Here’s a short story about my observations during this week. We have a younger,  newbie driver in our center. She fought hard to get on driving this year, and had to endure layoffs through the summer this year, due to volume issues, and car cutting. Needless to say she appreciates it when she can work full time. In her interest to have the company work her on a daily basis, she has become a real fireball out there. She smokes any route off, to the tune of 2 hours under allowed. The manager would just sing her praises, and would be very upset if he had to lay her off. They would search high and low for a senior, pokey, driver to give the day off, just to keep her working. 
     All was well in “brown land”, until——— she came out of the truck, (three points of contact?) and rolled her ankle. In her interest of keeping working she has let them keep her driving, and working the pre-load, etc. under the guise of TAW. She finally came to me, (the Union steward), and complained that her ankle was not getting any better. I gave her the low down on workers comp. and advised her to get to the doctor and have it checked, and that she might be interested in staying home and giving it a couple of days rest, otherwise she may risk long term problems. You should have seen the dirty look from the division manager when she advised him she needed to be off on comp. Now she is very worried about how they will treat her since she is injured and now “damaged goods”.
     Everyone needs to remember, you are only a hero when the job gets done everyday, and you make no mistakes, or have no issues. Your past history means “nothing”, when something happens.
     Now, no matter what she does, she is tainted goods. She couldn’t be a hero without being hurt.
                                  There’s no such thing as a Gimpy Super-Hero!