Drama Queen Loggers
Some context: I’m a service forester with a state agency in north-central Appalachia. I’m also a 5’1” woman and have been in this position for about a year. Before this, I worked for the feds in R8 and honestly, the only major issues I ever had were with some Amish logging operations. even those eventually got sorted out.
Overall, I have a great relationship with my loggers. If I ask 95% of them for something, they usually get it to me pretty quickly, and our interactions are respectful and professional. Then there’s this one drama queen. I’m doing an initial inspection and I noticed that on the forum the state received there’s some errors on location and there’s also some adjacent land clearing happening right next to the job. So much that it’s hard to delineate what’s the operation or the clearing. Because of highway permits and other logistics, I need to know if the logger decides to move his landing to a different spot along the road as well as job boundaries and updating his form. Pretty standard stuff.
So today I gave him a call, introduced myself, and asked that he let me know if the landing location changes and if he could get back to me as soon as he could.
Apparently, this was a grave violation of his constitutional rights.
Instead of a minute long conversation, I got a five-minute lecture on how I had wronged him as a sovereign citizen, how I had no authority to bother him while he was on vacation with his wife (who was apparently sitting next to him and shaking her head at me on speakerphone), and how the State now owes him compensation for this inconvenience. I’ve cut down a lot of the screaming and language used but I think y’all can get the picture. The situation was interesting enough that my supervisor ended up spending 30 minutes on the phone with him afterward.
Now, I’m still pretty green, but I’ve already been offered meth, dealt with Amish 12-year-olds running equipment, and a decent amount of wtfs. According to the person whose position I overtook, he’s requested Forester changes so many times that it’s an inconvenience for the state to deal with him and send a new service forester out, so I’m most likely gonna be dealing with him again; I have a meeting with my supervisor and a higher up tomorrow about the situation, plus they knew what happened the second I got off the phone with the drama queen, so truly idk what’s going to go on with that. I’ve been told verbally by my supervisors that they believe my account.
I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve apparently incurred a state debt by asking someone to let me know if they move a landing.
For those of yall’ve been doing this longer than I have: how do you handle drama queen loggers? I’d love to hear your stories because I have a feeling this won’t be my last.