I could be wrong. I feel like it happens to everyone, but maybe I’m the only one. And I feel like it’s happened to me more than once, but one incident in particular stands out.
I was in high school at the time. One day, a member of my daily ‘lunch bunch’ carelessly tossed their trash toward – but not in – the garbage can. With a shrug, the thrower stayed put. The trash stayed put.
You probably know, dear reader, what came next. First, many side-eyes. Then, a pathetic protest: ‘What?? That’s why we have janitors!’
It feels like a perennial debate. Is making more work for others a sign of disrespect, a way to make a hard job even harder? Or is it an explicit acknowledgement of service workers’ essential role, a way to make the invisible visible? Not to mention contribute to their (individual and collective) job security?
This debate isn’t resolved so easily. Nor is it a hypothetical exercise. Of the millions who lost their jobs in the pandemic shutdown, most were service workers. A whole segment of the labor market virtually disappeared, virtually overnight.
In response, the U.S. government distributed billions in relief to businesses and sent stimulus checks directly to the American people. We Americans took it from there, doing what we seem to do best.
We bought stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. And because nobody could go out, we stayed home, purchased all that stuff online, and watched as it rolled up to our front doors.
Of course it didn’t get there by magic. Or even through technology alone. At every link in the supply chain, real live humans were moving that stuff all the way from point A to point Z in a relentlessly labor-intensive global journey.
It was at precisely this frenzied moment that I started working for United Parcel Service. Although I didn’t know any different, that Covid summer I spent in the warehouse two years ago was unprecedented in the relatively brief history of e-commerce.
I’d overhear drivers swap stories of staying out on route until past nine or ten the night before. They’d go out with 300, 400, 500 packages or more, and bring back whatever they couldn’t deliver in a fourteen-hour shift – the maximum allowed by federal law.
By the time I started as a full-time driver that fall, things were still busy but stable. I was in my 30-day trial during the peak holiday season, so I was exempt from the long hours my fellow drivers routinely experienced.
My time came soon enough. Through much of 2021 my workdays and workweeks remained long. My second peak season didn’t feel like a temporary surge; it was just more of the consistently high package volume I’d been experiencing all year.
By 2022 I’d gained enough seniority and experience to settle into a pattern that was mostly manageable. I could look forward to two consecutive days off each weekend, and five shifts per week of a reasonable workload.
Then came July 12th and 13th: Prime Day.
It always takes a day or two for UPS drivers to feel the impact of a major online shopping event. For example, Black Friday last November was a nice easy day for me. Even if some people started their Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving, those orders wouldn’t even get looked at before the following morning. Saturday after Thanksgiving would be the earliest I’d see a rise in volume. The flow through the delivery pipeline doesn’t really pick up in earnest until the following week – especially after Cyber Monday.
Meanwhile, the full impact of Prime Day has been sustained over the past two weeks. But it’s different from Black Friday/Cyber Monday in two major respects.
One difference is that UPS hires many additional temporary drivers for peak season, spreading the higher workload across a greater number of drivers. Not only are all those temp drivers long gone by Prime Day, a certain number of our permanent drivers are gone too, out on vacations they scheduled back in January.
The other difference is temperature. And what a difference that has made this year!
The two weeks following Prime Day 2022 have coincided with record-breaking heat in my corner of the country. We’ve been experiencing highs running ten to fifteen degrees above average.
I can’t tell you how many people on my route have asked me, ‘Don’t you have air conditioning on your package cars?’ No we do not. Really. The question itself feels like a cruel joke, even if it’s being asked in all innocence and true ignorance.
I did my best given these exceptionally harsh, brutal working conditions. But by this past Thursday I knew I’d reached my physical limits. With the record highs continuing through the upcoming weekend I called in sick yesterday and today. The last thing I wanted was to make work harder for my fellow drivers, but I knew it was the right decision for me and I’m glad I made it.
Still, people keep shopping. The packages keep coming.
‘What?? That’s why we have delivery drivers!’
Right?
I’m not complaining about my job. But with the current surge in purchases, the dip in drivers, and the spike in temperatures, here are a few things I wish online shoppers knew:
- Your delivery may not arrive on the day you’re expecting it. This could be for any number of reasons. It could have been loaded on the wrong car by mistake. Or it could have been loaded on the wrong shelf of my car and thus ‘Not Found’ until much later in the route, after it’s too late and/or too far for me to go back. Your package could have been loaded on the right shelf, but I ran out of time before I got to your stop. Your irregularly large package may not have even fit on the car amongst all the other pieces being loaded that morning and thus got left behind in the warehouse. I do my best to get every package delivered every day, but there are so many things I have absolutely no control over. And it may surprise you to learn that I have no idea whether your package is even on my car until I go looking for it when I get to your stop.
- Your package may look beaten or bruised upon delivery. This is normal. Rough roads (and driveways) jostle loads. It’s possible that your package got squished by another package out on route. But it’s much more likely that whatever happened, happened at some earlier stage in the long journey from point A, amidst the vast gantlet of belts and chutes and pairs of hands loading, unloading, and transferring it from one path to another. First as a loader, and now as a driver, I’ve seen the laws of physics do violence to shipments without any malice or negligence whatsoever. Shippers everywhere are looking to cut costs; they may skimp on the quality of their various shipping methods or materials. A supervisor once told me that UPS spends $50,000 each year re-taping Amazon boxes – the tape Amazon uses is notoriously failure-prone. While I believe it’s the delivery company’s – and my – responsibility to treat each parcel with proper care, it’s the shipper’s responsibility to pack in such a way as to enable each shipment to absorb the normal shocks of the delivery process. A well-packed parcel should be able to take the abuse so that its contents don’t have to; if the contents of your delivery arrive undamaged, it’s due in large part to the packaging effectively doing its job, regardless of its ultimate appearance.
- You have a lot more control over my day than I have over yours. I agree: it’s frustrating and annoying to wait for an eagerly-anticipated shipment to be delivered. Even more so when the shipment is delayed without any apparent (or specific) explanation. But as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, there are things that you can do that can help make your delivery go more quickly, easily, and smoothly. I look at your home, yard, driveway, and street as spaces filled with potential hazards I must avoid or negotiate: animals, kids, toys and sports equipment, trees, vehicles, power lines, and so much more besides. Every hazard I encounter adds precious seconds to my workday. Accumulated over 150 or 200 stops, those seconds can add an hour or more and, at the extreme, make the difference between having enough time to make all my deliveries or not. But aside from all this, the most straightforward and significant way you control my day is through the frequency, number, size, weight, and type of your deliveries. How many purchases do you make, and how often? How large and how heavy is what you’re buying? Can I fit it in one armload, or will I need to make several trips? Will I need to use a carry aid? Will I need to climb one or more flights of stairs? Will I need to obtain a signature? Will you be available to assist in and/or sign for your delivery?
In another post I’ll address the four types of delivery customers, and the kind of delivery customer I myself have become since I started driving for UPS. For now, it suffices to say that I believe everyone is entitled to buy whatever they want, however much and however often they want, and pay for it to be shipped to wherever they want.
But I’ll be honest: sometimes it feels as though some customers are just throwing trash, not caring whether it lands in the garbage can or not. And the hotter it gets, the more readily I find myself feeling that way.
