It was 30 days ago today that I completed my 30-day trial period as a UPS driver. How have I been keeping busy since then?
Completing my 30 Days meant giving up my training route and going to the very bottom of the list of permanent full-time drivers. Since that happened the week before Christmas, there were still seasonal drivers swelling the ranks, and no one out on vacation. These conditions, combined with an eerie lull in the package volume, meant that I spent the first couple weeks off probation just standing around waiting for an assignment each morning.
Assignments did come, but some days it would take a half-hour or an hour or more after the official start of my shift. Now, it might sound like a sweet gig to get paid to stand around, but it’s actually torture not having work to do. It’s worse than sitting on the bench waiting to be called into the game. It’s more like sitting in the locker room. After my fellow drivers have started their shift the warehouse is empty and quiet, and more than a little lonely – like I’m not even part of the team.
I spent much of the weeks of Christmas and New Years doing ‘cleanup.’ That means I’d meet drivers out on their route and take some of the packages off their package car to deliver for them. Or I’d ‘prelim’ one or several of the UPS Stores in the area: loading some of their outgoing packages into a rented box truck and bringing them back to the warehouse during the day, prior to their scheduled pickup time. Or I’d handle ‘misloads,’ meeting a driver whose car had one or more packages belonging to a different route, but were mistakenly loaded onto the wrong car (it happens). Anything that needed doing I’d do it, and gladly.
Almost none of these assignments filled an entire shift. So I’d have to call the office (again) to find out what my next assignment was. Sometimes they’d have something for me right away. Sometimes I’d have to wait around (again) and call back.
It all felt very strange after working like crazy through my 30 during Peak. I tried to enjoy it because I knew it wouldn’t last.
It didn’t.
Christmas came and went. Then New Years. After working six-day weeks through December, I enjoyed a couple five-day workweeks.
Peak officially extends through the 15th of January, but by January 4th – the first Monday of the new year – it felt like the season was already winding down. Temporary drivers were laid off. Nearly all of the box trucks that had been rented out since the pandemic started were returned to their respective companies around town. (One of my assignments was to help strip all the rentals of any UPS property and drive them back.) Scheduled vacations resumed.
And the package volume picked back up. With a vengeance. In fact, I’ve been working six-day weeks through January as a ‘cover driver,’ filling in for people on their bid routes when they take time off for sickness, jury duty, bereavement leave, vacation, or military commitments. I go into work each morning not knowing what I’ll be doing that day. But most of the time I get one assignment – someone else’s route – that lasts me the entire day. Depending on the route, I make anywhere from 100 to 200+ deliveries, and quite a few pickups, in a shift that extends well past sundown and into the evening hours.
Then today, Tuesday, January 19th, happened. After being forced into work yesterday for I don’t know how many Mondays in a row – my normal schedule is Tuesday through Saturday – I was unexpectedly ‘laid off’ for the day. It was the first non-Sunday of 2021 where I wasn’t working.
I’m not sure if this is just a blip or a sign of things to come, a return to a non-Peak normal where I can look forward to ‘only’ working five days, 45 (ish) hours per week, instead of the 60 hours each week the US Department of Transportation restricts me to.
In either case, it’s given me the time and rest I need to come up for air and let the world know what I’ve been up to lately.
I have more I want to share about my work and what I’ve learned. Each day is a surprise and a challenge and an adventure. I’m always learning something new. I think it’s important, and enough of you have told me that it’s interesting. But all of that will have to wait until my next day off, whenever it comes.
3 replies on “What do new UPS drivers do? Inquiring minds want to know”
More than anything I love your sense of wanting to be active and a part of work, Rather than simply enjoying the downtime. I am certain that your earnest desire to make a difference helped set you up for the position you have now as a UPS driver. Like I told you one of my dreams was riding along on your route with you. You were happy and so was I. Thanks so much for this.
Did you have to scratch for 5 days? Like if you don’t would that make you fail the 30 days? I think I’m going on day 20 maybe and haven’t made my time yet.
It was all very murky. At no point did anyone discuss or review my performance with me. I checked the over/under reports every day and at no point did I actually scratch without doing some extra subtracting (AM time, PM time, etc). At one point I asked for feedback and all I got was, ‘you’re fine, keep it up!’ or something like that. I feel like this is a very squishy/arbitrary standard and supervisors like to keep it that way so they can retain discretion on who they wash and who they don’t. I’ll have more to say about that in a future post. Thanks for reading!