 when he shut down Conner Mcgregor in round 10. Things had happened while I was out there. The fight never aired at Ceasars Palace Casino. In fact there was a 15 minute delay in the airing causing for much frustration. Despite having $2,000.00 in wagers on the fight I still to this day have never seen the fight other than about thirty seconds on YouTube. I clearly remember a very much confused crowd at Ceasars Palace casino curious as to why the Queen came around with the remote and personally made sure the Conner Mcgregor fight never aired on the big screens.
Ironically the fight somehow aired at a Mickey Mouse casino known as Valley Forge casino adjacent to King Of Prussia mall in PA. So why were Las Vegas Casinos refusing to air the fight? What or "who" was disrupting their system? Had the Manny PAC fight the year before also not made it to the big screen at Ceasars Palace?
Because I had been abducted right from Philadelphia Airport to head back west after my three weeks in Vegas obviously my ward robe of clean laundry was limited. On the last day of orientation I found myself wearing a tshirt I found to be slightly a little too tight for my liking that I had purchased at a closing Sears store in New Jersey. It had a picture of three ferocious wolves gloating with a big American flag in the background and the tshirt read "Freedom". I don't know if my t- shirt was misconstrued as "The Lone Wolf" that DC always warns us about but I soon found myself in the office of Mr. John S. sitting at his desk with my paperwork. I could tell something was amiss. He reminded me a lot of the heavy white collared "Bob" that sent me packing when I tried to get my job back at PTL before coming out to these Vikings in the first place. At least Bob was clever about it and claimed I had forgotten to list a minor backing incident in my application to prevent me from feeling discriminated against concerning my criminal background. Philly never played into these "Peek-A- Boo" peoples shit and I was always getting letters in the mail asking for me to join in on a class action lawsuit because qualified criminals were being discriminated against because of their colorful background histories. As if the welfare population isn't high enough in Philly half the city would be unemployed and draining the system if these "Peek-A-Boo" thumpers couldn't equate Romans 3:23 into their hiring calculating systems.
John was having an awfully hard time proving his discriminating intentions had any irrefutable evidence to give any weight to his opinions. He reminded me a lot of the big fat "Penguin" warden we had at Allenwood that refused freelance writer Seamus Mcgraw to come interview me while I was upstate. I'll never forget how excited "The Penguin" got when Allenwood had plans of taking something away from us and opted to give us something in return. The warden had removed our mandated t-shirt requirement for the yard and all the fellas could sun tan in the yard and compliment each others titties.
This guy sure looked and talked just like the Penguin. And he was making no sense!
He pushed a white envelope with a plane ticket in it towards my direction.
"Blake I'm sending you home. We don't feel you're ready at this time."
"Why? Did I not already give you guys an impeccable 14 months of employment?"
"It's beside the issue. You're criminal background check didn't clear."
I was confused. I sugarcoat on my aps but I never flat out fib. "It cleared before. What crime? Are you referring from 2005?"
"Yes I believe so."
"Great so then you're aware that the law says an occupational license cannot be removed if a crime is over ten years old. It's 2017. Been 13 years almost."
"Doesn't matter we're an at will termination."
I had one last one for this slimy piece of shit that suddenly had an interest in my ding dong but no paper work to bolster his opinions.
"Well I'm just curious of this crime you speak of. Are you able to prove that my actions in 2005 caused anyone but myself any detriment?"
John didn't answer. He was being a dick just like Bob had been over at PTL. I knew he didn't like me. I've met his jealous kind plenty of times in life.
I patiently waited for him to come up with an argument but he had none. I was already speculating in my mind what had possibly happened. Had my name changing stalkers violated laws and used paper and ink to go to town with defamation of character infringement? Did all this sudden brakes being slapped on me have to do with John's comments he made earlier in orientation about being confronted by an attorney with a pile of paperwork to intimidate him?
I suddenly remembered John S. telling our orientation about how things usually played out when an attorney comes to town. John earlier admitted to us that he was recently accosted by an attorney asking a lot of questions about a driver. John had told our class that he already had been through the drill many times and he even imitated for us all how the drill went. "And then the attorney handed me a bunch of papers to leaf through and asked me to look through them so I did. He then asked me if I would have still hired that person if I would have previously stumbled upon these papers and I told him no."
John was done talking with me and I had no choice but to grab the plane ticket. I knew Western Express (Grid Iron Express) would take me back with welcoming arms but with the years of experience I felt over qualified to jump onto their prison bus and sit in their weak air conditioned orientations. Even for good measure Western Express started us off each morning with prison scare tactics to keep us straight by giving us the official jail house brown paper bag breakfast each morning that was probably donated by extras from Allentown prison. The recruiters at Western Express couldn't spell if their life depended on it and everyone in the trucking industry pretty much said the same thing about the grid iron company. "If you working at Western Express you either one of two things. You really hot with a dire prison record or you one hell of a bad driver!"
In fact my mother told me that Western Express was trying very hard to recruit me prior to me initially resigning from the Kochy Monster. I could still hear me giggling over the phone while I could picture those Western Express trucks I used to see EVERY Friday morning flipped over along side the highway shoulders showing off their under carriages as if they were armadillos! It's no secret that the Brotha man don't play when those weekly paychecks don't go properly through. I still remember giggling to my mother. "Who did you say called?
Was it West Side or Western Express?" A pause. "It think it was Western Express" I giggled. "Don't return the call mom. It's no big secret out here. Of the thousand trucking companies out here Western Express is always gonna remain at the bottom."
It was hard to believe that after putting a fur coat on the Kochy
Monster they would a year and a half later take a sudden interest in my pee pee but it was truly happening!
The plane was set for flight early the next morning so they wouldn't have to feed me breakfast but at least I was smart enough not to purchase my OWN ticket home this time. I didn't know it at the time but there are actually laws now that a company is required to purchase your way home. I think the only exception that excludes this law is if you give them a hot urine.
When I got back to the hotel in Minneapolis I was sure to write one of the part owners of the company a letter that I would never mail anyways. I was sure to include a cute little quote at the end as I'm not one to scrawl out a Bible Verse.
Dear Mrs. Connie Koch, Never forget about that dirty little penny that managed to slip through the cracks only for you to rub it off later to find out it was indeed a dime.
The letter never got mailed. It made for good entertainment for the cleaning lady.