ApisMellifera

This dream occurred at a place I worked during my college years. The job involved delivering fruits and donuts overnight to gas stations. The location of the dream was the dock where we would load the box trucks before starting the route.

I come in through the truck bay door. I know I have not been on the job in a few years, but I am eager to prove that I'm still the best driver around. I go looking for my clipboard of route papers, but instead find a black binder which seems to be in really nice condition. I think this is an improvement over the old system, and I toss the binder on top of my "store cart". *note: this is the cart I would use to wheel trays of donuts into the gas stations from the truck. We each had our own with our name on the top.*

I look at the pallet of banana boxes and I'm about to start picking the ones I take with me. Some of the boxes are open and only partially full with yellow, splotchy bananas. I knew these were left over from the night before. Other newer boxes were full with semi-green bananas. These are the ideal ones for sales because they last longer in the stores, but before I start picking my boxes, I see the head driver. He never liked me much because I worked to hard, but I somehow knew that he had covered my route the night before. Since he has a history of doing a poor job on my route, and loading only old bananas, I knew that I would need extra boxes to account for a lot of replacement tonight. I asked him how the bananas went last night and he just blew me off saying it was fine.

One of the other drivers shows up, and he's panicked. He's goes around asking everyone "Have you seen my black, 3-inch binder?" He comes to me and I say I haven't seen it. Then he points to the top of my store cart and asks, "What's that?" I pull down the binder and suddenly realize that his name is printed on the front. Embarrassed, I hand it to him. It occurs to me that we don't all have binders. He bought this one just to help on his route.

I'm ready to start loading my truck, but the head driver is already grumbling that I'm working too fast. Meanwhile, others are waiting on me to back my truck in since we can only load one at a time. I walk out to where the trucks are, but another truck is in the way so I know I won't be able to position mine. I walk back inside feeling the pressure of the others waiting on me.

All of a sudden I am in the rafters of the ceiling, peeking down at the others working. I know that they are talking about me and I am trying to eavesdrop. I hear the head driver griping about me going too fast and making him look bad. I specifically remember him saying "I don't get a 55 dollar salary to put up with this!" The alarm goes off and I wake up.

Much of this dream is very similar to how the job actually went. The head driver in the dream was the same one from my job. When I worked, I focused on efficiency. The head driver was the only salaried employee and would stick around to help the bakery boss after his route, so he was never in a hurry. The rest of us were paid for 8 hours per day, regardless of finishing the route early or late. It was in our best interest to finish early. By hustling in the stores and at the dock (but never on the road! ) I typically finished my route in 5 hours. The head driver, who didn't have a route of his own and covered us on our days off, took at least 8 hours on every route. Over time he started to resent me and he didn't hide it very well.