What if they gave a work day and no one came?

My day starts at 0530. Normally, a manager opens the building at around 0500 and gets things ready. The drivers come in between 0520 and 0530, and the first warehouse and Flash shop guys trickle in until around 0600. Every so often the manager runs late and we're stuck outside for twenty minutes or so.

This morning there was no manager when we showed up. so the usual driver bull session developed as we waited. And waited. More employees showed up, and still no one to open the building. We were seriously wondering if we closed over the weekend and no one told us. Marvin, the Will-Call guy, was trying to reach anyone in charge. He was unable to reach anyone with a key to the building. Finally, after waiting for an hour and fifteen minutes, the drivers decided to bail. When I left Marvin was trying to call the CEO. I'll sit here in my uniform with my lunch pail ready to go until about 0900. At that point, doing my route today would be pointless.

This is bloody unacceptable. I fully expect to be paid for today and not out of my PTO time.

EDIT: They just called. I'm going in.

I'm on a horse.

When we last left our hero (me), he was heading back into work after coming home when no one showed up to open the damn place.

Since I was going in during the heart of rush hour, it took a little longer than usual. Once I was finally at work, I did not clock in (they can my 0530 start time.. I was there, and their failure is not my problem) and walked into to find that my route had so little on it that it was being put off and I was originally tasked with covering East Bay.

At this point I should explain. Today we were already going to be short of drivers. The usual Local 1 driver is out with an injury, and the usual East Bay driver is having massive dental work done (much like mine of a few years back) so things were already going to be tight. We had four scheduled drivers and two of us could be reached after we left.

I looked at the EB route and remarked out loud that i had no clue about any of the stops. At which point one of the emergency cover drivers offered to trade Local 2 with me, as he's done East Bay recently and knows at least some of the stops. Local 2 is mostly San Jose, with some stops in west valley cities like Saratoga and Cupertino. I gratefully accepted the offer, and of seventeen stops, had been to four of them before and at least had a clue about another half dozen or so.

Just writing up my trip sheet took forever, since I had to use the Thomas Guide to route things. I honestly had no clue how to set this up, but things fell into place. That should be your guide in picturing this, for most of the day I was clutching a Bay Area Metro Thomas Guide in one hand while driving with the other.

But out on the roads I went; and once out, I kicked ass. Without much knowledge of the sites I was hitting, I made my first five stops in one hour. Company standard is four stops in an hour (not possible on my usual Livermore Valley route.) Using my mapbook and phone, I managed to hit just about every stop with little problem, and even saw an old coworker from the SuperShuttle days at SJC. I even managed to fit in an extra stop in Santa Clara. One of my first stops was a wrong address error, and I had more than enough time to fit them in at the end. Even with the late start I rocked out 17 deliveries in about six hours.

Look at me.
Look at your driver.
Now back to me.
I'm on the mother-freaking horse, baby!