Light Bulb Quest
Sometimes you don’t realize how deeply a place has become part of you until something happens to it. It’s not unusual for UPS drivers to be transparent with each other about their earnings. It’s also not unusual for UPS drivers to know exactly where their coworkers live. This isn’t just because they socialize with each […]
After months of training, I became ‘UPS Guy’ for one unforgettable morning. Whenever I put on my brown work uniform, I seem to disappear. I don’t mean I become invisible; I’m just no longer recognizable as an individual. I disappear into the character of ‘UPS Guy.’ I still remember the first time I delivered to […]
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 […]
If you’ve been following this blog since the beginning, you’ll know that I used to run regularly. When I lost my dream job I’d been running outdoors year-round for more than ten years. Runner isn’t one of my identities. I picked up running in my 30s as a reasonably convenient and inexpensive way to try […]
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m in the middle of my 30-day trial period as a package car driver for UPS. Here’s how it all went down. Because UPS is a ‘union shop,’ everything is governed by the current collective bargaining agreement between the company and the Teamsters. The contract states that you […]
As a mid-career professional, searching for employment can be a slog. It involves the same routine tasks day in and day out. It’s nowhere near as interesting or rewarding as anything I’ve ever done to actually earn a paycheck. It’s not physically strenuous but it is emotionally draining. It can also be dispiriting. Each time […]