Pluspunten
Walpole has a good team of managers, and they are also genuinely good people, but they have a couple of bad apples and maybe even one rotten apple on the safety team. My first and third day of orientation was off the chain. They bought us lunch and not McDonald’s. They took us to a real sit-down restaurant. The best meal I had in a long time. We sat down to break bread with the managers, and they explained everything to us in great detail so we knew what to expect. Everyone in the office was super nice and professional. As corny as it sounds, they really did make us feel like family. You’ll get minimum pay on down days so you have the safety of knowing you’ll always be able to pay your bills.
Minpunten
During my second day of orientation, we went on a ride-along with a safety team member. He had a political radio station on in the work vehicle. Throughout most of the ride, he engaged in a political rant about the government, the border and attempted to involve us in a political conversation. We weren’t biting. Eventually, we stopped at the Mosaic Plant. Upon arrival, the safety team member took out his phone and started reading text messages while driving around the plant. This is when he really drove the point home that he could take our bonus or “get us in trouble”. We didn’t report him because we knew he would retaliate against us. We parked and approached a driver getting loaded, but when we got out of the truck, a strong chemical odor filled the air. The Walpole driver expressed concern about the fumes, but the safety team member told him to “stop being a pu**y, causing visible upset. I could see the driver was grinding his teeth and the safety person just stood there smirking. We left for another Mosaic plant and a few seconds after we pulled in the safety team member storms over to the loading area and scolded and belittled another driver in front of everyone. After about two weeks, I had completed training and was on my own. While at Mosaic, I spoke to drivers from other companies doing the same job, earning more per load, and enjoying cheaper health insurance. Night management wouldn’t answer my calls or texts, and upon coming in, I found the manager watching TikTok on his phone, revealing my load had been canceled hours earlier. Despite being paid minimum for the day, I discovered the night managers knew about the cancellation at 6 pm but never called me, But they called other drivers. This happened more than once. When entering the office, the night managers wouldn’t acknowledge me, engrossed in TikTok.