Sorry Lorry

You May Not Know This -

And you may not care, especially if you hail from South Canada where being employed can be the same as indentured servitude (fast food especially) BUT the road haulage industry here in the UK is highly regulated.  Obtaining an HGV licence costs about £3,500 so they're not scattered amongst the population like leaves in autumn.  Art!

An example

     I won't go into specifics, just to say that an HGV driver earns as much as mid-level management.  There are extremely strict limits on how long they can drive for, enforced by technology and inspections, and also inviolable rules on how long they have to wait before being allowed to drive again after doing a shift.

     So, having set the background, this is the story of a Malicious Compliance Reddit story, set in the UK and featuring a logistics company who provided food to various schools, restaurants, cafes and the like.  Art!

     For those who have never been behind the scenes in a supermarket, this is a rollcage and is where all the supplies for destination are kept.  Obviously you put the goods for the first stop in the HGV last, because they are the ones that come out first, and the goods for the last stop go in first.  Simple logic.

     Original Poster explained that working out delivery routes needs a fair bit of knowledge, experience and forward planning.  You don't. for example, deliver to schools during the school-run hours, as the traffic is manic.  Some sites aren't open until specific times in the day.  For some destinations you need to work out alternative routes because there's a low bridge involved.  Bear in mind these HGVs are 18 tons fully-loaded and 12 feet high, and one of these will NOT fit under an 11 foot-clearance bridge.  Art!

SHOULD HAVE READ THE SIGN

     One day a new duty manager shows up:  Bob.  Bob has no experience of either delivery driving or HGVs and is in fact a manglement computer idiot focussed only on driving up profits and driving down expenses.  Bob has his super-duper Route Plotting Tool draw up a more efficient delivery route for all the lorries involved, and tells those protesting that they are mere peasant drivers who need to shut up and implement the plan.

     So the drivers did the very worst thing they could; they implemented the plan.  Art!

     OP was one of the first drivers back, having taken 13 hours to do a route normally done in 10, and with 20 extra gallons of diesel required thanks to sitting in traffic.  Remember that strict time limit?  The drivers couldn't do more than 15 hours, so when that limit approached they headed back to the depot, regardless of whether they'd delivered their loads or not.  By 21:00 there were lorries queuing to get into the depot and hand their keys in to the Duty Manager, who had to wait until the last lorry had come in.  Bob was the Duty Manager.  He didn't leave until 03:00 the next day.

     The chaos was not yet complete, because drivers had to wait 11 hours after clocking out, so those who normally began at 05:00 couldn't begin until 08:00 at the earliest.  Everyone who could work was offered overtime at double rate to make up the shortfall.  The Depot Manager, who was off on leave, came in and had a very loud shouted conversation on the phone in his office.  Bob never came back.

Bob.  Manglement personified

     The drivers immediately went back to their old routes.  O and the kicker?  Bob didn't have any authority to change routes in the first place.  Bob: hoist with his own petard after shooting himself in both feet then shoving them in his mouth.

     There will now be a short pause as Your Humble Scribe gets lunch.  That is all.

BOOJUM! Reviews Shizzle

I'm not specifying either TV or film, hence the vagueness.  We've not done one of these for a while, so let me elucidate.  We generalise hugely based on the title alone, perhaps also with a nod to the atmosphere engendered by a bus poster.  If you want a proper review go look up Mark Kermode.

"Nope": Ah, as directed by Jordan "Peales Of Laughter".  Conrad cannot help but feel that such a negative title is going to affect audience perception.  

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1:  Hey, did you go and see a film like you said you would?

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Nope

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 (sounding hurt): Okay, okay, you could at least be civil about it.

Art!

"Bullet Train": Who green-lit this?  Let me guess, a documentary about the Japanese high-speed rail system.  What an unmitigated bore!  Art!

Doubtless the voice artists

"The Gray Man":  Lord preserve us, another documentary?  From the title it must be about the most boring British politician ever, so forgettable that I can't immediately rememb - ah!  Major.  John Major, which surname is an utter misnomer.  Or - no, I don't think Spitting Image could manage a satire for a whole ninety minutes.  Art!

Let's Wallow In Some Fan-Fiction

Yes I say, back to "The Sea Of Sand".

The Doctor grinned with a degree of mischievous glee.  Even world-spanning aliens could get it wrong!

     What happened next made the grin vanish instantly.  The commanding alien, with a purple and tan body colouring, lashed out with it's proboscis at the other alien, which instantly went rigid.  As the Doctor looked on, the victim began to shrivel and waste away, collapsing inwards until all that remained were the jacket and fitments, and an empty helmet sat upon them all.

     Instantly the Doctor knew what those robots had been doing.  Harvesting energy from living beings, which was transmitted back to this site, allowing the alien garrison to emerge from millennia of sleep.

     Then that made these creatures bio-vores, able to live only by draining the life-force from other living organisms.

     Alien bio-vores with a Trans-mat capability.  This, this above all, was what the Time Lords had diverted Sarah and himself to investigate and prevent.

     "Hah"  Prevent!" he snorted.  There were over fifty aliens out there on the site, with their robot excavators.  What chance did he have of preventing anything?  True, there was the venerable Webley revolver, which he had no intention of using to kill anyone or anything with.  It was safer with him than with the rather panicky Albert, though.

     A sudden stroke of inspiration struck the Doctor.  He had an idea about what to do - risky, but worthwhile if it worked.

     I wonder what craftiness our favourite Gallifreyan is up to?

Logistics Again

Forgive me!  If you recall I had pontificated about how Russia would get all the Nork artillery supplies it was buying to Russia, considering rail versus air transport.

     I completely forgot marine freight.  However, this would be even slower than rail movement, because it would take about six weeks for a Russian freighter to get from the Baltic to the Norks, and the same amount (if not longer once loaded) to return.  That's three months.  Then the supplies have to be off-loaded and railroaded south, then split up and re-distributed.  Hopefully Bob got a job with the Russian railways - nobody else would employ him.  Art!

     Yes, there is an Arctic route, which closes down from October when it ices over.  And we are already well into September.

Finally -

Wow, a huge dirty storm cloud has just arrived overhead as I am sitting here wondering whether to venture into Sainsbo's in Oldham to restock on loose-leaf Darjeeling.  I shall take a comfort break and consider.