Otherside,
You are assumming, naively I believe that the management personnel at my location are a direct reflection of you're experience with management.....how could you possibly comment on what the management structure here will do without having ever been exposed to them?......I've told everyone from the center manager, Division Manager and BA that I will not sheet packages as CLOH from now on....my intentions were never malicious (as I have stated repeatedly) in using CLOH.....admitting guilt in a local hearing (in which every single word is planned to be used against the hourly at the panel) is highly suspect at least in my experience here.....(I hope you don't plan to say otherwise, since as far as I know you have never been at this location).....having said that I recognize that my behavior is the cause of the problem... that was never the question... the question in my mind is "Why should it be perfectly acceptable to management to allow me to use this method for 5 years while it profits them (good numbers on center reports) only to turn around and crucify me for doing the very same thing at a later date?......is management not held accountable for anything or is it only the hourlies that are..... maybe you can answer that for me since you seem to have the correct reply for everything.
Let me begin by addressing the management first. As another poster said on this thread earlier, sometimes too much power can corrupt the dumbest supervisor and end up costing the company more money in wasted manpower over a really stupid issue that could be handled in 5 seconds.
This is usually the case. I am no fan of management by any stretch and if you have ever read my positions, you will know that I believe most of them are not capable of running the business at the center levels.
That being said, this isnt the case at hand. Your supervisory crew is NOT responsible for your actions. YOU ARE. Plain and simple.
There are lots of drivers out there making big mistakes, some intentionally, some unintentionally, but there isnt one (1) management person looking over everything all the time and those mistakes can go un-noticed for years. Its called learned behaviors.
A learned behavior is something that is done repeatedly, goes unchecked and becomes "normal", that is, until a problem starts.
You have practiced "learned behaviors" by sheeting CLO H and no one bothered you about it, so you believe its ok to do so. However, now that a problem arose, that learned behavior got you in trouble and you want to plead some sort of ignorance to proceedures.
That just doesnt fly.
It could be that you went to the stop, shook the door and turned around and walked back to the truck, but there is one nagging question...Why not try the side door that you had knowledge about? Why now do you acknowledge a side entrance?
There are many things at fault in your case, the customer should burden some blame as well,
I dont believe the punishment fits the crime in this case, but I think you may have stirred a hornets nest by your attitude with your manager. Lots of guys think they have the balls to confront their managers in an agressive manner, but mostly they end up getting castrated.
I believe you will get your job back, as you should. You will be nothing more than an example for others to look at.
This is how the business is run now. The union has weakened our positions with this last contract and we are paying for it. (collectively)
As for management not being held accountable, well thats the million dollar question. There are plenty of idiots in positions of "management", trust me, ive seen hundreds come and go.
The problem I have with them is this, they dont manage anything. They are merely robots who follow some other idiots orders to the letter to the detriment to the company.
They have no decision making authority. They do what they are told even though they know they will impact the business negatively. Where I am, they are given the dispatch order each morning for the number of trucks to run for the day by IE. IE doesnt have the first clue about cube space, piece count, area knowledge, traffic patterns, mileage, pickups or any other aspect of the days operation. There only concern is a certain number of stops on the car to meet some unrealistic goal in order to blow smoke up some other management persons Keister. At the center level, the center manager's dont have the ability to question the dispatch and merely chop the routes and wait for the impending disaster.
Then, cars end up with over 200 stops a day plus pickups in 110 degree heat and at 6 oclock at the NDA relay, there are 33 trucks with over 60 stops each remaining for the day and a handful of pickups missed because they lack the cube space to cover them.
Hey, but IE got the magic number of stops on the cars for the day!! Too bad they cost the company twice the amount of money it would have cost to run the business for the day.
For the record, ive seen my share of "new sheriffs in town" managers who's ego's were bigger than the gut they lugged around..so nothing youve seen could be any worse.
Your case should have been a simple one, how it got to the point to where it is, is another million dollar question.
At any rate, at some point you will get your job back. There is no dishonesty involved here without absolute proof you were not at that address when you closed the stop. However, even with gps, a driver could go to a stop, pull a door, scan a pkg, place a clo1 on the diad screeen, NOT hit stop complete, leave a note and drive away to the next location only to realize he didnt stop complete the previous stop, then hits the stop complete and it appears as if it was stopped completed somewhere else.
This doesnt make a dishonesty case. There are many reasons that this can happen, distractions mostly, but it happens.
Your BA should be in the ear of the division manager everyday trying to make this case go away. Ive been involved with guys who have been fired 4 or 5 times who always got the job back, so its not impossible.
Just take my advice and accept your errors and agree to change the way you conduct business. Lose the attitude and humble down.
Good luck,
on you.
