Still Just Hanging Out

So it’s 6:06 AM on Tuesday February 2, 2010. Yesterday morning, I was so sure I’d be out of here within the day. Sometime between 7 and 8 AM Josh’s phone rang; it was his trainer making first contact. A first contact which ended with Josh having a good-hearted laugh at my expense as he packed up his stuff and left.

Throughout the day I saw some of the others from my orientation class and talked with them a bit. Most had received their calls, some were heading out right away, others were being re-directed to Dallas, Texas. Those going to Dallas weren’t sure how they were getting there, or if they would have trainers waiting for them there, or what, so I counted myself lucky that I, at least, didn’t have to worry about sitting in a Greyhound bus for however long it would take to go from Los Angeles to Dallas .

At about 3:30, Mike called and informed me that his truck was number 17 in line at the shop, which meant I could expect to get out of here no sooner than the next day. Yay.

I had just settled into bed to watch House and get some much-needed sleep after a long day of sitting around watching TV (interrupted briefly to walk 15 minutes to the nearest McDonalds, and 15 minutes back), when I heard a key in the slot at my door. Having assumed I was going to be alone for the night, I had locked the dead-bolt and the slide bar.

As I rushed over to unlock the door, I opened it to the sight of a very tall, thin man in his late ‘40s - early ‘50s with a short, gray handlebar mustache and a curly mop of hair on his head, gray speckled with white. “Is this room 217?”

“Yeah.”

“Why the F--- doesn’t my key work?”

“Sorry, I didn’t know I was going to be getting a new roommate tonight, so I had the door bolted. Come on in.”

He dropped the F-Bomb on me a couple of more times the first 10 minutes he was here. I tried to just tune him out as he was unpacking and I was trying to watch House.

He calmed down a bit over time, introduced himself as “Vince” and we talked a bit. He just finished his 300 hours, and he had very little good to say about his experiences, so far, with Werner. Which is to say, he had only bad things to say, though he did reiterate several times: “Don’t let me sour you to it. If you keep a positive attitude, you’ll be fine.”

Such encouragement.

He actually seems like a pretty nice fellow, he just had a rough training experience, and his trainer was a big pain in the butt. Oh, and he was supposed to pick up his own truck on Thursday, but ended up in the hospital with the flu. His stuff was already in the truck, but since he was in the hospital, the company decided to assign his truck to somebody else, who proceeded to dump Vince’s stuff on the ground outside the truck. So now he doesn’t have a truck, and all his stuff was left sitting in the mud.

Ah, to be a truck driver… a dream come true. It’s early, yet. With any luck my trainer will be calling soon and I’ll be out on the road living the experiences I’ve only heard about, so far.

Oh, and Vince talks in his sleep. Not the charming, “Can I have waffles with my snickerdoodles, please?” kind of sleep-talking. More of the cries-out-in-frustrated-terror followed by a calm “yeah ok, yeah.”

Supposedly the morning meeting has been cancelled this morning, but I think I’m going to head over to it, just in case. Miss the meeting, lose your job. Probably cancelled since I’m the only one left in town from my orientation.

----LATER----
Yeah, the meeting was really cancelled. Now I'm down in the lobby which has a stronger internet Wi-Fi signal than the wired connection in the room. So far I've seen one guy from my orientation who is still here. So I'm not alone. More or less.

Vince told me this morning that he's catching the shuttle out of here, and then a bus home. He gives me the impression that he's quitting Werner. After hearing his complaints, I'm not terribly surprised.