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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I have now completed 3 seasons of my X Files rewatch, and I believe if you are learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share lessons I learned from an encounter with a truck driver.
Today’s fun fact: Tonight during the Monday Night Football broadcast, we’ll be getting a new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As if that’s not enough to make you celebrate like a bunch of Ewoks who have just help overturn the evil plans of the Galactic Empire, here are some Star Wars facts for you.
- In early drafts of the screenplay Yoda was actually named “Buffy,” which was completely changed in subsequent drafts to the full name “Minch Yoda,” and then shortened to just Yoda.
- Alec Guiness, the actor who played Obi-Wan Kenobi, thought of the Star Wars films as “fairy-tale rubbish.” Despite this, he negotiated a deal to earn 2% of the gross box office receipts for the movies he appeared in, earning him over $95 million.
- The phrase “I have a bad feeling about this” is said in every film.
- A young man named David Fincher got his first job on the film as an assistant camera operator. Fincher would go on to direct such contemporary classics as Se7en, Fight Club and executive producer for House of Cards.
What I learned yesterday.
As you probably remember, I spent nearly 20 years of my life working for a chain of bookstores. At the age of 24, I became the youngest person to become a store manager in the history of the company…except for the guy that started the company. It wasn’t an achievement that I had set out to reach nor was it anything that I ever really thought about. But when it happened I thought it was pretty cool and it gave me a satisfying sense of accomplishment.
As I look back on that time of my life, I think that I did a lot of things right and the trust that was placed upon me was given a good return. However, it wasn’t all roses or filled with decisions that King Solomon would approve of.
I’ll be sharing one of my failures with you today, but first, let me give you a bit of context.
My store was located in Wichita Falls, TX. Each week we took a manual inventory of the entire store, and placed an order to restock our low and out of stock items. Those items were delivered the next day via a semi truck from the corporate office. About once per month we would get a visit from a different semi truck that we called a return truck. The return truck was a truck that was on his way back to the corporate office, but was assigned to stop by our store on the way and pick up any merchandise that we needed to send back to the corporate office.
Because the return truck was also scheduled to make stops at other locations along the way, we never knew the day or time that it would arrive. It was our job to stay on top of our inventory, and be ready when we got word that the return truck was on its way to our store. We kept a designated pallet in our stockroom so that any time we had something that needed to go back, we could log it into the computer, put it on the pallet, and simply wrap the pallet with shrink wrap when we knew the truck was headed our way.
The good news was that our return truck almost always originated from Abilene, TX. Once it departed Ailene it would call another store in town and let them know that the truck was headed our way. The truck would stop by the other store in town first, and then come to my store last. Since Abilene was 2 ½ hours from our town, we usually had about 3 hours to get any final stuff prepared once we got the call that the truck was headed our way.
Well, you can probably guess that I wouldn’t have a story to share with you today if things always went according to plan.
One day we got the call that the return truck was leaving Abilene and heading our way. I immediately went around to each of my department heads to check and see if they had any last minute items that needed to be added to our return pallet. As it turned out, we had received a memo earlier in the week that asked us to return a few items from our children’s department. The process for getting the merchandise ready to return was fast and easy. All said, it would take the department head about 30 minutes to pull the items off the shelf, prepare the paperwork, get the items logged into the computer, and get them packed on the pallet. No problem. We had at least 2 ½ hours, probably more.
Imagine my surprise when the truck arrived at our dock about 30 minutes later. I opened up the overhead receiving door and told the driver that we were just about ready. The children’s department was on the last step of getting the items ready, and then he only had to put them on the pallet. The total time to finish the work, wrap the pallet, and get it on the truck would be 10 minutes at most.
The driver was not happy. He instantly got antagonistic. He threatened to leave immediately and not take any of our stuff and he threatened to call the corporate office and tell them that we weren’t ready. I told him that we were ready, but we had a last minute memo that we were trying to get completed. I also told him that we were under the impression that he wouldn’t be arriving for 2 more hours.
He accused me of lying. He said that he had called a few hours ago to let us know he was on his way. What I didn’t explain to you earlier is that we never received notifications from the actual drivers when they were heading our way. Instead, the drivers would call the other store in town since that was their next stop. It was then up to the other store to call us and let us know. As it turned out, the other store failed to tell me that the driver had called them a few hours before they actually remembered to call me. Yeah, I know. That would have been really helpful information to have known. Back to the story.
I was immediately frustrated by his belligerent attitude and threats. I thought he was completely out of line. I told him to go ahead and call the corporate office. So he did. He came back a few minutes later with a scowl on his face. His supervisor had told him to wait for us to finish and take our stuff. Needless to say, that was not the answer he was hoping his supervisor would give. He was sure to let me know that he would not wait for us if this happened again.
And then it happened.
He said something to the effect of, “If I was in charge of this place I’d be more organized and have things ready to go when I was supposed to.”
I thought to myself, “Oh no you didn’t!”
I looked him in the eye and said, “Oh yeah? Well I tell you what. Managing this store is a whole lot harder than driving a stupid truck!”
What happened next is one of those moments that you either remember in fine detail as it goes by in slow motion, or it’s one of those moments that becomes an emotional, rage infused, out of body experiences that renders you with only blurred memories of the aftermath. For me, it’s a blurred memory.
I can’t tell you what he said next or what I said next. All I can tell you is that both of us began yelling and insulting the other person. He made another call to the corporate office. I did all I could to get the pallet ready ASAP.
Unfortunately, the ugliness wasn’t over.
Our dock was at an odd height. If we were loading or unloading a container truck, the height matched up pretty well. However, if we were loading or unloading into a standard semi trailer, it caused a very steep angle as the trailer met the dock. Pallets had a tendency to tip over due to the steep incline, and it took two people to do the job right.
Unfortunately, on this day, his other stops had nearly filled up the trailer. There was only enough space for one pallet, and there was no room for an extra person to guide the pallet to make sure it didn’t tip over.
Probably due more to my anger than the steep incline, as I loaded the pallet on to the truck it tipped. Merchandise spilled everywhere. At that point my frustration reached its snapping point. I looked at the driver, barked something about since he was in such a hurry to get back that he could just deal with the mess himself, pulled the pallet jack and dock plate back in the store, and shut the door.
Here’s what I learned.
I’ve thought about this story a lot since it happened. Each time I think about it or tell someone about it I’m filled with shame. I’m embarrassed that I lost control of my emotions. I embarrassed that I set such a poor example for my employees to follow. I’m embarrassed that I left a mess in the back of his truck. However, what embarrassed me most is that I belittled his job as something lesser than mine and implied that he was a lesser person for having that job instead of mine.
Honestly, that’s not at all how I felt about his profession. I had met dozens of truck drivers in my career up to that point and had a lot of respect for them. In fact, I had a really great relationship with the driver that delivered our order most weeks.
So why did I react that way?
I allowed emotion to take over. Emotion is almost always a terrible guide. If we allow ourselves to be led by emotion, we don’t see clearly. We need emotions, but we can’t allow them to control us that way.
When I allowed myself to be controlled by my emotions, I fell into a vulnerable position. When he insulted my abilities to perform my job, my first reaction was to belittle his job.
Honestly, I don’t know why he showed up in such a bad mood that day, but that’s life. Sometimes we are blindsided by the circumstances and battles of someone else’s life, and those circumstances and battles will cross over into our lives in unexpected and unforeseen ways.
When that happens, we can’t allow ourselves to get caught up in it. As I look back on it now, I can think of a dozen different things I could have said that could have diffused the situation or at least have kept it from escalating. But I didn’t.
As a 39 year old, I’d like to think that if I was put into that exact same situation today, even without the experience from 15 years ago, that I’d handle it in a way that I would be proud of. But that’s not the way life works.
Instead, the best we can do is do our best to prepare for the situations around us. Learn from others, seek wisdom from books, mentors, and friends, remain humble, and acknowledge it when we mess up. Even through all of that, sometimes we’re still going to have to learn the hard way. When we do, we have to pick ourselves back up, learn from mistakes, recommit ourselves to doing the best we can, and be grateful that we have a chance to get it right next time.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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