This is one of those cases of management blindly doing what the client wants, never thinking that maybe they should check with the employee who actually does the work every single day.
You’d think they’d learn, but apparently that’s too much to ask.
OP drives a delivery truck and had an unhappy customer.
After I left active duty service, serving onboard a ship, all I wanted to do is drive, so in 1999 I got a driving job delivering meat in Southern California.
It was a tough job, dealing with traffic and my schedule was always tight with 16-20 deliveries each day to local markets. I was mostly given inner city routes with markets with limited space for mid-size delivery trucks.
One of my weekly stop was a small market owned and run by an Iraqi immigrant, I will call him “Ali”, Ali was always scheduled to be my 5th, or 6th stop and would always complain to me why I would show up that late (after 9 am each time), he said he wanted to the first one of the day.
I told him I knew he opened each day after 8:00 am each weekday and that I start my route at about 6:15 am, plus I don’t schedule my route, if he wanted to make sure he was the first delivery of the day, he would have to call “Steve” our delivery route supervisor.
That unhappy customer called his boss, and OP was told to deliver to that customer first.
Ali in fact called Steve, because the very next week I received special instructions that read: Make sure Ali’s Market is your first delivery of the day.
I had my normal amount of stops that day, about 18 and I knew they all will be pushed back at least 2 hours because I knew Ali won’t open until 8 am and he will not open the rear door until an hour later…the rear door was for deliveries and trash bin access.
OP said ok, even though he knew it would cost him hours of work.
I began driving at my usual time, I arrived at Ali’s market 15 minutes later, Ali’s market is closed, I had my orders, I will make sure Ali’s market is the first one of the day.
I park and wait. 8:00 came and Ali shows up, he drives his old Benz around the back of my truck and parks, and walks inside thru the back door.
I wait for him to open the front and he ignores me, he was busy pretending to supervise the cashier,intentionally ignoring me, so I walk to the meat counter on the back, the guy tells me he was not allowed to take deliveries, that I had to wait for Mr. Ali.
At this point I could have gone to make two or three deliveries and then return, but I had my very specific order.
The guy was a jerk, to boot.
As I was walking towards the front to exit the market, I grabbed a newspaper, paid for it, and then told Ali, who was just standing there looking at me, “let me know when you are ready to take your order, you know where I parked.”
Ali didn’t say a word, he was apparently taking revenge for all these years for his small city market not being the #1 priority of a meat distributor who delivered beef, pork, chicken, cheese and other refrigerated products from over 12 distribution points throughout the United States.
Steve arrived to his desk right after 10 am, the first thing he saw on his computer screen was an alert of my truck sitting inert for 4 hours.
He called me all in a rage, demanding I explain to him why my truck was sitting for all that time, I explained that I was following his order to make sure I deliver to Ali’s market first.
But he got his in the end.
Steve hung up and called Ali, whatever Steve told Ali made Ali to get his whinny butt out of his crappy little market and take delivery of his meat order, about 14 boxes of product, if I recall correctly.
I then began to rush through the rest of my stops, not wasting time at all and at the end of my day I was the last driver back to the warehouse. I got an extra $80 on overtime because Ali cried for not being the first delivery of the day.
I never returned to see Ali again, apparently we dropped his whinny butt as a customer.
Funny how that magic happens.
Not everyone is so awful, though.
Narcissism runs rampant.
This person couldn’t resist writing their own ending.
But this person liked the original.
This guy totally screwed himself over.
I hope that one day of gloating was worth it.
If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.