Stories From the Road: Tina

[Droopy]

Tina used to be a co-worker of mine. Trucking is still almost a completely male dominated profession. I'd say that about 90% of truckers are male, maybe even more. It's hard for a woman out there on the road sometimes. It's gotten better since I've been driving, but female drivers still have to put up with a lot of sexism from their male counterparts.

Tina and I worked in a trucking yard together for five hours a night. It was my full time job, but Tina would take off at midnight and run a route that took her about seven hours. One thing I can say about trucking companies is that they aren't discriminatory in their hiring practices and pay- at least the ones that I've worked for haven't been. If you are a woman and you want to work hard and make good money then you can certainly do it in trucking, just like the men. I say this because Tina was doing pretty good. She was the second highest paid driver out of about 20 in our division of the company. Every driver was male except her and she'd only been working there for a year and a half. The highest paid driver had been with the company for ten years.

But that money and hard work came with a toll, and it would be Tina's undoing.

I liked Tina and she and I used to talk to each other when we weren't very busy moving trailers around in the yard. I learned that she was a mother of 5 children, but that she was only 32 years old. Her husband had left her for another woman a couple of years back and she was raising those kids by herself as well as working twelve hours a day. She did have a boyfriend. He was a mechanic that worked for the company that took care of our trucks. He would come over to the yard sometimes and work on trailers or trucks. But he wasn't a serious enough part of Tina's life to help her with the bills and the children.

A driver got fired and a route came open one day and I jumped at the chance to make more money. I had been sentenced to yard duty until something like that happened because the company had lost a route and I was right under the cut-off point on the seniority list when they assigned new routes. So I was out of the yard and they didn't put anybody in there to replace me leaving Tina to do all of the work on her own. The yard job really was just a one person job, but when you also had to do a 7 hour route as well as the yard...well, that's a different story.

Tina didn't like working with one of our customers who was in charge of one of the docking areas. Yet she had to deal with them after I was gone because I used to handle it. One guy in particular didn't like her, for no good reason, and was always giving her a hard time. One night she just couldn't take working with the asshole anymore and she called the big cheese in the middle of the night to protest what she had to put up with. The boss was not sympathetic and told her to do what the dock manager wanted her to do. She was alright with doing that if the guy would just lay off the assholery. She couldn't take it anymore and she did something she shouldn't have done: She cussed out our boss. That was the end of the road for Tina at our company.

Truckers have got to put up with a lot of shit to get the job done. The shit is piled higher if you are a female driver. I applaud any woman who tries to make it in this field. Current female drivers are the trail blazers for future women who will make trucking an egalitarian profession.

Last I heard, Tina had found work with another trucking company. But she wasn't making near as much money and was having a hard time making ends meet.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear Droopy...

That's a tough story, and I'm glad you're here tonight, to tell it.

Life just is not fair sometimes, is it?

I hope she was able to put her life back together, and to persuade her children to stay in school so they wouldn't have to endure the mess she had to.

Thanks, Droopy...

I've missed your stories!

:hi:

[Droopy]

2. Thanks, Peggy

I think Tina will be alright. I hope so for certain. And it is a tough story, but I needed to tell it. Thanks for reading it.

[Droopy]

3. A nice and buzzed kick

Give me a shout y'all. Especially if I made you think. I love thoughts. :)

[Heidi]

4. I think it's sad that Tina had to be the one who moved on.

It seems to me that her co-workers who lacked the skill set necessary for working in a diverse environment should have been the ones to move on. x(

I hope Tina and her children are okay.

[Droopy]

5. Me, too, Heidi

There are a couple of real jerks who work there who have held on to their jobs just because they have kissed ass. I know one guy who has screwed up more in two months than Tina had in all of her time working there, but he remains employed there.

I want my stories to convey reality. Real people and really talented people move on every day because they don't play politics in the work-place. I'll take Tina any day over most of the assholes I work with.

[Heidi]

6. There was an article in LBN a week or two back about a female EMT

(or something like that -- she worked in an ambulance station) who ended up committing suicide after being subjected to absolute cruelty by her male co-workers. None of the co-workers were disciplined, as I recall.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3387298

[Droopy]

7. That's terrible

But I know for sure that it can happen. I've heard the most horrible things told to women on the CB radio out there on the road. Women told to get back in the kitchen "where they belong." Women told that they are of no use unless they are pleasuring a man. Women that are told to do the most base sexual things to a man.

That's the dark side of trucking as I currently see it. I just hope that women do not give up in their endeavors. I have defended women out on the road and I will continue to do so. I've defended Tina and I do to this day even though she doesn't work here.

[EFerrari]

10. I worked monitoring a security console with a crew of women.

We worked two to a shift and around the clock guarding all kinds of things. Management was male, sales, too, all male, and the techs we sent out to fix problems were all male.

It was a pretty interesting dynamic there, you betcha. No real outright meanness but a lot of passive unfairness and a lot of coping behavior among us monitors that wasn't great -- eating, drinking, spending, sexing. I think if I'd stayed there instead of going back to school fulltime, I'd be an alcoholic by now or in jail for bossicide.

[EFerrari]

8. Working women have to deal with that all the time.

You can always find more money in the world but you can't always find more self respect.

Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do.

[Droopy]

9. Damn straight

It works that way for working women and men. More-so for working women. I hope Tina is getting what she needs and there is a part of me that would like to be a part of that. I don't know if I would have written the story otherwise. ;)

[EFerrari]

11. Droopy, have you ever read Grace Paley?

I think the title your stories are recalling for me is Little Disturbances of Man. She used to write stories about working people, iirc. (She did for short stories what Sharon Olds did for sonnets. she declassified them, lol.) If you haven't, check her out. :)

[littlebit]

12. The industry is getting better for women.

I have been trucking for almost ten years now. There are still some real jerks out there but for the most part it is a lot better than it was.