I have been reading many of the complaints that are included in this site (Consumer Complaints Board) and would like to share and sympathize. I worked for UPS from 1985 until 2002 as a delivery driver. UPS changed dramatically after the death of its founder Jim Casey in 1987. From that day forward nothing mattered to management other than the almighty dollar. Customer service is a joke. Employees are treated like slaves. Working conditions are third world at best. UPS had a solid reputation during the late 80’s and early 90’s but there was a dramatic shift to the bottom line at all costs. Early on management was promoted from within but as all companies move toward a lower wage this trend stopped. This is by far the worst place I ever worked in my life. Supervisors who are in way over their heads is the norm. Safety is a afterthought. Most centers need to be audited by OSHA. But employees who speak up or take action are targeted for suspension and termination. Work weeks of 55+ hours for drivers is a regular occurrence. Let me explain in detail. As a driver you could start work at 8:30am and will not be off the street until 9:30 or 10:00pm. Fatigue is commonplace. During my time I nodded off routinely when I was driving. Safety at UPS is a smokescreen. Prozac is taken like candy by drivers, divorce is ramped, hypertension is common, production levels are unrealistic, management is unskilled and combative, and injury is considered weakness and lazy. I spent 17 years at this “hell hole” and was paid very well for my services. But I came to the realization that it was just not worth it. I quit and am happier for it. Most complaints that you may have are a direct result of a poorly managed company where stress is used as a tool for greater production, no matter what the cost to employee or consumer.

Consumer Complaints Board

This was my report after the peak of 2007. You are so lucky it’s not like this anymore.      

      OMG !!  We survived another Peak Season. It was touch and go there at times, but we all pulled through. There was so much work to be done that I would think UPS would just stand back and let the workers go at it. But they can’t do that. They’ve got to be in there mucking things up. Here are a few examples of things that happened this Peak that I’m still scratching my head about and wondering……..why?….

        Early in December, IE was cutting routes like mad and there were days off to be had for some lucky drivers. That’s nice, but at the same time other drivers were pushing 11 hours a day and anyone who went over 11 was called on the carpet. If you didn’t have express permission from your manager, then you got a warning letter. Maybe that would not have been a problem if they hadn’t cut so many routes.
        Sheeting mistakes got to be a big issue, like sheeting a business as closed between noon and 1 o’clock. If you had been talked to about it before, then that became a warning letter too. If a driver had a bad day, he could easily get 2 warning letters the next morning. That gets you off on the right foot !
        The dress code became the pet peeve of some managers with nothing better to do. Shoes and hats were favorite targets. T-shirts of the wrong color were hot items too. We hoped they would send us home if we had on the wrong color t-shirt but they just told you to change it. Or leave your hat in the manager’s office for the day. Or don’t wear those shoes tomorrow.
        In our center, the manager stooped to posting the WOR as a shame list on the bulletin board for all to see. At first he listed the top 5 production drivers and then the last 6 or 7 according to the over/under numbers. Someone tore down the worst list the first day. The next day he posted the whole center report showing how everyone ran. As the steward, I raised Cain that it was low-ball management. He countered that everyone was looking at it. I said the interest was morbid and for some, embarassing. People stare at a car wreck too, they watch Jerry Springer. It’s vulgar. It’s dirty. It’s not how management should be operating.
        As our cars got more full every morning, you would think that IE would have SPA’d the Next Day Airs all up on the 1000 shelf. But they continued to SPA Next Days deep into the load and every day I had some in the 2800 or 2900 sections. That put them in about the middle of a packed car on the lower shelf. There is no way to dig those out and get them delivered before 10:30. Anyone who has ever driven would know that.
        Another way to shame drivers was dreamed up this Christmas and it was used on any driver who ran 3 or more hours over allowed. Management would pick a city that’s 3 hours or 4 hours away, like Grand Junction and feigning righteous indignation, they would exclaim. “How could you be 4 hours over, Hell, I could drive to Grand Junction in 4 hours!!!”
        We were working Peak Week under a 12 hour curfew and a lot drivers were bringing stops back every night. One driver forgot to punch out his board, went home and an OMS punched out his board and he was over 12 hours. They wanted to fire him the next morning, but decided against it. A bunch of us were hoping they would send him home because that’s the kind of termination you can easily get reduced to a suspension and we were all going to “forget” to punch out that night too. I’d take a 3 day suspension during Peak Week anytime.
        With the 12 hour curfew of course came missed pieces every night. Some drivers were bringing back 50 to 100 stops a night. Soon management was browned up and running routes, working as helpers, etc. You can’t have it both ways, you can’t restrict driver hours and have management working. Management would meet drivers at 8 o’clock at night and take everything they had left and send the driver in to get off the clock under 12 hours and management would stay out and do the stops themselves. Gee, I wonder if that will generate a girevance?
        I arrived at work one day just as an ambulance pulled away from the building. Unfortunately, someone had slipped and ruptured 2 discs in his back. They rushed him into surgery that very morning and he’ll be out for quite some time. That’s a heck of a way to get out of Peak. The rumors flying around the building were that a driver had looked in the back of his truck and had a heart attack. It wasn’t that hard to believe.
        I would think that UPS would focus a little more on getting our pickups covered during Peak because having to do pickups in the afternoon just kills us. Not only does it take valuable time away from delivery, but it fills much needed space inside the truck. Then when we stay out till 8 or 9 o’clock, the pickups don’t get unloaded and sorted in a timely mannner and the twilight goes down late, then the midnight sort runs late, and then the preload is not done when the drivers come back to work the next morning. Then we leave late and the cycle repeats itself. 
     
      UPS never seems to be able to take a good plan for Peak and save it and build on it the next year. They have to reinvent the wheel every December.
      Why is that???

        UPS drivers were voted the “dumbest people on earth” at the annual gathering of the Society of Industrial Engineers. Citing widespread newspaper accounts detailing how the Engineers had restructured all UPS routes to make only right hand turns (thus saving the delivery giant millions of dollars), the Society also named themselves the “smartest people on earth.”
        “If we hadn’t invented Package Flow Technology and introduced UPS Telematics when we did, UPS would be in the crapper right now,” said Tony Bologna, spokesman for the group. “UPS drivers had been running their routes for almost 100 years and never realized that right hand turns were easier to make than left hand turns. And they thought leaving the bulkhead door open saved them time. How dumb are can they be?“
        “All these UPS drivers thought they were so smart when they sat up their own routes and ran them,” Bologna added, “but we just sat down with a map and a magic marker and showed them to be the dumbest people on earth. The new routes, designed by the industrial engineering department, are models of efficiency. Who needs area knowledge when you have Google Earth?”
        A special award went to former CEO and industrial engineer Mike Eskew, for his role in elevating the Industrial Engineering Dept. at UPS to the rank of Godliness. “No one questions the word of IE at UPS,” Bologna noted, “when we speak, it’s as if God Himself has spoken.” Bologna glossed over the fact that UPS stock has been flat for the last 5 years, noting that Eskew was an engineer, not a “Goddamn financial wizard.”
        A large number of UPS drivers picketed the gathering. They held a demonstration on the sidewalk outside the building, singing songs and carrying signs. One poster read ‘Right Hand Turns are for Cowards’. Others sang a stirring rendition of Willie Nelson’s “Momma, don’t let your babies grow up to be engineers.”

        We live in a world of new technology. Every day we are confronted with some new fangled gadget that is supposed to simplify our lives. I remember when a 4-function calculator would draw a crowd, and a cordless telephone was a figment of somebody’s imagination.
        Today we are surrounded by high tech gadgets in our day-to-day lives at home and at work. Life at UPS in the 70’s was very different from a technological standpoint. Deliveries were recorded on a pad of paper. You recorded the 6-digit shipper number and the address. Every package needed a signature so there were no driver-release options. If you ran a residential route you were expected to make at least three indirect attempts on any package in order to prevent a send again. The company had an allowable amount of send agains for each day. You had to call in your stops “off”, and your stops “to go”, and the “number of send agains”. Very often you would be asked to go back and make a second attempt on packages to reduce your send agains.
        You became very good at scanning an entire street for signs of life in order to get rid of your packages. The most innovative change at UPS was the creation of “driver release”, where no signature is required for residential deliveries. The company finally realized that it was going to be physically impossible to obtain a signature for every package. Couple that with the cumbersome ability to search paper records by hand for proof of delivery and you can see why we have come to the technology of today.
        Had UPS not taken the initiative to computerize, we would certainly not exist in today’s economy. Technology has had a very interesting effect on the company. Many drivers feared the loss of their jobs with the implementation of the DIAD. They thought the company could reduce routes to the point that many drivers would lose their jobs. That just didn’t happen.
        Today many drivers are thinking that they will lose their jobs because of PAS. The reality couldn’t be farther from the truth. Technology has served to reduce management positions, not drivers. In the 70’s there was one supervisor for every seven drivers. WOR’s, (work operation reports), were written in pencil. The office people that did the calculations had to wear guards on their sleeves to keep the pencil lead from soiling their clothes.
        Today the WOR is a computer printout. What people were eliminated by this technology? Management. All of the people who did the calculations for your previous day were laid off or transferred. All of the management required to manage the operation under that system were bought out in the largest management reduction push in the history of UPS.
        Today we function in our centers at a level of about one supervisor for 20 drivers. In some locations it is one for 30. The true fact is that technology has replaced management, not the trained driver. In fact the driver has become more valuable because of the cost and difficulty in training new people. If you watch you will see that the percentage of drivers that qualify for driver jobs has dropped. It is very difficult for new people to grasp the nuances of the DIAD, and being able to make proper deliveries. You and I do it every day without thinking, but to the outsider it’s as foreign as a kangaroo.
        My point to you here is that the new technologies make us more valuable. The elimination of management by technology will continue. The frightening thing for the driver is that we will be managed from afar more and more. Some unknown creature sitting behind a computer terminal in Atlanta will dictate our dispatch without any contact to the operation or the people involved.
        You see it daily with the adding or elimination of cars today based on the required stops per car arbitrarily chosen by the “Lord and Master”. Eventually their will be no one to complain to that has any power to affect any changes. Local management will only be there to serve up discipline, and make sure that people show up. (Sounds like today doesn’t it?) The “Lord and Master” will make every decision.
        Does this all sound like a Sci-Fi movie? Is the movie titled…. PAS
        You’re living it today! Look around you!
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     This article was written in 2006 about the implementation of PAS. Today’s article would probably be about Telematics. Every place it says PAS, plug in the word Telematics, and you would see that nothing has changed. The new technology has served to replace management. Drivers that can do the job are even more valuable today than in 2006.
     A driver has nothing to worry about until they create a Robot that can drive, and deliver. Of course the “Lord and Master” is alive and well.

     Every driver that works for UPS will eventually have to deal with harassment from management. No matter how good you run, or how much you promote the company, management will always find a reason to get on your case.
     If you are lucky enough to have a decent sup. or center manager, the level of harassment will be tolerable. If you happen to be unlucky enough to have the Soul selling, go getting, “the world is all about my success”, type of manger, or supervisor, you could be in for the fight of your life.
     Many of the latter type of management cares little for you, your family, or your life. They are all about making themselves look good. They don’t care if the job gets done by cheating, they are all about themselves looking good, and moving themselves ahead.
     These management types do not care if you get hurt, or damage the company’s image with the customer, or even if you sell the company. All they care about is making themselves look good in the eyes of the “Lord and Master”.
     Whatever the situation, they will not be on your side. Given even the smallest situation, they will corner you, write you up, terminate you, scream and yell at you, and basically attack you as if you are a child with an abusive daddy.
     So what’s a self-respecting driver to do?
     The first thing is to remember that you have the Teamsters behind you. Never talk to any manager, particularly this type, without a steward present. These guys function with a, “anything you say will be used against you” attitude. The steward should be able to control the situation, and keep you from being needlessly attacked.
     The second thing to remember is the “Article 37” grievance. While these grievances rarely go very far, it opens the door for you to give it back to the sh-t head manager or supervisor, and also wastes a great deal of their time. I always felt that it also prevented them from harassing someone else, since they had to be in the office meeting with you.
     The third, and most important thing to remember is to communicate what these management types are doing to you, to the drivers around you. Once the rest of the drivers get wind of the type of person they are dealing with, the hammer will come down. Drivers will cease to do any favors for the jerk, and very often they will get moved to another center, or position because the center begins to look bad for whatever reason.
     I have seen many a bad-a– manger change their spots because they just can’t get anything done.
     Many drivers have a very difficult time dealing with the harassment. They get upset. They don’t sleep. They take their anxiety out at home. They start to say, and do stupid things in the hope of getting retaliation on the a–wipe manager. That is when the management JA wins. That is when many drivers get fired for doing something stupid.
     It takes a great deal of mental strength not to let the boss get to you. Remember to do your job as trained. No more, no less. Stick to the methods, be where you are supposed to be, and ride it out. Eventually the a–hole will head off to an easier target. They have a quota of discipline, and harassment that they need to live up to. They cannot afford to be attacking a driver that is doing their job, because they begin to look bad for wasting time in the grievance procedure, only to look bad in the end.
     The last thing to remember is that eventually that manager or supervisor will go away. Each driver needs to remember what it felt like when they were the guy under the gun. Remember how good it felt when the other drivers came to your aid, (and the steward also). When it’s the next guys turn to be singled out, be sure to be there for him or her, as they were for you.
     Oh Yeah, one last thing. If you have a manager or supervisor that treats you well, pay them back. Make it worth their effort to be honest with you, and make your working environment decent. Taking advantage of the guy that treats you decently, only opens the door for the jacka–.