In my last post I was feeling pretty good. I’d returned to training for a marathon after a long hiatus, and I believed my new(-ish) job as a UPS driver was helping me train stronger than ever before.
Since I’d been setting new records in my training runs of various distances, I flew to Denver hopeful that I’d set a new personal record (PR) in my race. Indeed, for the first two-thirds of the marathon I was on pace to beat my current PR.
Then something happened.
I felt something inside my left knee shift. It was a weird sensation, completely foreign to me. I don’t even know how to describe it, except that it was very abrupt – like a light switch being flipped.
The first seventeen miles had been ‘lights-out.’ Now suddenly I couldn’t run anymore. It wasn’t excruciating pain but it was severe discomfort that I couldn’t ignore.
I’ve had to let go of quite a bit in my life lately, so giving up running would be a huge loss for me.
But as devastating as that would be, it’s nothing compared with an injury that would sideline me from work. I’m grateful that after twenty months of driving full-time, I’ve yet to miss a single day of work due to injury, whether work-related or not.
However, not every UPS driver is in equally great shape. It turns out that on any given day, there are at least a dozen drivers in my building out on injury.
In lieu of doing a regular route, drivers with minor injuries get reassigned to ‘Temporary Alternate Work’ (TAW) – essentially some form of light duties.
Some drivers on TAW do errands for other drivers or odd jobs around the warehouse. Some just sit in the office and complete safety training. Regardless, all of these drivers must appear for work on time and in uniform, and they must complete whatever tasks they’re assigned, even if it’s just make-work.
Not every hurt driver has to do TAW, but they face restrictions nonetheless. Earlier this year I rode along as a ‘driver’s helper’ for a couple days to do all the heavy lifting – literally – for a driver who’d gotten hurt while making a home delivery and couldn’t lift more than five pounds. The front porch steps had completely collapsed under him; it’s a wonder he wasn’t hurt worse.
Sometimes TAW can extend into something more serious and long-term. Another driver tweaked his shoulder lifting a heavy package and had been on TAW for a few weeks. Then he just stopped showing up. I was later told that he’s out on Worker’s Compensation (‘Comp’). Similarly, drivers getting hurt off the job go out on Disability.
Drivers out on Comp or Disability receive a percentage of their weekly pay. But they can disappear for a long time. One was out for several months for carpal tunnel surgery. Another threw out his back off the job and was gone for more than a month. A third had not one but two surgeries on his knee, requiring more than a year away from work. He’s back now, but is fitted with a custom knee brace.
More than once I’ve asked someone, ‘Does so-and-so still work here?’ To which the reply has always been, ‘Yeah but he’s hurt.’
Working for UPS, whether in the warehouse or as a driver, is always physically demanding. Of course people get hurt. We’re constantly being reminded to put safety first; that our Most Important Stop is back home at the end of the day; that no package is worth our own or someone else’s life or wellbeing; and that no one is responsible for our safety more than we are ourselves.
Still, our limits get tested all the time. One supervisor actually told me that he was always going to be pushing us toward our limit, and that it was up to us to push back when that limit had been reached.
Thankfully we have the union to protect us. The collective bargaining agreement between UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters codifies employee rights to, and employer responsibilities for, safe working conditions. The union helps hold the company accountable for workplace safety, and when people get injured they don’t just get kicked to the curb.
But those protections only go so far. If a driver is unable to perform the essential functions of his – almost all UPS drivers are male, a topic for another post – job, even with reasonable accommodations, he’s given three years before his seniority is ultimately and irrevocably ‘broken.’
In an earlier post I mentioned that we’re all just ‘bodies’ to UPS. The longer I’m with the company, the better I understand that it has no use for me once I’m no longer physically able to do my job. No matter what my value to them has been, no matter for how long, there comes a time when I become a net-negative instead of a net-positive resource.
Not just me, of course. It’s true of everyone. But my case feels different. I’m about ten years older than the next-oldest ‘new’ driver. I’m also a type-1 diabetic, a condition that qualifies as a disability under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
I never worry about being mistreated or discriminated against because of my age or physical condition. But I worry constantly about a work-interrupting – or worse, a career-ending – injury. Or simply the inevitable process of my body breaking down over time. I especially worry that if I’m unable to keep running, I’ll become even more susceptible than I already am.
Which brings me to my analogy. Careers among UPS drivers, like those of professional athletes, tend to be short. The reason we love to hear about drivers with 20 or 30 or more years of service is because they’re the exception rather than the rule. Not everyone can be a Tom Brady; the average career of an NFL quarterback is purportedly less than four-and-a-half years.
Four-and-a-half years. That’s the median amount of seniority of the nearly 200 drivers in my building.
I checked the list. I did the math. Sure, our two senior-most drivers started their careers in 1989, and another eight began driving before Y2K. But the bottom 50% of my fellow drivers and I have been at it for less than five years. And I have no reason to suspect that it’s different at any other UPS facility.
Then it finally dawned on me. There’s a reason why the wage progression for UPS drivers is four years, and there’s such a big wage bump going to ‘top rate.’ It’s because so few of us last that long.
Some are terminated for one serious violation or another. While it’s hard to get fired at UPS, and most terminations are subject to appeal and potential reinstatement, getting fired is not an impossibility.
Others up and quit. They decide that the work just doesn’t agree with them, or they’ve had enough, or they can do better doing something else, somewhere else. Burnout is real.
And then there are the drivers who return to working in the warehouse. I seem to be running across more and more people who have taken or are considering taking this path. The pay is lower, but the hours are more predictable, and you don’t have to contend with the weather while working indoors.
A few go into management. But only a few, because that’s all there’s room for in the organizational structure.
I like to think that I’ll stay healthy long enough to retire as a driver. Maybe I can have the same longevity as Tom Brady. But the reality is I probably won’t. Since I’m closer in age to the senior-most drivers than I am to my fellow low-seniority colleagues, the odds of my eventually sustaining a career-ending injury seem especially grim. It’s not realistic for me to consider it an IF; better to accept the inevitable WHEN.
I’m not quite ready to give up, though.
When my knee gave out in Denver I was still feeling strong. Nine miles is a long way to walk, but I felt good that I could finish if I persevered.
It wasn’t a hard choice to make. I chose to continue. Obviously it wasn’t my fastest time but I finished my race. I’ve now run marathons in 25 of 50 U.S. states.
Today I started my sixteen-week training regimen for my next race, in Indianapolis in November. I had to take eight weeks off to rest and rehab my knee, but I didn’t lose a day of work along the way.
Just as I hadn’t when I broke my wrist in January, slipping on the ice while doing the same eight-mile training run I completed this morning.
I just have to keep listening to my body. And be ready for the inevitable, whether it happens sooner or (hopefully much) later.
