It’s been an odd week for work. Usually I was starting in the evening until midnight, meaning I would eat at 10/11am then again at 3/4pm and a short snack after work at about midnight and in bed for 4am ish. Sometimes when I finished I would be tired, but after driving the hour to get home I’d be awake. Sods law huh!
For the last two days though I have worked noon to 11pm to fit around another driver. Being agency I don’t have any say in the matter but I was on a different run which I prefer than the regular one.
So yesterday I stopped after the 2nd delivery area for a small market sized store and got a couple wrapped sandwiches plus some chocolate, lunch was eaten and the chocolate was forgotten about. However, today when I was doing the same route at the same time (having only had breakfast at 10am) I couldn’t stop due to a pair of Police cars in the layby who instructed me to ‘move on’ even when I tried stopping up the road. After that point there was no where to go and the next I knew about would be at about the 4th drop; a place where had another store and I had used before when I had done this route before, however that would be 8-9pm rather than 4-5pm
I didn’t really recognise the symptoms, there was other things to mask that particular thing including planning the drop order that had a loo available to use without passing the numerous security checkpoints found at the site.
So. At about 5.30 I reached the drop and started to unload. I had mostly been sitting down driving and this was the first time I had spent quite a bit of time standing and doing stuff. I also found that some of the straps had moved making the load unstable, and having sorted that I felt a bit odd.
I have had oddness before, but they were usually explainable, such as not enough water=dehydration headache or other pains forming. It wasn’t too cold but I had the right layers on. I had had to work hard breifly moments before to get the truck in position, a low long wheelbase thing that needed a 10 point turn in carpark of ‘60 plate’ cars.
So, I had sorted the load, extracted the parcels and got them to the customer and I felt quite a bit worse now, tired, short tempered, making mistakes, lots of mistakes. Missing things, miss-scanning with the handheld scanner and I had to login to the machine twice. I felt quite faint, so propped myself up against the wall and sorted the paperwork.
I had almost all done and then found I had missed some parcels, but finally the paperwork was done and all was loaded. By now I didn’t even have the energy to close the tail-lift properly and the other guy helped me.
He asked if I was OK, as I had gone quite white and I said I thought my body was rebelling and I needed food and thanks to earlier complications had missed lunch. He reminded me that this was A Bad Idea. I could have asked to grab something from their canteen but already knew my wallet was bereft of cash and the only way to get something for nothing would be if i I collapsed, and I was feeling quite strongly like that. Leaning on the truck the other guy explained where the nearest store was, 3 miles away and so I set off in the truck having stumbled to the cab and disrobed my fleece gear without impaling myself. I thought yesterday had been bad enough when I nearly dropped a tyre on my foot. From a Boeing, weighing 200kg!
Oddly enough when I got in the truck I felt a bit better, sitting down, but still a bit drowsy but felt if I stopped for a doze I’d get even worse. I found some lockets in the bottom of my bag and the sugar from that helped me enough and I managed to get to the store and got some food (yaay debit card!), but couldn’t eat straight away as there wasn’t anywhere to park and I’d already jammed the petrol station up with getting the truck in there, but 5 minutes down the road (in heavy traffic) I found somwhere to stop and also took a 15 minute break.
I spoke with another friend this evening and he explained that he has these glucose tablet things his wife got him and they are good for emergencies, but it comes back to planning. If I had thought about it properly I could have made more of an effort to get some food earlier, because clearly by body has it’s limits.
So. I need to plan more or at least carry reserves with me. It was only later I found the chocolate bar from the previous day but I think it may have been unwise for me to have had just chocolate rather than regular food.
The rest of the day went south later when I found the barcode scanner had a flat battery that really narked me off but I survived… to tell the tale? Normally I would have made sandwiches at home, but I’ve not had a chance to go shopping and so this is it.
Anyway, thanks for reading my tale. The end result is to remember food, food and water. Don’t think it would have gone as well if I hadn’t have had those lockets!