Opinions are like arseholes, everybody has one; the trouble starts when opinions are challenged. "…the only way you’ll get a decent job now is if you’re an immigrant or a…”
Credit where its due, Colin (we all knew it was Colin because he’d written his name on a small card and placed it in front of him for us all to see) stopped mid-sentence before delivering the coup de grâce that would have merely confirmed what we all suspected him to be, a racist. Not that he was alone. He was in a room with others who were also homophobic and misogynistic. What set Colin apart was that he was the first to show restraint. In the vacuum created by Colin’s abbreviated sentence our ‘driver trainer’ tried to wrestle back control of the group. Something he’d freely given up just two hours earlier when he said he’d welcome input from his captive audience. Sat at tables lined up on three sides of the room, are 27 participants of the mandatory Driver CPC course. It is also a Saturday, which seems to put everyone in a bad mood. It is one of the few times lorry drivers gather en masse. For seven of the next eight hours we are to have the fine detail of the Analogue and Digital Tachographs & Drivers Hours Regulations course shown to us on slides, which are then repeated word for word by our host for the day. I’ll call him Derek. Driver trainers tend to spend too long justifying their credentials, deliver time-honoured industry stories and provide a platform for lorry drivers to air their list of grievances. Derek fitted the bill perfectly. Gaz got the ball rolling with a query about the 24-hour working day and wondered if its best to start from midnight. Derek explained that every 24-hour period is best established at the beginning of his shift, say five o’clock, and to work from there to five o’clock the following morning. “That’s a lie in,” cut in Geoff with a twinkle in his eye, “I start at four most mornings – bloody silly o’clock.” A chuckle rippled through the masses bringing Derek light relief, he then took the opportunity to go through a lengthy yarn about starting at 3am and deploying the split-rest solution every day so he got three hours kip at midday, which was the punchline. A core of four or five delegates took up the mantle offering their experiences of early starts. The best of which was delivered by Mike: “I used to start driving again 20 minutes before I finished my last shift…” It was more than half an hour before we got back to the slide show. Then came Period of Availability. Only a few drivers actually used this but POA provided delegates with a chance to turn their ire towards warehouse and security staff where being an ethnic minority was clearly more of a problem to the drivers than being held up for hours on end. In the end both were treated with distain in equal measures. Looking uneasy, Derek decided not to challenge the casual racism and moved onto situations where POA is relevant. Either side of a coffee break the ponderous anecdotes turned to feckless transport managers and clerks, colleagues’ inadequacies, women in the workplace and fellow driver’s poor hygiene. As we got to graduated fixed penalties attention turned to the DVSA (Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency) highway officers. Here bile rose quickly in the throat as ‘these parasites’ were roundly condemned for being petty, ineffective, hiding up lanes ‘dogging’ or watching mucky DVDs as ‘Johnny Foreigner’ roared past busy watching their own mucky DVDs. After some brief mentions Brexit popped up in its entirety as several confirmed their unswerving allegiance to Nigel Farage and the debate moved swiftly to the flip-flop and white sock brigade, and those who came here looking for work. Colin’s brief outburst proved to be the final straw. It was Gaz who bravely stepped into the breach to counter the wildly unsubstantiated hearsay spoken as unalienable truths. He argued that the industry had to recruit from all walks of life as road haulage has a significant driver shortage problem that British middle-aged men alone cannot fill. Gaz added that being out of Europe isn’t going to help that. It opened the floodgates. Lee (although he might have been called Les as his handwriting was shockingly bad) took us back to warehouses and said that they are usually run as poorly as transport companies so expecting it to be anything to the contrary is simply unrealistic. He also said that bullying colleagues has no place in today’s society. Derek grew a pair and said that DVSA enforcement officers are only doing their job and will act if your boss is less than watertight or you have done something blatantly wrong, after all leaving the yard with a bald tyre is down to you. Another gentleman, with ‘Twat’ written on his card, suggested that we considered the wages (or peanuts as he described it) drivers get for working long hours for scrupulous eastern European hauliers. He added that we would not accept being holed up with a colleague for 24 hours a day seven days a week for a whole month cabotaging across this fetid isle. “It’s bad enough doing it on your own,” he concluded. As things looked likely to boil over Derek wisely sent us out for an early lunch and hoped the fresh air might help restore calm. I’ve been on 10 Driver CPC courses and this was by far the worst. I want to believe that it is the exception and not the norm. As Big Dave pointed out, the Driver CPC is an opportunity for people who don’t usually meet in large groups to interact. “Drivers,” he said, “are a solitary beast, allowing them to hunt in packs means the odd deer might get taken down.” To his credit it’s a fair analogy brought on by his love of Sir David Attenborough. The afternoon dragged. No one shared anecdotes, everyone avoided eye contact and focussed on Derek as he read the slides word for word. As the seventh hour clicked over we left quickly and quietly. The only consolation was that I won’t have another ‘seven hours tuition’ for another five years and by which time I will hopefully be retired.
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AuthorAging proletariat with face, teeth and body to prove it. Archives
August 2021
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