eagerbeaver:
I love the way you phrase that mate. You were unsure which address to attend, so you picked one and it was wrong.
Yet it wasn’t driver incompetence? Lol.
No, because in the first place I was given ambiguous information - that was organisational failure number 1.
It’s some time ago so I can’t remember exactly what the problem was. It wasn’t a question of me misreading the documentation. Perhaps there were two delivery notes or something. I do recall that one of the addresses I had been sent to deliver to before - the other, never before.
But I didn’t just toss a coin and drive off, I sought advice from those in a position to verify my instructions. But they didn’t answer the phone despite several attempts at 3am - and clearly at that hour, I’m not calling for a chat. That breakdown in communication channels was organisational failure number 2.
How long was I supposed to wait for the phone to be answered? 8am? 9am? Would it ever be answered? Would they have preferred me to sit around rather than make a judgment? Or were they ignoring the phone (which had occurred on previous occasions)? It turned out the planners were intentionally ignoring it as a form of demand control.
Obviously, in hindsight I could have done more things on my own initiative that might have compensated for the organisation’s failings (including failings caused in consequence of its mistreatment of the planners), but that puts the cart before the horse.
When tired and mildly irritated, in an unfamiliar place on an unfamiliar run, without access to advice, and frankly already worn down by other experiences, the most straightforward thing to do was to make a decision on the address and head for it.
There was certainly no obvious alternative course of action which wouldn’t expose me to one or the other of suspicion or blame. In an organisation with so little mutual trust, the consequences of sitting tight and coming under suspicion of swinging the lead, may have been no better for me than taking a chance on the correct address and getting it wrong. Other courses of action, like driving to the nearest manned depot for help, would have been a plan too mentally demanding to conceive, let alone to execute - and such a depot may have been closed or unmanned itself in the middle of the night.
What I’ve really learned from experiences such as that, is just not to bother working for such firms in the first place, and what I hear is that Stobarts at Goole is suffering precisely this outcome en masse.
firms like DHL rock up with an even lower rate, let them all crack on, make a balls of it, and let them all go ■■■■ bust…, who would care anyway, not the real drivers I would bet, because they are treated like schoolboys not men, and are on average money anyway.
…how very dare you, I can still pass for 35, …ok admittedly on a dark night, but I aint written off yet…you, you, English Jock you. 
