Smug Karen Stored her Junk in MY Garage while I was Gone — I Posted “Free Pickup”

If you ever order concrete yourself and the driver refuses to pour without you signing the ticket first, think long and hard about what you just asked him to do. The ticket includes a damage waiver and acknowledges receipt of the concrete. Some drivers may have you sign it as a matter of course, though I've never met one, and most of the guys I know don't even get signatures after the job.

For the most part, however, it should be viewed as a giant red flag that the driver thinks there's some kind of liability in play. It could be something as simple as backing up a curb, which could crack, or a front yard with ever-so-crushable irrigation pipes and septic tanks. It could also mean that you have really ticked off the driver and he's about to nail you on standby time. You have a limited amount of time to unload before the accounting trolls start charging you a buck or two every minute, and your best bet is to ask them if there's something to be concerned about. Technically, you could refuse to sign, but by that point, it's kind of a Hobson's choice, and if there's nothing wrong with the load, you are paying for it either way.

If we were busy, I would have slowly backed up until my truck started to bog down, then pulled forward and refused to go any further. We are not busy, though. When I bog down, I just pull forward and try again. Each time I get a little further back, but it's very slow going.

Paulie is getting upset now. After half a dozen attempts, Paulie starts waving me back furiously and shouts, "Step on it! Just get on top of it!"

Apparently, Paulie thinks I'm on a boat. But in the world of malicious compliance, the customer is always right.

I pull forward as far as I can, floor it in reverse, and right before I hit the sand, I flip the selector up and stick it into high range.

A manual truck transmission is laid out in a standard H pattern, but each position covers two or three gears. There are selector switches to choose which sets of gears you are using. For instance, on an eight-speed, low range is 1 to 4 and high range is 5 to 8. While high-range reverse is a usable gear, you will almost never see a driver using it. Even the manufacturers recommend against attempting it. It's a fragile gear that is easy to break if you hit it with too much power, and you rarely need to go anywhere near that fast in reverse.

My truck leaps onto that sand like a corpulent gazelle, huffing and wheezing across the veldt. It doesn't take long. I've barely made it a truck length before I have to go back down to low range. Not long after that, my wheels start slinging dirt. The tires sink in, and the truck stalls from the effort.

That is the signal to stop and check my work.

Paulie is, of course, not happy with this. My truck is nowhere near close enough. He looks at me, and to my complete and utter lack of surprise, asks, "What happened?"

I tell him that I appear to be stuck, and he asks if I can pull forward and try again.

I look at my tires. The truck is now buried to the axles, and it weighs as much as thirteen pickup trucks or forty Smart cars. Nothing short of divine intervention is moving that truck while it is still full.

So, I smile and say, "I'll give it a shot."

On the side of my stick is a little knob for something called deep reduction. You set that knob and put it into low, and that engine turns into the god of torque. For you gearheads out there, the ratio is somewhere around 27 to 1. It's practically impossible to stall the engine in that gear without running into an immovable object, and even then, you're just as likely to snap your axle or tear out the drivetrain while the engine hums merrily along. And of course, if you are on soft, loose sand, it will just kick a gloriously wicked rooster tail all over anything or anyone behind you.

Paulie is still spitting dirt when I get out to give him the bad news. "Looks like we're going to have to keep using the loader like we were. Then, once we are finished with that, you can use it to help pull my truck out of the dirt."

In the end, we had the loader pulling on my tow hook and an excavator pushing on the Mansfield bar. Not only did it waste half an hour of the precious time he was trying to save, but he had to pay around $50 worth of standby. Of course, it could have been worse: if it had been truly stuck, he would have been on the hook for the wrecker.

I'm not changing all the clocks in our store for you.

Last Saturday, I had someone show up one minute after I had locked the doors. He stood at the window and tried to get me to open the doors. When I refused, he put his phone up to the glass to show that his phone clock said we were still open for like two more minutes, but I refused.

Cut to today: five minutes before I locked the door, he shows up again and accused me of closing early. When I said that we closed at the same time every Saturday, he then said that we need to fix our clocks.

I've had a long day and ended up saying the first thing that came to my mind. I replied with, "Maybe you need to fix your clocks."

When he refused and started saying that it was our clocks that were broken, I cut him off and said, "Have a good day," and walked away to continue closing.