Trucker and his "package"

[Really]

I was just reading a story that reminded me of something that happened back in my Red Circles of Doom days.

This must have happened when I was 19 or 20. What makes it worse is I'm just shy of 30, and last week I was teaching in a local high school and got stopped by another teacher thinking I was a student. I had to show my drivers license and call the teacher I was working with to come vouch for me that I really wasn't a student. So yeah I'm almost 30 and can pass at 16/17 think about how young I looked at 20. It wasn't uncommon for people to stop and ask me "Do you need me to call CPS? You are far too young to be working this early/late."

Anyways back to my story.

I was working in the clothing department one weekday morning. I was the first person in and was taking care of some reshop from the night before when this guy calls me over to the work out clothing in the men's department. At first nothing seemed off, just normal questions on how things fit, if we carried any shorts in just plain spandex, and then came the question that started making me uncomfortable. "What size do you think I am?"

I'm 20 and very very extremely naive. I led a very sheltered life and even my friends in high school made sure I kept a lot of my innocence for a good reason. So now I have this guy about shoving his butt in my face asking me sizes. I quickly just told him a medium because at this point I wanted to run, but customer service is a top priority,I just got a small promotion and didn't want to mess it up. So I just kept a smile on my face and kept answering his questions. Then the guy knocked over a rack of shorts. So here I am on my hands and knees cleaning stuff up and I hear "How do you think these would fit?". I look up to see this guy with a pair of spandex shorts on with a raging bulge happening and him holding the shorts in question right where I couldn't miss it.

I quickly excused myself, and the guy bolted out of the store. I got a hold of security to let them know what happened, and thankfully they took care of it all. Guess this wasn't the first time it happened and he was a truck driver that came in every few weeks. I was not there the day they served him with trespassing papers but I heard about it later that evening. He claimed it never happened and security had a very cross words as they hauled him outside.

These days I would have looked at his "package" and started laughing (which has happened and another story that is not retail related). I still can't understand what causes these perverts to get off on things like that. So yeah. Beware of guys in spandex shorts and beware of any that try to show off their "package" to you.

[ADeMartino]

Long-haul truck drivers are, by definition, a fairly isolated bunch. I mean, they climb into the cab of a truck and drive hundreds of miles at a stretch, sleep in the cabs of their trucks, eat fast food all the damned time, and often don't have a great deal of social interaction. Some of them don't even really have a 'home', per se. Their truck IS their home.

And while it's not true of ALL truck drivers, some people don't handle that sort of isolation well. They fall into a pattern of behavior that 'regular' people would find repulsive.

I briefly worked in a heavy-truck dealership, and got to see some of this stuff firsthand. Again, I'll mention that this was only a fairly small portion of the truck drivers the shop dealt with - by NO means the majority. The state of some of the trucks that were in the shop for repair was appalling..

One driver had pulled the rubber boot at the base of the shifter back, and was using the hole over the transmission to relieve himself. It was fairly evident, too - the mechanic refused to work on the truck because the transmission was covered with.... well, dried piss and shit, and the entire truck smelled like a Louisiana outhouse at the height of summer. I mean, to get anywhere near it induced a gag reflex. I WISH I was kidding.

One fellow brought his truck in for repairs, but unfortunately, he was seriously behind on the payments. The shop was ordered by the bank to seize the truck for repossession. The (ex-) owner simply walked away, forcing us to have to clean the truck out. And it was stuffed with loads of 'adult' material. Not the typical fare, either. This was some of the raunchiest, nastiest stuff you could imagine. We suspect he picked it up in Mexico, because I'm fairly certain it wasn't legal in the US. Amongst all this we found some fairly explicit love letters to..... himself. With photos. Of himself. Wearing clothing of BOTH genders. And certain accessories. Apparently he'd write a letter (to himself) in one gender, then 'reply' in the opposite. There were some pretty off-color 'stories', too.

Some of these guys have no concept of social norms at all. The customer lounge was just down the hall from the mechanics' lunchroom (which I also used for MY lunch). It was not uncommon to walk into the break room and find a customer rifling through the mechanics' lunches - and being utterly remorseless about it. Management, in its infinite complacency, refused to put a lock on the that break room door.

The customer lounge had a television and DVD player. The service desk had a fairly large selection of movies the drivers could 'check out' and watch while they waited for the truck to be repaired - but several times a month, some driver would instead pop a disc into the player from his OWN collection. I think you know the direction this is going, but I don't think you realize HOW far it goes. We'd get complaints about the material on the TV, yes.... but on at least two occasions, we got complaints about what the driver who provided the disc was doing while watching it. Please don't make me elaborate on that further.

One several occasions, a customer would wander in who hadn't bothered to shower in probably MONTHS. Hey, I get that it might be a day or two between opportunities to wash yourself, but truck stops have public showers, and indeed, the DEALERSHIP provided showers, towels, and even a free washer and dryer that the customers could avail themselves of while they waited for for their trucks to be repaired. And yet, they'd sit in the lounge in their horrible stench, sometimes for two or three days (some repairs just can't be completed in two or three hours). Some would go to a hotel for the night, only to come back the next day still wearing the funky rags they had on the day before.

One fellow had is entire family in his truck with him. Seriously. Himself, his wife, and two children, one of which wasn't even four years old. They were LIVING in that truck, and it was absolutely stuffed with all manner of belongings and trash. I wanted to call child services on this guy, but management insisted I 'stay out of it'. I still kick myself to this day for not calling it in anyway.

And then there were the ones that were just.... creepy. Not overtly so, like the ones I've already described, but if you dealt with them, even for just a minute or two, you'd get a vibe that things were... askew. With a couple of them, I could chalk it up to drugs or 'energy' pills, but the others..... brrrrr.

Just a sampler......

[xxscooterxx]

Geez. And I thought my former stepdad was a pervy trucker for finding old ladies in hell-mart and asking them if they sold edible panties.

[Argabarga]

And they say I'm abnormal for a truck driver....... then again, I'm not OTR, and only ever had to use a logbook twice.

[ImmBarb]

I used to have a CB radio in my car. You wouldn't believe the BS and sick sex stories some truckers would just sit there and pour out. Nothing to do but turn off the radio until they were done.

[ADeMartino]

I used to have a CB radio in my car. You wouldn't believe the BS and sick sex stories some truckers would just sit there and pour out.

Yes I would. CB radio was, in some ways, the internet of its day. Anonymity coupled with some seriously f*cked-in-the-head people, and no regard for others. And all you needed was about $100 or so for a radio and an antenna to get started.

[purple]

I wish this suprised me but I grew up in a freight yard. Even with drivers trying to censor it around me I know just how sleazy they can be.

Glad he got treaspassed though. yay for security doing something.

[ImmBarb]

The 'good guy' truckers would tell them to shut up and "time to go home, buddy" but you know with sick minds like that they had nothing to go home to.

[Seshat]

Why, oh why do these people pick the sheltered ones to do this to? It's not fair on them.

(sigh) Yes, I know. Because those of us who are more 'adult' are just going to roll our eyes and pull some Mae-West-ish snarky insult at them. They won't get the 'OMG' reaction they're apparently looking for.

But don't they realise they're genuinely scaring/freaking out the sheltered ones?
(Girls OR boys - I know it gets done to sheltered boys as well as girls.)

[XCashier]

But don't they realise they're genuinely scaring/freaking out the sheltered ones?

I'm sure they do know, but don't care as long as they can get their jollies off of someone else and not get in trouble for it. I hate creeps and pervs.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Should just have taken a look at him... 'hmm sir,you appear to be extra small or a small at best.'

[prjkt]

Or, "you should see a doctor about that"

[Sleepwalker]

Because the savvy ones will fight back. It's no different from a short change artist int hat way- he's trying to scam an employee into doing something they shouldn't, in this case, putting up with his inappropriate behavior.

[Zheuse]

As a Long Haul truck driver, I run into that type all too often. Guys advertising over the CB about their "lady friend" in the truck with them offering company to lonely drivers, guys who smell worse than a loaded cattle trailer, and some far worse.

I have seen such bad behavior that I can understand how truckers got the bad rap they have in most places. It can be hard being almost completely without human contact for weeks at a time. I usually stay out 8 weeks then go home for a week or two. Sucks that I cant be home more often. There are ways to compensate for it, but a lot of drivers don't even try to socialize with normal people anymore. I spent time on the phone with my wife, 4yo daughter, and skype with them using my tablet when I am not driving. I have a laptop with games and wifi in my truck. That is about all that keeps me from going Heath Ledger crazy.

The job wears you down pretty badly sometimes. We have to deal with tons of ID10T's in 4 wheelers cutting us off, and if something bad happens, it is the truck driver that gets blamed even if it wasn't our fault. (I once got a ticket for allowing a car to tailgate me). We have to follow so many different rules that I dont know any driver that has them all memorized. We have to deal with shippers and receivers that treat us like scum, cops that harass us for no reason, people who ignore us while we are on the road. This morning alone I had 3 different cars in 2 different states cut me off and nearly run me off the road, they pulled in front of me and slam on the brakes to hit the exit ramp they just HAD to take.

And we must not forget how much we miss out on our families, for those of us that do have them. I have 2 kids and I am missing their childhood. My daughter worships the ground I walk on and cries for days every time I have to leave home and go back out on the road. I sacrifice my life and relationships to do this job. The pay sucks, roads are always bumpy or narrow, dispatchers that yell at you for no reason or because they screwed up and want to blame you, shippers and receivers that think you can wait all day and night for them to load or unload you and run your legal driving hours out then kick you off the property by calling the cops because you cant legally drive.

Oh, and did i forget to mention.... at 65 mph, when you slam on the brakes in front of us, you may stop in 200 feet or so in your honda or prius, but it takes us 600+ to stop, and if we lock up our brakes, we will jackknife and kill ourselves and others. We truck drivers are working our asses off to avoid idiots on the roads and make it home safely.

The guy that taught me to drive told me this - "You are the guidance system for an 80,000 top-heavy ballistic missile, with no acceleration, bad brakes, no roll cage, and you will be blamed for everything that goes wrong... even if you were nowhere near it." I never believed him till I got out on my own and paid more attention to how everyone drove around me.

[prjkt]

Zheuse - I hope you have one of those windshield mounted cameras - you'll be able to prove some of the stupid sh*t people do on the roads.

As for getting a ticket for someone else's actions. What the f*ck? How could you control that?