Sunday, February 27, 2011

Hero or Zero

The last few days have been very weird and busy. I am the admin. staff for the Maintenance Dept. of a transportation company. Husband is a part-time driver for said company as well. This is pertinent to the story.

A few weeks ago, Husband had a trip where upon returning the brakes quit working on the vehicle. He was able to get it to a safe place, transfer people and possessions to the rescue vehicle and return them to the pickup point. The vehicle was towed in and examined at which time it was discovered that there was nothing he did to cause the failure. Nor was the failure something the Maintenance Dept could of predicted of prevented. Top Dog of Company was not pleased and tried to blame Husband AND Head of Maintenance (*HofM) for breakdown. When confronted with evidence that neither could have been prevented or predicted the failure, he backed down.
This past Thursday, Husband had a trip with the same vehicle traveling across the state. His return departure time was approximately 9:30 that night so I was not expecting to see him until the following morning.
Said vehicle computer decided that something was wrong with the engine and shut down the power. As most of the miles were to be on highways and the vehicle would not go faster than 5 mph, Husband made the right call to stay put in the Safe Place he found until the replacement vehicle arrive.
*HofM had been home, fast asleep for about an hour when he had been called about above vehicle. He was the one that drove the replacement vehicle out to Husband and drove/tinkered with (cursed, beat, pleaded, stroked and limped along) the original vehicle back to the garage. He then went home and got another hour's worth of sleep.
The reason I know this was when I awoke at Oh'dark thirty Husband was not home. He walked in about 5 am and related the short version of what had transpired before face planting himself in bed. I got the rest when I arrived at work.

Yesterday, Husband had a trip that was going out of state to a ski mountain. All was well until he parked the bus and the state DOT did an inspection of the vehicle. They decided that it was not safe to drive and put the vehicle 'Out of Service'. This meant the vehicle was not to be moved until it was fixed or towed somewhere for repairs to be made. I was Husband second call regarding this, Dispatch being the first. I immediately called *HofM and volunteered to drive the replacement bus to Husband. Withing 10 minutes of my call to *HofM, Dispatch called and I was on my way. I arrived at the mountain with enough time to help Husband to transfer all the passengers belongings to the rescue bus and to put Youngest into the van that *HofM drove to keep her warm. It's now spitting flurries and the sun was going down. The temperature when we arrived was 4 and 2 hours later it was well below zero. But the bus was fixed and warmed up quickly.

Husband, *HofM, Youngest and I all arrived back at the garaged at the same time – 9:45pm. I'm on pins and needles until I get to work on Monday to see what Top Dog of Company reaction will be. Will he consider all of us Hero's – this was a well coordinated, flawlessly executed plan that went smoothly with minimal interruption for the passengers (and that is a whole other horror story from what Husband has related!) or Zero's for allowing the bus to leave in such a condition that the DOT put the vehicle out of service, causing the company to foot the expense of running 2 vehicles out of state and the purchasing of parts to facilitate repairs.

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