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Are truck drivers paranoid? Lucy Radley questions the division of labour to try to find answer to that one.
Page 15
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There are several schools of thought when it comes to drivers' views on how work should be shared out. The question of who gets the cream is possibly the most contentious one you could raise. I would even go so far as to say that it is a political barometer.
On the left you have those who think that everyone should get the same number of bites of the cherry. This is regardless of how much effort they put in, how many sick days they've (spuriously) taken that month, or how much vitriol they've flung at their long-suffering planners. They may have only been in the job for five minutes, but we're all drivers and all drivers are equal, 'comrade'. Some, of course, will always be more equal than others.
Then you have those who claim not to care. "I just do as I'm told," they mutter, while giving a professional shrug. Like all those who inhabit the middle ground, however: deep down they have some surprisingly strong views. Which is great except that those views swing from left to right depending on who they are trying to convince. Given time, they will step to one side of the fence or the other based on what they think will raise their popularity and hence wages the most.
As with everything in life, time and maturity make for a steady scuttling towards the right. Get your feet under the table and suddenly loyalty starts to mean something, or you start to think so. Why the hell should that bloke who started last week get the good stuff when the rest of us have been toiling away for years? Go back to the bottom of the ladder like we all had to. Drive. I'm not subsidising your lifestyle, I'm beyond that now.
Finally, all drivers think that office staff spend their entire working day sitting around a cauldron doing their best to screw up someone's week. They don't really have customers to please or efficiency to consider. Now that we're heading into what seems to be an inevitable recession, it's every man for himself. Not that a little thing like a global economic crisis actually has anything to do with it. Paranoid? Self-obsessed? Drivers? Never.