This is why many of us try to tell you guys/gals to create a mental buffer from management performance harassment. Nobody will help you with this. It's all on your shoulders. You need to learn to ignore their demands. There are no shortcuts. You have to decide that this is what you are going to do. Because here is what happens when they realize you aren't speeding up: they will bury your dispatch. And you will work much later than normal. So if you start taking shortcuts, because you are getting tired of working later, then you're heading for trouble. If you get into the habit of cutting corners to get off earlier, or just so you can get done without missing packages, or to avoid feeling their wrath, you're a mistake waiting to be discovered. Because that pressure WILL come. It's up to you to stand up and defend your standards and work methods. The rest is in UPS's lap.
If you cut corners, it's only a matter of time before you get yourself into an incident. That might be a wreck, an injury, or a screw-up in your job. As far as getting into a wreck, basically, you're on your own. You can't say, "I felt under pressure because of your excessive demands." UPS covers their ass with all of the safety training they give us. And no, that doesn't make it right on their part, but it gives them the fall back to say, "Yes, he/she was trained properly, and they failed to follow proper methods." And you won't be able to argue with them, if, in fact, you received their training. And it's very unlikely that you haven't been trained. In feeders, the better, older drivers always take aside the new guys who come back here with the burner mentality. They tell them that they are one accident away from losing their job, because in feeders, that is a very real possibility. Now many of these numb nuts refuse the message, so they're on their own. And hopefully they won't kill someone on the road.
Production harassment will never go away at this company. So each one of us needs to make peace with it, and carve out our own space. And you need to stick with it, whether your day is perfect or impossible. This is why many of us here repeat, over and over, to follow their methods by the book. UPS buries us in methods, and if you follow them you will probably find that you get more time and money.
All of their safe driving habits will keep you safe on the road, if you follow them. I know, I know, I resisted them early on just like many of you do too. No one likes stupid people telling us how to do things, but the information is correct. Hell, the 5 seeing habits aren't even from UPS. They're from a guy named Harold Smith who came up with them in 1952 for big rig truck drivers. But it is in your own interest to learn them, and protect yourself.
Bottom line is this: get yourself in a position where you go to work every single day, and do the job by the book. You don't want to be the driver who has a picture of your wrecked UPS vehicle on the check-in room wall. You don't want to be the reason your center is discussing why it's important to look left, right, left going into an intersection. You don't want to be the reason the PCM is about getting out and checking if you're not sure where you're backing. You don't want to be the driver who is suspended, posting on this forum, wondering if you'll get your job back, just because you lost your focus for a split second.
Because then you're living in UPS purgatory. And that's no place you want to be.
You'll always be able to fight for your job on even ground when it comes to the production game at UPS. They can't fire you for that. They might try, and they certainly will attempt to intimidate you into becoming one of "their" drivers, but you will never lose your job for production. But you DEFINITELY can lose your job because you wrecked or failed to follow their methods or instructions. Plenty of people on this forum are happy to explain how they skip this or that, or rush, rush, rush. Those people are the ones who tend to make the big mistakes, even if it hasn't happened yet. And not much you tell them makes a difference. You don't want to be a driver like that. No matter how much pressure you feel, no matter how bad you want to be off at normal hours like most other people.
Play it safe. Keep your job. No one feels worse than the driver who is calling UPS to report an accident. They make sure of it. Play it safe.
