I wanted to write about my job as a UPS driver, but this ended up being about something much more important.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 5th, is Election Day here in the United States. With the presidential race a toss-up, no one can say with any certainty what the outcome will be – or even when.

Tomorrow is uncertain for me at work too. The handful of drivers still on layoff in my UPS facility have all been recalled for this year’s ‘Peak’ holiday season. That’s entirely a good thing, but it affects me directly because I’ve been covering a route for a laid-off driver for much of 2024.

There’s a twist: I won my own bid route more than a year ago – a story I have yet to share. Through most of fall and all of Peak 2023, I enjoyed driving the route I bid (the ’29B’) every day. But my route has been cut almost every day since the end of Peak. (Drivers being laid off and routes being cut go hand-in-hand; both are the result of business slowdown.)

Any day my bid route is cut, my union contract gives me the option of following my work to the route where the largest share of it is reassigned, or staying home for the day without pay (staffing levels permitting). So most every morning this year I’ve gotten a call from the office telling me my route’s been cut and asking me what I want to do that day.

Most days I want to work. I love my job, I love getting paid, and I love being on this route every day, even if it’s not technically my own. They’ve been putting me on the ’29F’ which includes anywhere from one-quarter to one-half of the stops I’d have done had the 29B not been cut that day.

Tomorrow I don’t know if I’ll get a call, and if I do, I don’t know what my options will be. If I don’t get a call, it means that they’ve put my route in for the day – not likely, but still possible. I’ve been told that the 29B is the next one they’re looking to put in on a more frequent basis as Peak approaches.

More likely, though, I’ll get a call saying my route’s been cut, as usual. What I won’t know ahead of time is whether the bid driver is back from layoff quite yet. Apparently they’re bringing the laid-off drivers back one at a time, since they each have to have a supervisor ride-along their first day.

So I may have a reprieve for one or several more days this week. Or I may not. And if my bid route is cut, it means I’ll have to find an open route somewhere else.

Not that I mind too much. Before I won my bid, covering routes was all I ever did. There are very few routes in my area that I haven’t already covered. But it’s been a long time.

What’s more, all the route numbers got scrambled when they opened up the new facility, so I can’t just tell someone over the phone which route I want to ‘bump’ to. I have to get to the office at least twenty minutes before start time to see which less-senior cover drivers I’m interested in bumping off their routes.

I’ll miss the 29F. Sure, it’s someone else’s route, but it’s the one I’ve been doing every day for almost a year. It’s in the heart of downtown, which I enjoy because it’s always so interesting and challenging, and there’s lots of wonderful daily interactions with really good people.

There’s so much I can write about my experiences downtown. Perhaps I will sometime. For right now, it’s important for me to share that I’ll miss it. Even if I go back to the 29B tomorrow, I’ll still miss the 29F.

I’ve written recently about change and uncertainty at work. The latest change – getting to the top of the wage progression for UPS drivers – is totally positive and absolutely helps make all the other changes easier for me to manage. But it hasn’t exempted me from the uncertainty.

But I don’t think that’s the real lesson here. I think the real lesson is this:

When I first started on the 29B, I remember telling anyone who asked that I love the route because it’s mine. It’s analogous to how I felt – and still feel – about my three kids. Even before they were born I already loved them because they were mine, and because they were mine I cared for them. And do even now, even though they’re all grown up.

Meanwhile, my connection to the 29F feels more like that of a foster parent. I grew to love the route because I cared for it every day, even though it never did belong to me. I love it despite it not being mine. Or maybe there’s some other way that I’ve made it mine through my care and love? I don’t know exactly. But I definitely feel an attachment to it that wasn’t there at the beginning. So I’ll miss it when it goes back to its rightful driver.

I’d love to be able to tie all of this back to tomorrow’s election. The concept of patriotism has always been fascinating to me. What does it mean to say ‘I love my country‘? Or even just ‘MY country‘? How does that connection, that attachment, that sense of possession and belonging, translate into practical actions and expressions of care?

Like a UPS route, America is both a place and the people in that place. And like a UPS route, it takes ongoing work to actively care for America – the place, the people, the idea. That work looks different for everyone, but it’s work nonetheless.

I think it behooves all of us to ask, ‘How do I show my love for America? What work of caring for my country is rightfully mine?‘ I may be showing my bias here, but I believe making informed choices at the ballot box is the very least we can do. Sitting out an election shouldn’t be an option. Democracy isn’t a spectator sport.

It shouldn’t be a blood sport, either. Democracy only works when everyone is fully committed to its principles and process, respecting the outcome regardless of whether we like or agree with it.

It’s one thing to be distrustful of the institutions that undergird our society, including the government. I get that. I personally believe that that skepticism is healthy. But actively distrusting our fellow Americans because they look or sound or live or vote different from us, or denouncing their patriotism or their very American-ness, is highly corrosive.

Likewise when we accuse public employees – without any evidence – of attempting with malign intent to subvert the will of the people. Corruption, fraud, and malfeasance are real, yes, but thankfully they’re also relatively rare. We’re blessed to live in a country where most of the time, most of our elected officials, career civil servants, and civic volunteers act in good faith to uphold the rule of law.

So just as surely as I’ll go to work on some route somewhere, Americans will elect their next president tomorrow. It may take a while for us to figure out which candidate won the election, but that by itself doesn’t necessarily mean that the process wasn’t free or fair. I’m willing to wait.