On Tuesday, October 6, 2015, I decided to call Niki to explain that I did not think we are a anything other than a slip-seat operation, given that we are now expected to leave a key under the door of the truck we drive. She had been under the impression that we were not a slip seat operation in Texas, and that made a world of difference in how I was trying to place my equipment in truck-after-truck that I was being told was my truck.
Niki gave me the number for a Matt Lemke, the equipment manager. He told me that we are a slip-seat operation. However, Mr. Bonde would later tell me that we were transforming to a slip-seat operation but were not there just yet.
This contradiction was central to how I was placing my equipment. I wanted my equipment as safe as possible, but the shifting policy sands were leaving my equipment vulnerable.
Did Woody steal my monitor to throw another stumbling block under me, as I rejected his "gay" back scratching episode in the motel room? Did one of the nearly dozen or so pot head 20 year old kids in the motel walk past the truck door that Woody left wide open on Sunday morning and just take it from interest and the availability created by Woody? I don't know.
What I do know is that Badlands Tank Lines is led by bafoonery in management that I feel lucky to have escaped. The incompetence was all theirs.
The lawyers tell me that the liability for the stolen $700 monitor is on managers who should not have allowed a key to be placed in a vulnerable location, much less made it into policy. I was instructed to file for unemployment on Wednesday, October 7, 2015, as Mr. Bonde told me on the previous day that he would not be dispatching me until the matter of the $700 monitor was resolved. It seemed odd, a bit punitive, to not give an employee work just over a stolen item that was only stolen due to Mr. Bonde's policy imposed by his manager, Woody.
To date, my paycheck that should have been about $840 by my math was only $434.13, October 9, 2015. Mr. Bonde told me that the monitor was "a dead issue," meaning that there would be no attempt to take the cost of the stolen monitor out of my paycheck. I have no way to check my pay, now that I do not have a job or tablet, so I cannot check to see if I am being further robbed by Badlands Tank Line.
