The most difficult job an expediter has in his or her day-to-day work is maintaining a positive attitude and clear head when faced with the frequent negative circumstances the work entails.
The negative circumstances include things like an unanticipated truck breakdown, loads that are canceled after you have deadheaded to them, getting pulled into a scale for a truck inspection by a particularly picky and unsympathetic cop, driving for endless hours in heavy traffic on the East Coast, getting run out of a parking place you had settled into after thinking it was OK, being treated badly by a shipper who himself is having a bad day, waiting for freight for sometimes days while you watch other trucks move in and out, having your expected pay not come because it was not processed right, getting stranded in bad weather, twisting an ankle that makes it painful to drive and work for the next three weeks, going more days than you would like without a shower or hot meal, being treated like a second-class citizen because you are a trucker, watching roads deteriorate while tolls to drive on them increase, sleeping in truck stops with your windows up on a hot day because the parking lot reeks of pee, and contracting with FedEx Custom Critical.
Oops! that last item -- contracting with FedEx Custom Critical -- you can strike that. I did not mean to say that. Somehow it just slipped in.
I leave it there to exactly illustrate the point. Your question is timely as I have been having a very hard time in the last few days in maintaining a positive attitude and clear head. There have been
developments at our carrier that are getting me down, and the sadness of that can, if I let it, flood my brain and lead to skewed perceptions and bad decision making.
It is not true that contracting with FedEx Custom Critical should be lumped in with the rest of the items on the list, but because I feel sad about our carrier today, it is very, very easy to make that slip.
If that slip is made, my thinking will become even more sour, and self-defeating ideas like deadheading 2,000 miles home to take a week off, or subjecting people in the office to an angry burst start to make sense. So do ideas like spending $40 on a steak dinner to help me feel better, going to a casino to lose myself in front of a slot machine, or chatting with a bunch of like-minded truck drivers at a truck stop to validate my sad feelings by talking and hearing about how much this job sucks.
Going down that path will cloud my heart and mind all the more, crowding out or obscuring the many joys this job entails -- the freedom, the friends, the driving, the magnificent surprises that lie around many turns -- can be quickly forgotten if I let gloom rule the day.
There is something you can do to protect yourself against skewed perceptions and bad decision making, but that task is even more difficult than maintaining a positive attitude and a clear head. At least it seems to be more difficult because so very few expediters do it.
That task is to clearly define the goals you want to achieve in life and as an expediter, and write them down using words, such that if someone else were to read them, he or she would know exactly what you mean and be able to use relevant facts to gauge your progress.
At this difficult time in Diane's and my expediting career, our saving grace is the well defined goals we set early on. By focusing on those, we are reminded of the direction we wish to go and can better see the way that will best get us there. Without that reminder, it would be easy to slip into behavior that would hurt more than help.
p.s.
For those who believe in Jesus, getting down on your knees before your saviour is helpful too. It won't make you a more money (notice the millions of broke Christians out there) but it will help bring your heart and mind to a better place.
