Although it feels like much longer, I’ve only been working at UPS for about five months. It’s been an interesting transition from my former career as an academic administrator, where I dealt with people and ideas from behind a desk in an office, rather than with physical objects in a warehouse.
Many of the people from my former life are curious about my new line of work. I tell them that it’s like running a marathon every day. And as anyone who has run a marathon can tell you, it is just as much a mental feat as it is a physical one.
Any activity requiring mental energy is an opportunity to reflect and learn. Off the top of my head, here are five things that I’ve learned from working at one of the largest companies in the world since July.
- Every job has meaning. There’s no such thing as a meaningless job. Sometimes we bring the meaning ourselves by stepping back and seeing the bigger picture. There’s an old, much-repeated story about three bricklayers working on a large construction project in 17th-century London. When asked, ‘What are you doing?’ each of them has a very different response. The first one answers, ‘I’m laying bricks.’ The second one replies, ‘I’m putting up this wall.’ The third one says, ‘I’m building a cathedral!’ I try to bring this building-a-cathedral attitude to my work moving packages from Point A to Point B. I find this attitude easy to maintain if I keep the following facts in mind:
- Every job requires skill. Sometimes that skill is simply knowing how to use your body to accomplish what’s required without accident or injury to oneself or another. But more often than not, even entry-level work requires training in order to acquire and develop the skills involved. Based on my own experience with this learning process, I realize that it can be fraught with anxiety. But it also helps us engage with the task at hand. Mastery of a skill – any skill – is rewarding in and of itself, and much of our enjoyment of our work, be it our vocation or avocation, derives from the satisfaction of conquering a challenge.
- There’s a lot of untapped potential in the workforce. Most of us are using only a fraction of our abilities and talents in our paid employment. I’ve heard the stories of enough of my coworkers to realize that there’s often a mismatch between what the economy needs and what we’re able to provide it. I think about that now every time I encounter others like myself in low-pay, low-status jobs. I don’t know their story unless I ask them; I can’t assume anything about their full capacity, just like they can’t assume anything about mine.
- Small actions can make a big impact. Even in a warehouse setting, minor variations in how I do my job can result in making my coworkers’ jobs easier or harder. As a splitter ‘all’ I’m responsible for is making sure that packages are on their correct side of the belt. But I strive to go the extra mile. I turn each package’s label face up so it’s easily read by the loader. I also try, wherever possible, to stack packages destined for the same package car so loaders don’t have to scan the belt for each of them separately. Lastly, I call out the packages for the loaders standing closest to me to give them a heads-up for what’s coming. Likewise, small actions loaders take can make drivers’ work easier or harder out on delivery. Sometimes these actions require some additional effort, but often they don’t; they just involve a commitment to considering the effects of our work on those around us.
- It really does take a village. When I pause to reflect on just how many pairs of hands touch a package in transit, it can be mind-boggling. Just in my local warehouse alone, there are at least a dozen. Getting it to this warehouse likely involves several dozens more. And that’s not including the many pairs of hands that touched the package’s contents when they were being manufactured, assembled, and prepared for shipment. Even with the assistance of automation and mechanization, I’m a single link in a human chain that connects millions of people around the world.
These seem like basic lessons that could be learned and applied in any workplace. Perhaps I should have already figured them out. But just as it takes visiting a foreign culture to fully understand and appreciate our home culture, it took me leaving the white-collar world of higher education and entering the blue-collar world of logistics to reckon with these simple truths. What would you add to this list? I welcome your comments below.
