Politically hostile work environment, or over-sensitivity?

To clarify a point in the OP, the company that has painted onto the back of all their trailers(not bumper-stickered) the phrase “IT IS NOT A CHOICE. IT IS A CHILD” is Covenant.

My condolences on your situation. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is much you can do considering how “right-to-work” laws allow employers a lot of room to be insensitive jerks. Whenever you have some extra money, you might consider making a small donation to Planned Parenthood, so you can have the satisfaction of using money earned from Covenant going to support abortion.

Since I’m here:

In the first sentence of the first post the OP wrote that he doe not work for that company.

This would irk me too and I’m sorry you have to deal with it. I do think if the company’s management doesn’t care about the message that their dirty trucks are carrying, you should probably just let it go.

Boy do I hate agreeing with Shodan.

You’re head of security, and I assume that means protecting all of the company’s assets and reducing their risks. Is there a reasonable security-related reason for you to get involved here? Employees writing on the backs of trucks are wasting labor hours, which is a company resource. Should management put a stop to it for that reason? Perhaps it’s a trivial loss of time but if there are hundreds of trucks with this message, the time adds up. Especially if the messages keep reappearing after cleanings.

If employees are walking around the truck yard to write on trailers, are they increasing the risk that they get hit by a truck? That’s a hit to your employer’s comp insurance and should be something your managers worry about.

Does the graffiti indicate that employees have too much unsupervised access to trailers? That could suggest there are are gaps in the monitoring or security of the trailers that could lead to freight losses. Perhaps increased camera coverage in the yard would let you figure out who is doing this. Then, report the person to their manager and HR for shirking. The political content of their message is irrelevant.

Can you enlist allies at the company who might care for different reasons? I’m guessing your head of marketing/sales doesn’t want this message to deter customers who aren’t part of the MAGA crowd. Does he or she even know about this problem and want to fix it for you?

**
HurricaneDitka**, your solution seems fair but management’s failure to scrub a partisan message of their trucks is a trivial reason for Czarcasm to quit. It would be a weird hill to die on.

Procrustus, I don’t know why you think that would be unacceptable for an employer to require its employees to phone bank for Kamala Harris. It’s clear that if HurricaneDitka worked at a phone bank hired by the Committee to Elect Kamala Harris, this would be part and parcel of his job. HurricaneDitka would either suck it up and make the calls or quit, as he suggested. You might think that just because HurricaneDitka doesn’t actually work at a phone bank, they can’t make him place such phone calls but, generally and in the absence of a specific contract (such as a union contract) that provides otherwise, employees work at their employer’s will and the employer can change the job description to include phone banking for Kamala Harris any time they want (disregarding campaign finance law limitations for a moment).

Your employer can make you work for a political party, as in my telemarketer phone bank example. Under federal election laws, there are limits on a company donating services in-kind to a political campaign or party but, as a practical matter, as long as the company isn’t coordinating with the candidate or the candidate’s party, your company can spend as much money as it wants promoting or opposing a political candidate, and it can assign its employees to do that work. That was the holding of Citizen’s United v. the Federal Election Commission. The employee either makes the calls, quits on principal as Shodan and HurricaneDitka suggest, or refuses to make the calls and faces the employers’ consequences, which probably means getting fired.

That is why I preface my legal opinionating with “I’m pretty sure”. :smiley:

I’d be more upset by the fact that my co-workers are fucking idiots than the messages themselves.

Can’t believe I am going to agree with **HD **but Yes, you are being too sensitive. It kind of sucks but it isn’t close to an actual hostile work environment.

I say this as someone who was one of the 3 of 49 who voted for HRC and not Trump at my prior job.

I don’t think the OP is being too sensitive. The messages “Democrats are Communists” and “Build the Wall” are threatening, hostile messages, and are clearly intimidating to someone who disagrees with them. The fact that they keep appearing repeatedly signals an intent to aggressively enforce his hostile point of view on the entire workforce. The OP has to be careful not to reveal his disagreement with these political statements, because they clearly suggest that anyone who disagrees with them won’t be treated equally, or worse.

This kind of intimidation can be a major impact on a person’s mental, and as a result, physical, health.

I’m trying to distill the known versus unknown facts from this conversation:

Known:
A) The company with the graffiti on its trucks is Covenant.
B) Czarcasm is not a truck driver. He happens to work on a trailer-storage site for a company that is NOT Covenant.
C) The trucking company has no problem with the display of right-wing propaganda on its name-bearing vehicles.
D) The verbage that Czarcasm finds objectionable has been appearing for months, and it was months before he asked the trucking company’s management if the messages might be excessive
D) Czarcasm is not in a position conducive to changing careers
Suggested but unknown:

  1. Czarcasm is employed (as on-site manager) by a contractor who provides security for a trucking company’s trailer yard(s)?
  2. Czarcasm is not (yet) in a position to retire.
  3. Czarcasm does not feel he can simply train for another career and find another job
  4. Czarcasm does not know exactly who is putting graffiti on the trucks.

Questions:
I) Can Czarcasm ask to be transferred to another site and expect the same remuneration?
II) Has Czarcasm found evidence of anyone at any time putting graffiti on the trucks? [I know this conflicts with #4 above; are there any video captures or witnesses or braggarts or shoe prints or…?]
III) Who else is accessing the site where the trucks are stored? How easy is it to come by and write on a truck?
IV) How many trucks are receiving this graffiti? How long does it take to mark so many trucks?

Comments:

  • It’s painful to write this but, given your circumstances, I would agree with the various responders who have said, “Try to Ignore it.” because it’s not worth losing the job you have. I don’t think the trucking company is going over the top even if it’s behind the partisan messaging; I do think it’s pushing the limit of respectability, but our First Ammendment protects that on both sides of the aisle.

  • I do agree, though, that the company is being foolish to allow the graffiti because, at worst, it makes them look like right-wing extremists and, at best, it tells the world they don’t keep their trucks clean, or protected from graffiti artists, or safe from other types of potential vandals, thieves, saboteurs, et cetera.

  • If it was me, I wouldn’t be able to ignore it either. You have my sympathies but…well…that and a half-buck will no longer pay for a cheap burger.

  • It may be too late because you have brought up the subject once already. However, you might note to the trucking company’s management that the right- or left-wing nature of the message is less relevant than the fact that someone is coming in and spending time writing on the trucks. Whoever he/she/they might happen to be, the message he/she/they might be learning is that one can access the truck storage yard and do all sorts of damage – visual/graffiti, electro-mechanical, merchandise/product/content-harming – with impunity.
    It then becomes a matter of storage-yard security – which is your concern as head of security – to request resources and funding to catch the culprit and make the yard more secure. Be careful, though, because this could also bite your ass by pointing out that it has been going on for months and you haven’t caught the culprit. [I.E. what T&C said but from a different angle.]

  • FWIW* Democrats – even extremist Democrats would be highly UNlikely to be applying graffiti or other vandalism…well, anywhere. I’m not just saying that because I’m a registered Democrat; I’m saying that because one of the well-known and highly exploitable facts about the Left is that they actually believe in the Justice For All ideals and want everyone to feel included and empowered and respected – to the extent that they lack the balls to stand up to even the tiniest of right-wingers abuses. Honestly, it aggravates the hell out of me! But that’s the empathetic stance that would also keep them from writing ELITISTS ARE JERKS even on a half-inch Post-It note.

Good luck!

Please keep us apprised.

—G!

Wrong. Covenant officially paints slogans on their trucks. The OP doesn’t work for Covenant.

The OP didn’t really ask for this kind of advice. He’s merely asking if this situation would make you feel like you were on a hostile environment too. Speaking for myself, yes it would.

Are these tanker trucks or, um, he other kind (long box with pallets of stuff. Or even hopper/ veggie trucks, I guess)?

If tankers, Ramos Oil Company has a wash bay for their tanker trucks because they did some research that told them:

shiny tanks rise less in temperature than dirty ones
the mass of the dirt does have a measurable effect on fuel economy
clean trucks are a better presentation of your company than a dirty truck

If you wished, you could try this tack with management.

If mgt doesn’t care, then you will have to live with it. I understand that retirement could be impacted by going to work somewhere else after a certain age; this is one more factor in either not letting it get to you or not letting anyone think it gets to you.

Because some jerks will pile on and continue if they see they are annoying someone else. Jerkish behavior is not normally illegal, and was the normal enough in the military that a thick skin was important.

Most people really don’t care. If it bothers you a quick brush off, literally would take care of the problem. I’ve all kinds of stuff written in dirt on cars, trucks, trailers, etc. some are very creative, like these http://graffsociety.com/News-12/Car-Dirt-Art.html#.XF7hrFxKiUk most are pointless.

Most people know that the odds are it wasn’t the driver, who probably doesn’t own the trailer, who only job was take this load from point A to point B. I’ve also seen where the trailer owner rent out space on trailers as billboards, which might have messages that driver doesn’t agree with, but again it’s not the driver’s job to agree just to take the load from here to there.

So in MHO you’re beign over-sensitive. Brush it off if you don’t like it and get on with your life. You have better things to worry about.

Comedy Gold, this thread!

Of all the posts iin this thread, this is the one closest to my thoughts.
When I see messages written on the vehicle in the dust, I do not associate it with the owner / driver but to an opportunistic tagger. Similar to all the impressive paint jobs on the sides of the boxcars I see while waiting for the train to get through. I doubt Union Pacific or Canadian National agree the urban disciples rule or care that* Josiah luvs Kendra*. I imply no more or less malice or threat to “lock her up” in dust than I do to “trump” spray painted under STOP on the red octagonal sign on my way to work.
So yes the OP is oversensitive as he knows it is not directed at him personally or at least wasn’t when it started. Probably was done by someone that only knows of him by name on a company phone directory.

yep!
This thread seems like something the snowflakes on a college campus would get all worked up about.

Slogans scratched in mud…oh, what a threat!!

And of the two slogans, one is perfectly legitimate, and the other is just plain so stupid that you can’t take it seriously.
(to clarify: 1)“Build that wall” is a perfectly legitimate political slogan. I hate it , too, just like you. But it was the slogan used throughout the democratic process of the election, and 60 million voters approved it. 2) “Dems are communists” is just plain stupid. It’s not worth getting your panties in a twist over.)

The world is full of stupid people. Some of them are your bosses. Deal with it.

What actually worries me more than the muddy slogans is the overly smug attitude expressed by the OP: seeing things he disagrees with hurts his feelings too much, and he wants protection.

You’re at work; not in a safe space with trigger warnings.

As head of security you might have an alternate path. Is your company a part of CTPAT, or does it want to be? CTPAT regulations require a Highway Carrier to store trailers in a secure area to prevent unauthorized access or manipulation. Management might care about longer and more frequent inspections.

Nonetheless, I think the OP is being too sensitive if he wants to change the graffiti because he deems it offensive. But he is being a good head of security if he is looking to protect the business’ future participation in CTPAT. Just looking out for the terrorists, boss, should be a message right leaning management could agree with?

I think the OP should just shrug it off, and can’t imagine myself ever being upset by political graffiti. I also find it hard to believe that multiple truck drivers are all writing the same messages. If it is the drivers, the employer may just not want to tick them off. There is a real shortage of CDL drivers, and it can be very difficult to keep good, reliable ones.

Does the company have mule drivers? There would typically be only one or two in even a large operation. The truck mule would be moving the trailers all the time, so would have access to them more than the drivers themselves, often in more out-of-the-way areas of the yard. It could be just the one guy doing it. I would look for a mule driver with a MAGA hat :slight_smile:

Gotta second this.

Interestingly, if you did voice your opinions and the company took action against you, you might have a case for legal action. However, other employees giving you shit for your opinions might not rise to the legal requirements for hostile work environment. It is, however, unprofessional and shitty. With diversity in the workplace and all that, HR should do something about it. However, sounds like your company owners are in agreement with the sentiments, so they probably wouldn’t.

Why can’t you respond? Because there’s a company policy of no politics? And the drivers aren’t subject to it because they are independent contractors, not company employees? Or is it you just feel uncomfortable with the idea of setting yourself off from everyone else for your politics?

I agree that I can’t imagine slogans that would be harsh enough to draw criticism that wouldn’t be actionable for the expressed opinion itself. Certainly the two you suggest don’t seem any harsher than “Democrats are Commies”, which seems to be acceptable. Plus, he couldn’t do it on company time, as that would be actionable as wasting time or shirking duty, so really he doesn’t have the option.

The trailers are company-owned, and they are not tankers.
The yard is secure, and the only people who have access to them are the mechanics, the drivers and whatever office personnel want to wander out into the yard. Of those three, the drivers have the most access so, no, the drivers are not the least likely suspects.

And, once again, I do not work for Covenant and if I thought that so many people would seize on that I never would have brought them up in the OP, even though it was clearly stated in the OP, and repeated more times then one would deem necessary, that I do not work for that company.

No, the vast majority of the drivers are company drivers, apparently what is meant by the “No Politics” is that the admins want things to go smoothly so the drivers don’t go looking for greener pastures, so don’t say anything that might rile them up.