We're very close to quitting our jobs. Ray called this morning. He said he talked to Cummins in Charlotte this morning and they told him that the truck was ready. He said this was at 6am (an hour before they open). Mara called them at 7am (when they open) and was told that it was not ready. So after Ray called around 9:30, I called Cummins again. I talked to Chris, the guy who is handling our ticket. He said that they had to order an EGR valve, and that it hasn't come in yet, but should be in this morning.

I called Ray back and told him. He pissed me off right away by barking the word "Shit!" Then he started in on the Tunnel Hill thing, saying that this was the reason he tried to get us to go get a new truck. Apparently he forgot the part about us not being able to make it to Tunnel Hill in our truck. I told him that going to Tunnel Hill wouldn't solve the problem because even if we had a new truck it takes time to switch trucks. He came back by saying that it wouldn't help if we didn't have a job (meaning all of us) because we can't keep our North Cove customer happy. I gave him the number to Cummins (again), and he said he was going to call over there and "chew someone's ass." I said "thank you" and hung up.

We're very close to telling Ray to go fuck himself. He doesn't believe us when we tell him what's going on, and so he makes plans according to how he wants things to be rather than how they are. So he keeps finding himself in a mess. When he does he starts looking around for someone to blame for it. When we're involved, we get the blame. Just as he got pissed when we were in Ohio, and Mara tried to call him three times to report on our shop status, only to get a busy signal, then Ray runs his mouth at us because we didn't somehow work around this.

The critical moment now will be the next time I talk to Ray. We don't mind going to Tunnel Hill to pick up a new truck. But we can't do it in our truck that's in the shop in Charlotte. And if we were to drive ourselves up there, it then becomes a matter of our convenience and our timing. For one thing, under no circumstances are we going to leave our truck in Charlotte full of our possessions and head out to Tunnel Hill, Georgia without knowing when we'll get back to get our stuff. Ray might consider that an option. We do not.

Ray seems to think that we enjoy sitting around and losing money. I admit that I much rather enjoy sitting at home as opposed to sitting in a hotel room in Sharonville, Ohio. But Ray seemed to think that our stay in the hotel room last week was a little mini-vacation for us. We had the same problem there, in that the Volvo shop was telling us things that Ray just couldn't accept, and so he took it out on us. Doing that today would be a mistake. You might treat us like shit when we're stuck out in Phoenix, Arizona and get us to play nice and cover our asses. You don't want to fuck with me when I'm sitting at home.