“Gooooddafternoon, 2-5-6 checking in van number 1464.”
“Good afternoon and welcome back Brian. I copy van number 1464 and I show three to start. Have a good day.”
“10-4, I show the same. You have a good one as well.”
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Pulling out onto Middle street on this, my second day back to work after my EPIC vacation! All is well, all is quite normal, all is as it should be. And… as is also normal, the time it takes to pull out of the lot is about as long as my little happy time will last.
Of course, this is exactly what I signed up for. The daily challenges of this job are part of what makes it so fulfilling. Today does not disappoint. By the time I navigate some extra stupid traffic and reach the address of my first pick up (and find that one of the two scheduled passengers is a “no-show”) I realize that the device displaying my manifest and by which I am to communicate with dispatch is not working properly. It was working fine just a few minutes ago but now…
“Sheesh, ok no worries. I always have my backup.”
I pull out my cell phone (technically against the rules) to report this and a rookie dispatcher nonchalantly informs me that yet another passenger has been added on to my already full manifest. Her tone clearly indicates that she is a bit surprised I didn’t know about it. With equal nonchalance I inform the rookie dispatcher that my device is useless at the moment (thus my cell phone use just now) and carefully ask her to give me the new information so I can take it down. On paper.
The dispatcher sounds a bit harried as she reads the add-on passenger information.
Ahh… my first real challenge of the communicative kind. To stuff my slight annoyance that this (not at all that new) system we are using allows for such things. That an add-on can be thought to be a done deal without voice confirmation. This is the sort of thing that has had the heads of old-timers spinning for years now.
Unlike them however (despite my increasingly old-timer status) I of course I have no desire to return to the days of yore. The days of two-way radios. Of sitting around for up to ten minutes after clearing and waiting for an opening in the chatty radio traffic, only to have my new guy self extra-stressed by my failure to understand the dispatcher rattle off addresses on Hawaiian streets with names like Kuliouou and Waikupanaha in their thick lovely local dialect. Of course they were also quite patient with me back then but still…
“Oh yea… man that made it all better didn’t it?”
All this, brought back in a flash of memory. It brings to my awareness in this moment, conversing with this newbie dispatcher who is now speaking to me in a manner I recognize has at least as much stress in it as I remember having back in those old-timer days…
This flash of memory, helps keep my “Happy Brian” online, and tempers my critical “Thinking Brian” from going into teaching mode. The newbie dispatcher is audibly relieved as I stay in extreme politeness mode.
I get going on my happy way with my new navigational challenges. Ready to meet the ongoing challenges of this, most rewarding task of safely transporting my precious cargo to wherever they need to go.
In my Happy Van!
Blessed…
m(___)m
