W.T.F.?! U.P.S. edition
According to the Farmers Almanac, the moon last night was only 29.7% of full. But what happened last night at U.P.S. would have you believe it was 100% full.
First off, one of the FNGs on the belt got fired. FIRED. He got fired for misloads. A misload is when you load a box into a trailer that doesn’t belong to that particular trailer, causing the package to not meet service date. Kinda like loading a package from Texas going to San Jose, that passes our belt, onto a New York trailer.. Customer get pissed off, UPS loses money… you get the point.
Why is this surprising? This is U.P.S. Night Shift. A shift that they have trouble getting people to work. They’ve literally bent over backwards and give people a ton of perks to work that shift.
In the time I have been here, they have only fire people when they got into a physical fight, or if they stole, repeatedly. We used to have an employee that misloaded 3 – 5 packages a NIGHT. He was still with us... You just cannot get fired for that reason... that is like jumping off a boat in the middle of the ocean and missing water. It just doesn’t happen. But it happened to him… WTF… Oh well, he was slow anyways.
Then my former supervisor, Norm, who became a delivery driver, came back to supervise one of the belts. Being a driver is like the pinnacle of non-management U.P.S. work. The pay is good, overtime made it even better. The union benefits and health insurance are great, and the pension is superb. I was very happy when he became a driver. Imagine my surprise when I saw him. Turns out, like everything else in UPS, to become “permanent”, you have to have 30 working days in that position. 30 working days is like the magic number, upon which, the magical union barrier protects you from any harm the evil UPS may inflict on you. Well, Norm was told yesterday after his shift, that they didn’t need so many drivers after all, and he can reapply when another position opens up.
Yesterday was exact 29 working days since he started driving. This apparently was a common practice for UPS. One of the permanent drivers went through this ritual eight times before he was permanent…
Our current supervisor will be replaced by a different supervisor come Monday. Ever had a boss that you did not like? But as time passes, you just get used to them? He said to me last night that it was all for the better, cause no one in the belt liked him. It wasn’t until he said that which made me realized how lonely he felt on that belt. He isn’t really that bad of a guy, a bit uptight and emotionless. Maybe the people in the new belt will treat him better…
Last but not least, a couple of my co-worker almost got killed last night, or at least very badly maimed. Two of them was loading in a trailer, and has gotten it about 40% filled. When a feeder driver (these are drivers that pull and put trailers in docks as we need them) pulls the trailer out. The trailer jerks causing both workers to fall onto the floor. It wasn’t until 50 yards of so later, the driver realized what had happened. Lucky, the wall of boxes they were building did not collapse. These walls are about 8 feet tall, each wall contains around 120 boxes, if each box is approximately 30 lbs, if it were to collapse on them… not pretty. Funny thing was the driver did a “hit and run”. After he found out he had pulled a trailer with workers in it… he unhooked and sped away. I mean… where are you going to go? Last we heard, he was sent home and will be let go.
Strange things are happening, accidents everywhere. Everyone please be careful.
First off, one of the FNGs on the belt got fired. FIRED. He got fired for misloads. A misload is when you load a box into a trailer that doesn’t belong to that particular trailer, causing the package to not meet service date. Kinda like loading a package from Texas going to San Jose, that passes our belt, onto a New York trailer.. Customer get pissed off, UPS loses money… you get the point.
Why is this surprising? This is U.P.S. Night Shift. A shift that they have trouble getting people to work. They’ve literally bent over backwards and give people a ton of perks to work that shift.
In the time I have been here, they have only fire people when they got into a physical fight, or if they stole, repeatedly. We used to have an employee that misloaded 3 – 5 packages a NIGHT. He was still with us... You just cannot get fired for that reason... that is like jumping off a boat in the middle of the ocean and missing water. It just doesn’t happen. But it happened to him… WTF… Oh well, he was slow anyways.
Then my former supervisor, Norm, who became a delivery driver, came back to supervise one of the belts. Being a driver is like the pinnacle of non-management U.P.S. work. The pay is good, overtime made it even better. The union benefits and health insurance are great, and the pension is superb. I was very happy when he became a driver. Imagine my surprise when I saw him. Turns out, like everything else in UPS, to become “permanent”, you have to have 30 working days in that position. 30 working days is like the magic number, upon which, the magical union barrier protects you from any harm the evil UPS may inflict on you. Well, Norm was told yesterday after his shift, that they didn’t need so many drivers after all, and he can reapply when another position opens up.
Yesterday was exact 29 working days since he started driving. This apparently was a common practice for UPS. One of the permanent drivers went through this ritual eight times before he was permanent…
Our current supervisor will be replaced by a different supervisor come Monday. Ever had a boss that you did not like? But as time passes, you just get used to them? He said to me last night that it was all for the better, cause no one in the belt liked him. It wasn’t until he said that which made me realized how lonely he felt on that belt. He isn’t really that bad of a guy, a bit uptight and emotionless. Maybe the people in the new belt will treat him better…
Last but not least, a couple of my co-worker almost got killed last night, or at least very badly maimed. Two of them was loading in a trailer, and has gotten it about 40% filled. When a feeder driver (these are drivers that pull and put trailers in docks as we need them) pulls the trailer out. The trailer jerks causing both workers to fall onto the floor. It wasn’t until 50 yards of so later, the driver realized what had happened. Lucky, the wall of boxes they were building did not collapse. These walls are about 8 feet tall, each wall contains around 120 boxes, if each box is approximately 30 lbs, if it were to collapse on them… not pretty. Funny thing was the driver did a “hit and run”. After he found out he had pulled a trailer with workers in it… he unhooked and sped away. I mean… where are you going to go? Last we heard, he was sent home and will be let go.
Strange things are happening, accidents everywhere. Everyone please be careful.
posted by The World Against Me at 11:16 AM
6 Comments:
Oh my god...that's unbelievable...thanks for sharing. I found you on Shananigan's site!
p.s. Thank you for leaving such a real comment on my site as well :)
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Crazy. Whatever you do, don't die (always good advice, right?) Those UPS drivers are always running like the world is about to end and the only thing that can save it is the delivery of packages on time. The one that used delivered packages to the restaurant/catering business I used to manage would drop his packages and the digi signature thingy, sprint for the coffee machine, help himself while I signed, throw exact change on the counter or yell "keep the change" as he ran out the door with his dolly full of boxes. "Keep the change" were the only words I ever heard him say. I’m glad those guys are well compensated. And I thought the restaurant biz was stressful, sheesh!
Shananigans, you are so wise is incredible.. I love your advices!!
Leah.. One day.. I am going to either take my camera to work, or borrow a camera phone from my friend and show everyone what it is like inside an U.P.S. Hub.
Here are some pictures of what it looks like inside.. But trailers looking like that are rare. Most of the workers there, although unhappy (it is hard, physical labor at the wee hours of the night) with the work, do take care of the packages.
I also laughed at the caption for one of the pictures, "This is a picture of one of the sort aisle belts, on a good day! It's usually a lot more crowded than this!"
On a good night, our belt alone process 5500 packages a day, our hub process 80k on the night shift and another 100K on twilight shift. That’s like a million packages a week. Yes, some packages gets smashed and destroyed when they are going through the belts. Usually these packages are not pack properly with enough packaging material and proper size boxes. I once saw someone ship a pile of clothes in a HUGE box, and it must have been filled with 60% air (think bag of chips). Imagine what happened to that box when it came into contact with a few other boxes...
i have the worst accidents, i trip over my own feet, it sucks dude
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