True Confessions of a Truck Racist...

I hate semi trucks. They're huge, menacing, and make me ridiculously nervous whenever I have to drive behind or next to them. I live in constant fear that a freak gust of wind will come blowing over the freeway one day and push one of those monsters over onto me and my poor little minivan. Irrational? Maybe.

But then I actually have to drive next to one and then I think NO! Absolutely not! That thing is going to kill me!

I know that those huge trucks serve a good, useful, even vital purpose. I know that they're used to cart vital supplies cross country, there and back again, as the Hobbits would say. But can't they drive on their own roads? Or during a time of day that's NOT when I'm on the road? Maybe it's my natural paranoia kicking in, but I just can't trust them! It's not the drivers--mostly. I know a few things about what most of those drivers are like. I just don't trust that crazy, ginormous machine barreling down the freeway at 70 miles an hour.

I am not entirely ignorant of this work field. No, I've never actually driven one of those hulking beasts, but I worked in a call center for Flying J's in-house gas card company, TCH (before the company went bankrupt). I took inbound calls from truck stop cashiers, the truck drivers themselves, AND from their bosses--known as carriers. I took care of various customer service calls. Authorizing gas purchases, verifying card numbers, and fixing any bugs or problems that came up. Most of the carriers were really pleasant to deal with--mainly because I was very good at not screwing up and fixed their problems the first time every time. The cashiers were mostly polite. We had a few grouches calling in, and there were one or two who were so nice they could make my day when they called in.

However, the truck drivers were their own spectrum of humanity. We had the quiet ones, who just called in and got their authorization numbers and that was all I ever heard from them. We had the lonely ones, those who spent WAY too much time in those trucks and were in desperate need of another human to talk to for as long as they could keep me on the phone. Then there were the ones that were genuinely kind and friendly, but didn't overstep any boundaries of appropriate conversation.

Then there were the select few who seriously creeped all of us customer service girls out. There was one who always made sure he got one specific girl on the phone every time he called. Her name was Anne. I was on a training call for one of these incidents, so I was able to hear everything this guy said--though he couldn't hear me. This was a good thing, since I was seriously freaking out. This guy had figured out the general location of the main office where we worked, and kept inviting Anne out for dinner. He said: "I'm going to be in your area this week, do you like The Olive Garden? You should meet me there..." This was not his first attempt to get Anne to meet up with him, and this call was the last straw for her. She was terrified, but didn't know what to do. Finally our supervisor, who knew about the situation, saw what was going on and took the phone from her. He spoke: "This is Kyle, can I help you?" And the guy hung up. After that, Kyle convinced Anne to go to the person who took care of such situations, as as far as I know, she took care of it from there.

I had a guy who decided that he needed to creep me out too, for a while. Since we always answered with our name: "TCH, this is Candice, how can I help you?" This guy said: "Candice, what I nice name. You know there's a song with your name in it." The first time he said this, I just said something neutral but friendly, like: "Oh really? That's interesting." And then turned the conversation back to the customer service call. But the more he called in, the more he would bring up this song, he even called once just to play that song for me over the phone. I didn't recognize it, but then he came back on the phone and said: "Yeah, I'll just put that song on in my truck and play it over and over again and think about you."

This was the final straw for me. I reported him to the appropriate people and apparently he was a multiple offender, so apparently he got fired. I didn't even feel bad about it.

Anyway, this has gone off on a bit of a tangent. The point here is, I can't help but be completely distrustful of those 18-wheeled trucks. Maybe that makes me a jerk, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who's a jerk about this. Those things are scary! The end.