Be part of the problem, or part of the solution – your choice

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Updated Nov 30, 2015

There’s another video going around – this time of a guy peeing in the parking lot, in broad daylight, at a facility that clearly has public restrooms close. I’m sent at least one of these videos a week, or see them on other trucking pages. I don’t repost them, I don’t share them. I don’t because there’s not enough time in the day to attempt shaming people into acting right. It also shames the entire industry to propagate these unfortunate incidents. I would once again plead with those who do share and post these things to think twice before doing so.

arking lot memeHere’s why:

This was posted on our Facebook page by Barbara Price, who has been following along with us from the beginning. Barbara saw the video, read the comments, and took time to take it one step further by considering the innocent people who were injured by the acts of just one driver.

In the past few days, many of you have heard about and viewed a video showing a fat, shirtless truck driver inappropriately taking care of personal needs in the parking lot of the Love’s in Willis, Texas. The video gave a clear picture of his activities and identified the trucking company that he worked for. Since then, there were numerous posts made on that company’s Facebook page, including one by myself, and there are a number of scathing messages in the review section of Google. 

I have seen a couple of comments today where people have indicated that the driver was dealt with, but that word isn’t traveling nearly as quickly as the fire storm that the video created.

I couldn’t help but think of the owner of that company and their other employees. I saw on one post it stated that he (the owner) was actually taken out of church to be told about this situation!

I could only imagine how upsetting it would be to have your company’s image savaged on the internet because of one employee’s gross stupidity. There had been no response to what had happened on their Facebook page, so I decided to place a phone call and see what I could find out for myself.

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I spoke to the company owner, who actually answered his own phone. He was very nice, very professional, and totally mortified about what had happened. He did confirm that, in fact, he was taken out of church by a company employee and informed of what had transpired!

With his permission, I can tell you that the driver is no longer employed by his company, and as a result of the video, the driver was arrested by local law enforcement.

The district attorney is in the process of deciding how this is going to be handled. The owner has indicated that as soon as he has all the information from the authorities, he plans to make a public statement of apology about the incident. He has already apologized to the corporate office of Love’s.

I decided to post this because it is important that accurate information get out about the fact that this trucking company took immediate steps to address what happened.

The video is going to continue to be shared, no doubt, so I hope anyone who sees it and notices that there is no reference to what has happened since the video will take a moment to bring the record up to date.

Social media is a powerful informational tool. Unfortunately, sometimes people get too caught up in dishing the dirt to acknowledge when it’s been cleaned up. For the sake of one small business in Willis, Texas, let’s concentrate on spreading the word about the cleanup, rather than wallowing in the dirt.

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Barbara. Thanks.

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