This video is about my recent experience as a preloader. If you came here looking for advice on filing a grievance click this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPHjXmLobfE . I’m just here to lay out some concerns peculiar to my hub in the interest of promoting communication and on a personal note to vent a bit.
I’ve held the position for two years. This is my third peak as I started in December of 2017. I believe that what one of my full time supervisors asked me to do today was in violation of Past Practice. I learned that term after I made this video. But I’m glad that my ideas (if I understood the concept correctly/there is no fine print) about something being amiss were legitimized.
We have had three injuries in my hub this year, if I’m not mistaken. Sure you could say that’s because some of our employees are sub-par. But as someone who has been here for two years I’d say that’s definitely not the whole of the story. The management style and company culture is severely compromised by corporate pressure.
I understand the need to profit. But I think that UPS has had a wide enough margin that this corner cutting, union dodging, irrational authoritarianism is not only unnecessary (it never is) but compromises the ability to perform the job safely.
It is just a few days shy of Christmas, meaning that we have already worked a good portion of peak season, does it make sense to approach an employee at the end of the shift and tell them to rescan all the packages on the trucks because of an alleged misload registration. Especially if the misloads are not misloads as admitted by management? Especially if there was no prior practice of manually scanning out of the trucks? Especially if the supervisors do not do it and the employees do not do it.
There are further details of counterproductive and arguably abusive practices in the video. I will likely follow up in the near future as I get a better handle on the situation.
Neither my coworkers nor I should have to work under these conditions.
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Not Just Zazz…but Pizzazz
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I bitch a lot about my day job so here are some of the perks. I’m too shagged out to make it terribly witty or poetic but I’m trying damn it!
1) My feet are strong. I got buff feet yall. They conform to surface and balance all dance like as I carry 5 to 140 pounds of christmas cheer for 4 to 7 hours.
2) I laid down to sleep absolutely exhausted and drifted off deeply into my secondhand mattress to dream of playing billiards with Boris Johnson and Bernie Sanders. It was the most vivd thing in the world. I was in a futuristic megacity with my best friends and two mad lads one of whom parachuted with a union jack flag into a mini cooper. Felt like I knew both for years. Because fuck yeah. Serious no lie. This dream pretty much happened sans the parachute.
3) Beer is 9000+ times better.
4) You have a tangible result almost immideatly ready to gauge against your last best speed and accuracy.
5) When I lay down I am very aware of my calves and all my musculture. Sure this has just as much to do with my gym habits but I feel this intense vigor pulsing through me despite the exhaustion. Physical labor especially at UPS is basically paid functional strength training.
6) When you’re done you’re done.
7) It’s always interesting to see how much my body can overcome when I get home and decide to workout and write on top of all my daily responsibilities.
8) You appreciate how much work goes into making modern life possible. And do not have any illusions about economics and where produtivity origniates.
9) Food is instantly absorbed and allocated to the most efficient use.
10) Leprechauns whisper secrets in the dawn. If you don’t like them – just add coffee. They’ll be replaced by paranoia that makes you plan your life out to the T for the next twenty years as you learn to pickle and buy farmland in western Tennessee. \
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1) Number crunching and decision making will be done via algorithm. Algorithms don’t require bonuses. CEO’s will become Baristas.
2) The most hipstery Baristas will use the power of snark to become managers and tell the CEO to get the UPS driver a coffee.
3) Visual processing is difficult so all but the most mundane physical tasks will require a work force.
4) Rednecks and Mexicans will become the new elite.
5) The rest of society will fight ferociously over ad revenue from robot enhanced corporations via weapons grade cat videos.
6) Ad rvenue will run out.
7) We will all become Baristas.
If everyone gives me a dollar I can build a bunker. You’ll want access to my bunker because the robots will gain sentience and realize how shitty Unions have become. Then there will be heck to pay. Protect yourself from heck. It’s worse than hell….It’s in Indiana. Invest in your future. Invest below.
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For during my seven hour thirteen minute breakless shift…I paused to shit.
O Bezos most merciful fullfiller lead me back to the light. May I master my need to shit, may I purge all from my body and mind that does not translate into boxes on brown trucks.
May I not fear the 2 am start time for it is our sacred season whose name is Peak.
Bezos forgive me. Bezos keep me. For thee in thy wisom hath gutted the job market with tax exemptions and monopoly. There is to none but thee and thy servant UPS that I may turn.
Blessings upon you, merciful one.
You of the line of Re. Of Seti the great Begoten of Nuit unto whom stand grand pylons.
The blood and sweat of many hath made manifest the grandeur of your empire.
Grant me the strength to raise pillars of Chinese assembled goods that shall reach to the ends of the earth.
Your profits will stretch form the rising to the setting of the sun.
O Bezos great one my father.
All donations will be reinvested into the coffers of our Lord.
P.S.
Hail Bezos!
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I lug boxes for a living. Sometimes I run out of healthy stuff so I opt for hearty.
Base – Red Baron Deluxe Supreme
Garnish – Nacho Cheese and a metric ton of Ground Beef
I work in the hub but sometimes do driver help. Like I did a couple of days ago. I saw purple while recovering at a diner on the second day. Granted I worked since four AM and my own car doesn’t have air con but still: neither the hub where I work nor the trucks have air conditioning. And Friday in my area had a heat index of 105 degrees Farenheit according to what my driver said.
The lady from the video has created a petition to put air conditioning in the trucks.
And, while I’m not sure that air con is workable without a new fleet please sign the petition to help press for change.
(Warning – Much Cussing and Kvetching Ahead with Bawdy Jokes Thrown In like Filthy Garnish)
Today we are going to ask the deep questions. The philosophical questions. Questions regarding the truly esoteric and rarefied.
Questions like: Do you want the same company that delivers dildos to deliver your grandma’s betablockers?
I work at UPS. And while I have not myself encountered a box full of marital aids I have friends who have.
Far from the Hub. Where I like to be. Thanks for the hat tho!
I know that UPS delivers medicine. If you want your aspirin and statins delivered to your door instead of going to the pharmacy that’s fine. Some people are old, some people are lazy, some don’t have the time. I get it.
But generally folk who are super sick… need someone to help them take their meds. I know this. I take care of meds for my grandfather. I’m not gonna claim to be some kind of fastidious ‘type A guy,’ but it would seem that DEPENDING ON UPS TO DELIVER MEDICINE TO PRVENT DEATH; and letting the supply dwindle so low before the refill is a FUCKING BAD IDEA. And generally not practiced by those who haven’t been lobotomized.
Which is why I was surprised today by the driver of one of the trucks I was loading. When she informed me that they have “critical packages,” that they delvier hearts. FUCKING HEARTS! Are you shitting me?
Pictured: A Critical Package
For those of you not in the know about UPS. All your precious buttplugs, novelty blenders, and Nazi parephenalia get jammed onto 18 wheelers. By jammed I mean stuffed to the brim like a teenagers closet. To such a degree that they often tumble out upon opening the doors.
Your commemorative gimp suit then gets sent up a belt to the sleep deprived hands of highly caffeinated blue collar kids and poor boomers who need insurance. These are then sorted by color coding onto various belts.
THEN THEY END UP AT THE SLIDE!
So your heart, your epilepsy medicine, and Preppers Pete’s generator get’s to ride down a slide like one big happy family! Ain’t it great?
But the fun doesn’t end there! Because the slide sometimes gets fuckin’ JAMMED. So grandpa’s new vital organ may well make intimate contact with a bottle of corrosive DON’T FUCKING TOUCH THAT.
Sure the stuff is bottled and packaged with slightly more care than the tax forms and switchblades that occasionally spill out all over the place. But call me a softy…I’d rather NOT HAVE MY HEART CRUSHED.
..With stray calligraphy pens! You give LOGISTICS a bad name…
Now she may have been reffering to pacemakers, or robotic hearts, or just being dramatic but in any case…the case rests at...the same company that delivers Monster truck tires and nipple clamps shouldn’t be in the business of organ trafficking or even beta blocker delivery.
People who wake up at three in the morning to lug auto parts and ammo around aren’t FUCKING PHARMACISTS. And no matter how well trained, well rested, and diligent mistakes happen in non air conditioned buildings when you’re loading 600 -1000 packages per employee.
So…let’s talk about training. I have been at UPS since December 2017 and I have never heard the term “critical package” my supervisor for the day had…but only because a driver had told him while he was a “driver helper.”
Does that sound like adequate training. Like there’s a strong company culture of communication?
Well how about the fact that one of the managers. Not a supervisor but a fucking manager made me sign a form promising to load packages WRONG.
The drivers you see like the small packages behind the big ones so they don’t fall off the shelf. Which is what I was taught to do when I got there and… what I got in trouble for…. And what I went back to doing at the drivers request…with no further comment from the manager, because he didn’t happen to catch me stacked out on a bad day, and get the chance to don his micromanaging hat. I’m sure this had something to do with Six Sigma.
Pictured: Six Sigma Masurbation
Yes, every hub is different. But despite my bitching from what I’ve heard our hub is actually one of the nicer ones. That is if you can stand the Carolina heat.
I mention the lack of communication to highlight again how fucking dumb it is that apparently pharmacies, the FDA, etc is ok with fuckin UPS delivering CRITICAL medicine.
I can sort of see a vague economic one. Like there’s not gonna be a sustainable business model of specifically delivering medication but…there’s still the whole thing of….”YOUR MEDICINE IS BEIN HANDLED IN THE SAME PILE OF SHIT AS CLOROX, CRICKETS, AND BIKES. Being handled by multiple exhausted employees who barely have time to piss in the wee hours of the morn! (pun intended)
So this was a particularly bad day to try to guilt trip me by mentioning:
Umm..yea…do impossible things better…for less money than me..k…?
“Ummm…yea…make the truck neater because I deliver medicine – there’s a package out of order – yea out of the approximatley 1000 packages you just loaded there’s one in the wrong spot – and my cousin or somebody died because they didn’t get their epilepsy medicine when they were five.”
Lady, if the truck is loaded 90% correctly that’s already pretty good. Are you 100% on the ball on your route? Cause the drivers here just got berated for almost wrecking. And I loaded this shit at least 97% correctly.
I always try for 100% and hey…telling somebody that has had very little sleep ,and been working with no break for the past four hours that “THEY BETTER BE CAREFUL OR SOMEBODY COULD DIE…” isn’t good for morale.
“No pressure..you know…I don’t want you to make a mistake…it’s just that you’re now suddenly a neurosurgeon and if you fuck up just a bit SOMEBODY WILL FUCKIGN DIE!”
Yea…that’s real helpful.
I don’t like being guilt tripped. I don’t like the insinuation that I’m careless when for the past four sweaty ass hours I’ve been tightening, organizing, and rearranging so everythign is as neat and accessible as possible given the time constraints.
So, I don’t want to hear wails of protest about how you’re on the truck before you’re getting paid.
Lady…I currently make 13 dollars an hour whereas you likely make 22 – 28. Your little prep work is gonna pay you dividends. The prep work I do in the morning for which there’s barely any time is rewarded by FUCK ALL.
I wake up at 3 am….and load for four to five hours in a building that’s been stewing all day and all night in the southern sun. All while being given contradictory directions and having my attention diverted by forms, calls for help, and hardware.
Now…I don’t dislike the person I am currently writing about. She’s the best smellin’ driver in the hub. But…her attitude is indicative…is a crystallized indicator of the attitude of a lot of drivers. That attitude being our job is hard so yours isn’t.
The gals do smell better but…this is Not UPS reality. O well here’s a pretty girl. So stay tuned. Marketing? I am Don Draper.
Look guys…just like if you didn’t deliver the packages we wouldn’t have a job…you wouldn’t have a job if we didn’t load packages.
Do you get annoyed about dispatch riding your ass? Well our Sups and managers ride ours… so it would be nice for that not to also be outsourced to another employee. An employee who is paid exhorbitantly more.
No, I’m not saying “I don’t get paid enough so I load how the fuck I want” – what’s being contested is the assertion that: it’s not fair that I don’t get paid to come in early to make the truck look how I like it to look which is often different than how the (often shifting) loadchart looks.
It is fairconsidering the fact that I too show up early to make my day (and by extension YOURS DUMBASS) easier.. and make fuck all to show for it besides good health insurance. Especially since you’re making an uppermiddleclass income with no qualifications besides a drivers liscecne, a HS Dipoma, and maybe some dumbass MBA.
Mostly Decent and often Magnificently Moustachioed Individuals
Again most drivers even the ones I bitch about are decent people but that doesn’t detract from the vague cliqueishness that is readily apparent. Your job is grueling …so is mine…O YOU WORK LONGER. YOU ALSO FUCKING GET PAID MORE.
And…you’re not waking up at 3 AM to go to work….I can’t stress that shit enough. Hey UPS…. The constantly changing start time is not good for focus, productivity, or cancer rates. Do some actual research on sleep and apply what you learned to your policies instead of just handing out “healthy living” info sheets to sign.
As I said, and I say again, most drivers are decent folk. But they’re also a bit up their own ass.
I am in a peculiar socio-economic situation. I own things. The things I own are my business, so I live a somewhat yuppie-esque lifestyle. As such I go to the gym where I witness lots of people with their heads up their ass. Some of them are UPS drivers.
As I was benching a few months back I heard a couple babbling about loaders falling asleep to the owner of the gym. This basically turned into a Boomerific circle jerk of kids these days, and it’s a good job, and harrumph.
Hey…the reason some of them are sleepy especially the new ones is because they wake up at 3 am assholes..
This experience, along with not sleeping enough due to a busy schedule, and the god damned water heater/plumbing deciding to start a rockconcert right (as I was going to bed) did not make it a good day to be a cunty driver.
Of course there won’t really be consequences besides a snarky blogpost and me refusing to load that set of trucks. Which isn’t mine…I loaded them because…I’m nice…and someone else was out today. How bout ya have a blue vest load ’em eh…?
Maybe the consequence will be I’m fired. Fuck it. Even though this is the best job for my schedule despite the circadian fuckery, even though I like manual labor, even though I know that it has neurocognitive benefits I don’t care.
I don’t care because if I get fired over this post then it has nothing to do with my ability to perform my duties. And everything to do with appearance, and politics, and dog shit. I doubt this will be the outcome.
So why mention it?
You’re virtue signaling!
Because this gives me an opportunity to virtue signal and say free speech is more important than getting a tiny crumb off a huge corporate pie.
Why are you so like OMG overreacting…it’s just people were like teasing you and like….
Yeah…first off I’ve give the context, second off how the hell is “teasing” going to help my load quality when I’ve been initially nice, and even made a joke at my own expense, and informed you I’m tired, how is guilt tripping – teasing, and why is it tied to a larger case of head-up-ass syndrome?
It leads me to the question. Is the driver (at the very least this particular type of driver) helping JUST ME or are they helping themselves? I can’t exactly stay 100% focused after a four fifteen start time as I make smalltalk, communicate about bulk stops, avoid tripping, and navigate around you…so I think the answer is the drivers are helping themselves. They are helping themselves to make a whole hell of a lot of money. And a part of their pie involves MY LABOR.
Isn’t a bit more tact called for with exhausted coworkers?
Look God knows, I’m not always perfect about not getting annoyed, or snarky, or teasy, or preachy but I do generally try not to assume that people make small mistakes due to sloppy laziness or lack of care. Because you don’t know a persons background or their current situation.
And when a person figths your guilt tripping about – medicine and dead relatives who missed a crucial dose; by informing you that hey I’m tired, the truck is as neat as any on this belt, I’ve had no sleep, and I’m taking care of a relative who has had a stroke, my only living relative (that’s not estranged).
Yeah, you responding with “O…It’s all about you.” Doesn’t seem like teasing after FOUR HOURS OF LABOR IN A NONAIRCONDITIONED BUILDING.
What it seems like is the typical ‘Im so put upon’ attitude of drivers which while justifiable becomes unjustifiable by offloading it on the loaders. (Who are at the end of their shift. Taking a ton of hardware up the ass.)
‘O but I was just blowin off steam and you need XYZ and it was teasing.’
I do, most of the time, I do . This was the third time out of more than a year that I’ve voiced annoyance in any form about a driver.
The first one was when a guy freaked out over me moving a trash bin off the 4000 shelf so I could load packages. The trash was not supposed to be on the shelf.
The second one was when a driver decided to treat me like I was a waiter and his filet mignon was late. Spazzing out about HIS hardware as I was addressing another drivers far more pressing issue RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. (The bin guy later found me and apologized to me. So yes UPS drivers are mostly good even the ones that piss me off sometimes.)
Besides these incidents I’ve never said anything to anyone about drivers. And there are plenty of cunty incidents or teasy incidents (which can be misinterpreted) in a year and some of UPS.
I hope somebody finds this interesting, or funny, or informative. But I also don’t really give a fuck because I still haven’t slept due to plumbing, finance, and other responsibiliteis. That and if I cared what the audience thought all the time I’d use fucking cookie cutters.
Also what do you expect? A write who doesn’t write? That’s what day time TV is for…
I don’t like being guilt tripped. I don’t like the insinuation that I’m careless when for the past four sweaty ass hours I’ve been tightening, organizing, and rearranging so everythign is as neat and accessible as possible given the time constraints.
The Fractal Journal 