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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

You know what? If your job is crap, quit, or demand more pay. I never bought this "I have a hard job, so you should be nice to me" crap. You get compensated for your job. If you don't get compensated well enough, that's your problem.

And as for all the schedule crap? Also not my fault. I didn't make you late. I didn't regulate the speed on your rig. (And yes, that DOES make it safer, especially when you're running non-stop and tired.)

However, you -did- get in my way. For a long time. 3mph? Cripes, do you know how long it takes to move a rig around another rig at 3mph more while being safe?

Suck it up, buddy. You take crap from your boss, your co-workers, and anyone else at your workplace or your client's workplace, and you have the nerve to get upset at someone who isn't getting paid to deal with your crap?

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> You know what? If your job is crap, quit, or demand more pay. I never bought this "I have a hard job, so you should be nice to me" crap. You get compensated for your job. If you don't get compensated well enough, that's your problem.

That's easy to say if you're skills are in high demand. If they aren't, any you have a family to feed, it can be a much harder position to take. For many people their options may be limited to putting up with a crappy job or living on the street. And often it's through no fault of their own. Not everyone has what it takes to be a rock star software engineer.

Not everyone has what it takes to be a rock star software engineer.

Everyone is in a position to improve themselves. Take a class, get a degree, network, learn a skill.

It is not easy. But this is not the same thing as impossible.

That depends. Sometimes economics can make it impossible. Beyond that, if you read the article, it's not uncommon for truck drivers to only have one free day per week. How quickly can you learn a completely new skill set if you only have one day a week (a day, I might add, which is also your only rest day)?

Sometimes economics can make it impossible.

Sometimes, sure. More often people who _say_ they are stuck are not stuck so much as lacking imagination, or will.

How quickly can you learn a completely new skill set if you only have one day a week

I know that is a hypothetical but I'll take a crack at it.

- Cut expenses. There is always slack in a budget.

- Cut hours. The 6-day work week is for over the road - Get a teamster job working local.

- I've now got nights and weekends free, leaving me oodles of time to get cracking on mastering that new skill.

I've had quite a few jobs in my life, and only one of them was crap. And it was for a skill that was in "high demand"!

There are better employers out there. Employees who work for bad employers are enabling them. By not quitting, they're not only ruining their own life, but other people's too.

Upvote for that. There are a lot of brilliant people on HN but they seem to forget that to a large degree they are in the right place at the right time. You have a great career because you work in a field that is in very high demand at the moment, it isn't because you are intrinsically awesome.

>However, you -did- get in my way.

it isn't your way, it is a public way. If you see any violations in his behavior - just call Highway Police. Otherwise, learn to deal with the fact that not everybody and everything in this life is created to satisfy your every whims.

>Suck it up, buddy.

yep, suck it up, buddy.

He's asking me to be polite while failing to be polite himself. I have no tolerance for that.

Wait, what? Using the left lane to pass is impolite?

> I have no tolerance for that.

Being polite? Clearly.

Monopolizing a public thoroughfare for the duration it takes one elongated vehicle to pass another with a 3MPH delta should be illegal enough to result in a fine when it impedes the free flow of traffic IMO. For as much as claims of safety are thrown about, people should spend more time looking at how congestion causes and compounds accidents.

Maybe if they weren't over-regulated* and actually assigned the costs associated with blocking traffic, the trucking companies could come up with something as novel as a 'governor override budget'. I.e., "If you find yourself in a situation where you need to pass and it'd be best for everyone involved if you actually get it over with, you may do so. Just don't expect to spend the whole trip at the higher speeds because you only accrue so many override minutes per hour and you need to save them for complications that may arise. There are gas prices to consider, after all."

If we're going to insist on having humans behind the wheel, I assume it's because they have the capacity to reason. Ultimately, we need to incent them properly and then trust their judgement.

* Speed limits significantly below the 85th percentile of traffic == revenue. Also, penalizing motorists (who have, by definition, opted out of public transportation) by failing to build additional, needed lanes.

>Monopolizing a public thoroughfare for the duration it takes one elongated vehicle to pass another with a 3MPH delta should be illegal enough to result in a fine when it impedes the free flow of traffic IMO.

have you ever drove a U-Haul truck? Let alone a 40 ton one? Do you understand the accident risk (and scale of a damage, just an example of pretty light one http://www.10news.com/news/24315900/detail.html) of a fully loaded semi trailer making a pass at - how fast would you like it to go instead of 68mph? - would 80mph be enough for you? Do you really think you're a better judge of how to safely drive the truck than the truck driver actually driving it and who does have economic incentive to go as fast as it is possible while still ensure the high probability of making it to the destination?

We seem to be in agreement that our wised truck driver should be the judge of whether or not it's safe to pass. My point is that, should he judge the speed of his peer (who he's stuck behind at 65MPH) to be intolerably low, he should not have the option to pass at a reasonable rate precluded by a bureaucrat who lacks his experience and detailed knowledge of the situation.

How fast? In Minnesota (where I'm from and also where the article was published) I can tell you offhand that a recent figure for the 85th percentile speed on rural freeways is 79MPH (that means three out of every 20 drivers are going even faster). Does the truck need to go that fast? Only if it's in the left lane while cars are present.

> "However, you -did- get in my way. For a long time. 3mph? Cripes, do you know how long it takes to move a rig around another rig at 3mph more while being safe?"

3mph ~= 4 ft/s. Some of the longest semis are 60ft. One clearing the other is 120ft, lets over-estimate and say 200. 200/4 roughly a minute, again, if we over estimate.

So, you cannot wait a minute. And, remember, you're going a constant ~65mph or so in your car at the time -- so it's not like you're at a dead stop.

Instead of jumping the obvious conclusion about your likely personality defects, I would suggest that you take some time to think about why you're so angry about being limited to 65, or even 60 mph for a minute, assuming you're not rushing to the hospital.

Actually, if you are a consumer, you did do most of that. This is the reality of market pressures at the very end of the line. We still need humans to drive trucks -- but we expect them to be superhuman.

I find this post saddening. How little we care about the people responsible for all the things we take for granted in life.

Everyone is affected by 'market pressures', so I don't buy that cop-out either.

I'm serious here: If you do not like your job, demand more money, better working conditions, or quit and find a better one.

The first 2 of those are what unions were designed to fix. If the truck driving industry (freight industry?) is so horrible, why haven't they unionized and fixed it? If they have unionized, why is their union so ineffective?

I do pity people who think they have dug a hole so deep they can't get out of it. Mainly because they are -wrong-. They have allowed the world to walk allover them and have stopped considering that they can better themselves.

The unions exist to do things like limit how much they drive in a day -- before truck driving unions and such, drivers were basically expected to drive whatever it took to get their load where it was going. This was, obviously, horribly unsafe.

But unions aren't a magic fix for everything.

Also, how quickly we of the first world are to assume that you can just up and change jobs. It's easy when you sit at a desk. It's not easy when all you've ever done is drive a truck, or work at a factory, or done construction.

Your intolerance disgusts me, honestly.

You act like anyone who performs unskilled labor is a victim.

I feel for people who are in a difficult situation, but I expect them to work their way out of it. And the great thing about this country is: they can if they use their wits and are willing to work harder than most people can imagine.

You seriously underestimate exactly how hard being a truck driver is.

Random internet challenge: Be a truck driver for a month. Then come back to this thread.

Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle. ~John Watson, 1897

> However, you -did- get in my way. For a long time. 3mph?

So what? Who are you to deserve the right of way? If you don't want to get stuck behind a truck, get off the road. Suck it up.

Hell, it's your fault. You take crap from these drivers. It's your fault, your problem, not theirs. Flipping them off is the best you can do, and it's pitiful.

And yeah, I don't see any reason people should be nice to you.

> I never bought this "I have a hard job, so you should be nice to me" crap.

But you did buy into the "Be an ass" crap, didn't you?

However, you -did- get in my way. For a long time. 3mph? Cripes, do you know how long it takes to move a rig around another rig at 3mph more while being safe?

By my calculations, about a minute and a half at the absolute most. So if you were intending to pass both trucks at 80 mph, and assuming the passing truck moves back into the right lane when safely able to, this fiasco adds approximately 10-15 seconds to your commute. Oh the horror.

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