Brian.....

We were really getting down to the last minute back home, before we were leaving and still needed to hire another person. A kid from Kansas called Jon. He had seen some of our advertising posters, looking for acres to combine and wondered if we needed anymore help. We did and began the process of hiring him. He said he had been on harvest crews 2 other summers, so we assumed he would do a good job. We asked for a copy of his driving record, he said he had a clean record and he'd get it to us, but we didn't receive it before we left. He seemed very anxious to get going and would call Jon several times a day to ask what was going on and when we were leaving. Jon told him the approx. day and that we would contact him as soon as we were on the road, and would pick him up on the way down. Well you all know how hectic it was the couple weeks before we left and Brian soon became an annoyance, he even called Jon at 2:30am once. Once we left he called Jon every couple hours asking where we were, well, a couple hours farther than the last time I talked to you, what do you think? We stopped that night a few hours from his house and gave him the choice of either picking him up in the morning or he could have someone drop him off where we were. He showed up that night and was nice enough, we tried not to pre-judge, but he was rather hot-headed. We had plenty of time ahead of us to get to know him. Give him a chance.

The next morning Ben & Brian set off in our truck pulling the camper to get it to the campground so they could turn around to go back and bring the double header trailer down. Brian spit his chew juice out the window of our truck and it got all down the side. If he wants to do that in his own vehicle, fine, but NOT in our vehicles! dumb-butt. He was washing it off at a gas station with a window washer squeegee, Jon told him if he ever does that again he's washing all of the trucks and machinery by hand.

Fast forward to when we are combining, he does not have a class A license, says he has combined before, and is more familiar with John Deere equipment. So Jeff showed him how to combine with the green machine. He thought he knew it all and didn't listen very well. The next day he plugged up the combine so bad he almost burnt up an expensive belt. So he was banned from running that. He was just riding around with Chris in the tractor & grain cart after that. Chris was backing up and Brian decided to open the door. The dual caught the bottom of the door, shattering the glass on the entire door. Oh boy, that was a bad day let me tell you! Brian's nickname has now become "headache".



When I got back from a parts run that Saturday and saw this I felt sick, for 3 reasons.
1) I was sure it wouldn't be a cheap fix.
2) Who knew where there would be a door in stock and tomorrow was Sunday.
3) It is blasted hot and dusty in the field and hated to think that Chris or whoever would be driving the tractor would be in there till we could replace it.

We located a door in stock 3 hours away in Kingfisher, OK. They were even open on Sundays during the wheat harvest. So I headed there to get it. I got just the glass instead of a whole new door, we hoped the frame wasn't bent too badly that we could attach the glass and save some money. It was a tight squeeze getting the glass in the truck. Well we found out the frame was bent worse than originally thought, but they got it bent back enough to get the glass attached, it just doesn't shut flush to the tractor, there is a gap. but it will have to do for now.

Back to Brian....I found out that he wasn't very truthful with us, he did indeed have several major offenses on his driving record. We actually weren't surprised after being around him almost a week; reckless, immature.... It was just time for him to leave, we were tired of dealing with him. Good bye Brian, you're fired.