I pulled into the terminal parking lot. Cigarette smoke wafted through the air. Anthony, AKA Zeus, the new manager, had told me to text him when I arrived and he would come out to get me.
It was my first day on the premises, after telling my husband and his brother that I was driving the three hours to rural West Virginia to try to “help.” After four days of arguing about it, they finally backed down.
“Morning, darlin’,” said the guard in her West Virginia twang. Her friendliness was disarming. I waited for Zeus as employees slid by me, scanning their badges, grumbling in their hoodies, Monster drinks in hand.
Zeus made his way out to the guard shack and ushered me in. I had no idea what to expect or where to start.
Driving down that morning, I kept coming back to The Trust Equation, introduced by David Maister in the early 2000s:
My goals for this trip were simple:
- Do anything and everything I could to build trust with our employees and stakeholders.
- Get a sense of whether we could turn this ship around.
Inside, package handlers pulled boxes off noisy conveyors, sorting them by route. I had never seen so many Walmart and Chewy boxes in one place.
“How can I help?” I asked Dwayne, a sixty-something driver with a long beard.
“You want to help?” he said, perplexed that the boss man’s wife was offering to get her hands dirty. “Well, I guess you can hand me those piles of packages to help me load my truck.”
So I did.
The next three hours were a whirlwind. I walked the line of trucks, muddy and dented, front seats full of trash, food wrappers, and soda cups. People had no sense of pride in the equipment, and honestly, we hadn’t given them any reason to.
As the second-to-last truck pulled out of the station, Zeus said, “Well, I’ve gotta run the overflow packages down to Harts and Ranger. We probably won’t get back until around 8:00 tonight. You in?”
Hell yes.
I had never ridden shotgun in a delivery truck, but I wasn’t about to pass up the chance. It was too soon for me to have earned his trust, but jumping into that truck was a start.
That first day, I learned that trust isn’t built through words or titles. It starts in moments like that, when you roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, and show you mean it.
