Cherry picking for easy warning letters...

[toonertoo]

When I started working for UPS in 93 as a preloader, it was a awsome place to work. Morale was great in the whole center, their was never talk about warning letters and the disention that there is nowadays. For pete sakes, when I started you could smoke in the building, walk on the belt while it was running. We only had a Center Manager, no preload sup, daytime sup, or pm sup. Things never ran more smoothly, I remember one day we ran the belt at full speed for the sort, we were busting our asses to do it but we got done almost an hour early and never stopped the belt once. Fun Days!

Now there is disention in the ranks everywhere, we can't keep help, they continually threaten the loaders and drivers with warning letters. I have watched this company change over the years and it's not good. We are losing customers, and good employees, everyday it seems my bulk stops at certain stops grow smaller as Fred's grow larger.

It's a great job and I love the work, but the over management and micro management has gotten totaly out of hand. I mean come on 6 other work codes just to do the airport shuttle, how more micro can it get.

A good IT department is essential for us to succeed, but if UPS reduced its management by 1/2 and quit harassing everyone, hell, if they eliminated all the over-supervision we have then guess what? Preloads would probably get done sooner, as they would be happier, and they would probably have less missed packages because we as drivers all know what teamwork is and would work to get it all delivered, but with all the harrassing and politcal crap that goes on, alot of us I'm sure, have lost interest in teamwork. I know I have, and I don't like that.

Great post, aw yes the good ole days when It was fun to go to work, got tons of work done, everyone got along. When trailers were late preload made up for it. When it was heavy it was everyone heavy, or we spread it around equally or gave it to the guys who wanted the hours. Comraderie, and teamwork, and thanks for a job well done AND WE GOT PAID FOR IT TOO!!
Now we all dread Sunday night as it brings Monday morning. Its a darn shame.

 

[over9five]

Great post, aw yes the good ole days when It was fun to go to work, got tons of work done, everyone got along. When trailers were late preload made up for it. When it was heavy it was everyone heavy, or we spread it around equally or gave it to the guys who wanted the hours. Comraderie, and teamwork, and thanks for a job well done AND WE GOT PAID FOR IT TOO!!
Now we all dread Sunday night as it brings Monday morning. Its a darn shame.

That went away about the same time as "50 per page".

 

[soberups]

The real problem with all of this micromanagement and over supervision...is that it causes the management people involved to lose credibility.

Safety is important....but when management sneaks around and hides in parking lots to fill quotas of BS warning letters it is difficult to take anything they say seriously.

There are legitimate safety issues we can and should be addressing. This sort of crap gets in the way of that.

 

[grgrcr88]

While I agree that to some extent management loses credibility, I feel it is more a lack of trust and respect that they force onto the hourly because they treat us as if we are criminals.

 

[dannyboy]

Tie

Hate is such a harsh word.

Management at UPS has transformed itself into something that is hardly recognizable these days.

Or should I say micromanagement. There is very little to manage at the district level on down, only play nursemaid to the employees and customers. Everything else is controlled from above by faceless, nameless people who probably dont even work for ups, but are contracted to tell us how to do things better.

As has been stated, I dont hate the job, or the managers, I just hate what UPS has done to both.

You want drivers to be part of a team effort? But yet dont treat them as a valued team member? How does that work? Oh yeah, I forgot, you dont get treated as a team members either, so why should you treat your employees any different?

UPS built its reputation on a solid core of values. I dont see them too much anymore.

d

 

[Raw]

Warning Letter = 1 point
3 Day Suspension = 3 points
5 Day Suspension = 5 points
10 Day = 10 points
Terminations = 20 points'

All Point totals only count if it sticks. If you terminate someone and they greive it to a ten day, only ten points are awarded. Everyone puts 100 bucks in a hat and at the end of each quarter the scores are added up. Winner takes the hat.

A management person shown the door = PRICELESS!!

 

[tieguy]

Tie

Hate is such a harsh word.

Management at UPS has transformed itself into something that is hardly recognizable these days.

Or should I say micromanagement. There is very little to manage at the district level on down, only play nursemaid to the employees and customers. Everything else is controlled from above by faceless, nameless people who probably dont even work for ups, but are contracted to tell us how to do things better.

As has been stated, I dont hate the job, or the managers, I just hate what UPS has done to both.

You want drivers to be part of a team effort? But yet dont treat them as a valued team member? How does that work? Oh yeah, I forgot, you dont get treated as a team members either, so why should you treat your employees any different?

UPS built its reputation on a solid core of values. I dont see them too much anymore.

d

I'm surprised if you see much of any anyway being in retirement

 

[All Day]

When I started working for UPS in 93 as a preloader, it was a awsome place to work. Morale was great in the whole center, their was never talk about warning letters and the disention that there is nowadays. For pete sakes, when I started you could smoke in the building, walk on the belt while it was running. We only had a Center Manager, no preload sup, daytime sup, or pm sup. Things never ran more smoothly, I remember one day we ran the belt at full speed for the sort, we were busting our asses to do it but we got done almost an hour early and never stopped the belt once. Fun Days!

Now there is disention in the ranks everywhere, we can't keep help, they continually threaten the loaders and drivers with warning letters. I have watched this company change over the years and it's not good. We are losing customers, and good employees, everyday it seems my bulk stops at certain stops grow smaller as Fred's grow larger.

It's a great job and I love the work, but the over management and micro management has gotten totaly out of hand. I mean come on 6 other work codes just to do the airport shuttle, how more micro can it get.

A good IT department is essential for us to succeed, but if UPS reduced its management by 1/2 and quit harassing everyone, hell, if they eliminated all the over-supervision we have then guess what? Preloads would probably get done sooner, as they would be happier, and they would probably have less missed packages because we as drivers all know what teamwork is and would work to get it all delivered, but with all the harrassing and politcal crap that goes on, alot of us I'm sure, have lost interest in teamwork. I know I have, and I don't like that.

Great great post.
I also remember when morale was high and everyone just wanted to help each other out. Really miss those days, we all worked hard and was thanked for all that we did.
I think a veteran driver said it best when I said to him the other day, "what has happened to this place, remember the good old days?" His response, "you know whats scary, some day these will be the good old days."

 

[MC4YOU2]

The real problem with all of this micromanagement and over supervision...is that it causes the management people involved to lose credibility.

Safety is important....but when management sneaks around and hides in parking lots to fill quotas of BS warning letters it is difficult to take anything they say seriously.

There are legitimate safety issues we can and should be addressing. This sort of crap gets in the way of that.

Technology too, has opened a Pandora's box at UPS that did not exist 20 years ago. It seems that as we see new capabilities come online we see a rush to fill the percieved vacuum they create with data and reports that MUST be elevated to the highest level of importance simply because this info exists in a new and different format and now seen from a new angle. If some sup is not riding his monitor like a late night movie junkie, he must not be earning his keep.

It's as if we were asked to rely on our rear vision camera/monitor rather than looking out the windshield and using the mirrors because they are too "low tech".

I constantly get messages during the day regarding consignee/shipper addresses and such. It's nice to have the capability, but is this the best use of a managers time? This used to be handled by the driver and we were "empowered" to make business decisions that benefitted customers and UPS and were encouraged to call in if we were unsure. Now, even the simplest things are becoming complex policy issues.

You can only slash and burn your way to profit for so long before it becomes evident you have left your customers behind.

Hiding behind dumpsters and feeling pressured to "observe a quota" of infractions is surely the result of having so much effort directed at reading the reports and sifting through the data of the newest "time saving" (hahaha) software app.

 

[soberups]

Technology too, has opened a Pandora's box at UPS that did not exist 20 years ago. It seems that as we see new capabilities come online we see a rush to fill the percieved vacuum they create with data and reports that MUST be elevated to the highest level of importance simply because this info exists in a new and different format and now seen from a new angle.....

Once we can measure it....we then have to manage it.

Once we start managing it...we will then have to improve it.

It becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy. If your job as a management person is to monitor metrics and write reports....you must continously justify that job by improving those metrics and writing even more reports.

The current EBO is proof positive that we have become top-heavy. There are simply too many report writers and metric manipulators riding on the backs of those of us who actually do the work.

 

[tieguy]

Once we can measure it....we then have to manage it.

Once we start managing it...we will then have to improve it.

It becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy. If your job as a management person is to monitor metrics and write reports....you must continously justify that job by improving those metrics and writing even more reports.

The current EBO is proof positive that we have become top-heavy. There are simply too many report writers and metric manipulators riding on the backs of those of us who actually do the work.

Its been a nice journey through it all we learned that how evil management is. We've learned that raw is superior to his supervisors because raw spends more time at the gym then they do. Here again we hear that management being top heavy is the reason soberups got a warning letter.

And yet none of you management haters ever touched on the intent behind the observations to change unsafe behaviors. None of you were able to give us solutions to get people to stop acting like sober and actually follow safe work methods regardless of who is watching.

you folks shouldn't get mad at management. You should mad at yourself for being stupid enough to give managment reasons to spy on you and reasons to give you warning letters.

The observations won't stop when the 1800 managers leave and the micromanagement definitely won't stop when they leave. If you think management will now start looking the other way and pretending they don't know your out there working unsafely then you will be dissapointed in april.

 

[MC4YOU2]

Its been a nice journey through it all we learned that how evil management is. We've learned that raw is superior to his supervisors because raw spends more time at the gym then they do. Here again we hear that management being top heavy is the reason soberups got a warning letter.

And yet none of you management haters ever touched on the intent behind the observations to change unsafe behaviors. None of you were able to give us solutions to get people to stop acting like sober and actually follow safe work methods regardless of who is watching.

you folks shouldn't get mad at management. You should mad at yourself for being stupid enough to give managment reasons to spy on you and reasons to give you warning letters.

The observations won't stop when the 1800 managers leave and the micromanagement definitely won't stop when they leave. If you think management will now start looking the other way and pretending they don't know your out there working unsafely then you will be dissapointed in april.

I respect your point of view so far as safety and the need to find ways to make it bette, including observations where there is some sensible thought process to it. I am not sure that you can keep your hands at 10 and 2 while turning the wheel and therfore not convinced as you are that Sober was unsafe.
As for Aprl, I suspect you are more right than wrong. As odd as it seems to say so, your generation of management will be in the minority and so common sense (there's the odd part) like yours, though not always easy to see, will be in short supply. What will be in spades will be newbies with little experience and less customer relations expertise trying to "program" their way to the CEO position.
Yes I suspect micromanagement must run it's course through this patch of our history before it can be seen as the impersonal cancer it is becoming.
Too bad the EBO wasn't for micromanagement implementing planners.

 

[soberups]

you folks shouldn't get mad at management. You should mad at yourself for being stupid enough to give managment reasons to spy on you and reasons to give you warning letters.

You are right.

I was stupid enough to rack up 23 years without a lost time injury and 12 years of safe driving.

Obviously, I am a menace to myself and the public at large, and no one will be safe unless some management person follows me from one parking lot to the next and makes sure that my hands are at the 10 and 2 on the ******* wheel.

 

[soberups]

The observations won't stop when the 1800 managers leave and the micromanagement definitely won't stop when they leave. If you think management will now start looking the other way and pretending they don't know your out there working unsafely then you will be dissapointed in april.

Then it looks like we arent cutting enough dead weight off of the payroll.

 

[tieguy]

I respect your point of view so far as safety and the need to find ways to make it bette, including observations where there is some sensible thought process to it. I am not sure that you can keep your hands at 10 and 2 while turning the wheel and therfore not convinced as you are that Sober was unsafe.

you don't while making a turn. you then use the push pull method of steering. Its a very safe way to steer that gives you maximum control of the steering whell at all times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62dbS8PhIFw

As for Aprl, I suspect you are more right than wrong. As odd as it seems to say so, your generation of management will be in the minority and so common sense (there's the odd part) like yours, though not always easy to see, will be in sheort supply. What will be in spades will be newbies with little experience and less customer relations expertise trying to "program" their way to the CEO position.
Yes I suspect micromanagement must run it's course through this patch of our history before it can be seen as the impersonal cancer it is becoming.
Too bad the EBO wasn't for micromanagement implementing planners.

The nature of management is to seek continous improvement. That concept coupled with ever improving technology tells us that more micromanagement not less awaits us all.

 

[tieguy]

Then it looks like we arent cutting enough dead weight off of the payroll.

do the job by the methods and free them up from their responsibilities?

 

[Re-Raise]

do the job by the methods and free them up from their responsibilities?

The man is a 23 year safe driver. Maybe your little observations you think are so important that they take you away from your "responsibilities" mean nothing.

Don't you think we as drivers care about our own safety?

Lets say for example I am a brilliant safety manager and I come up with a new slogan. We' ll call it .....LAST... which stands for Look And See Things.

The other desk jockeys and I slap each other on the backs and order extra doughnuts ( bad for you heart by the way) to celebrate.

We tell our drivers to memorize our new slogan. Obviously we have greatly improved our driver safety because they will now Look And See Things.

Then we cut 4 routes to meet our SPORH numbers sending drivers out till after dark on areas they are unfamiliar with. Surely they won't have accidents because we just taugtht them to Look And See Things.

I am safe not because of what management does.... I am safe in spite of what management does.

 

[Dragon]

The point I am trying to make, is that there are alot(77 pages to be exact) of methods to try and perform all day every day, some of them have not been used or enforced by anyony for quite a long time. It will take some time to get everyone in the routine of following them all day, every day. I simply think that by giving someone a warning letter for the first time they screw up the smallest of methods is wrong. All it does is cause ill feelings and mistrust towards management from hourlies. As I said, I believe in the methods, I think that following them is key in keeping myself safe and effective throughout the day. I have no problem with a sup, going out and watching a driver perform his tasks while taking diligent notes on what could be improved upon and then after the observation, stopping that driver, sitting down with him over a cold bottle of water and telling or showing them what they did that needs improvement, while at the same time telling him what a great job he has done!!! If that does not work, then perhaps a formal talk with or a warning letter may be in order to grab someones attention.

Great Post.

But this center manager is tired of asking, reminding, re-training on the same topics everyone complains about. My new style is - I remind, retrain, ask you one last time then I am going to start typing. I am totally over it. I am ten warning letters and 1 suspension a head of last year.

 

[Bubblehead]

Its been a nice journey through it all we learned that how evil management is. We've learned that raw is superior to his supervisors because raw spends more time at the gym then they do. Here again we hear that management being top heavy is the reason soberups got a warning letter.

And yet none of you management haters ever touched on the intent behind the observations to change unsafe behaviors. None of you were able to give us solutions to get people to stop acting like sober and actually follow safe work methods regardless of who is watching.

you folks shouldn't get mad at management. You should mad at yourself for being stupid enough to give managment reasons to spy on you and reasons to give you warning letters.

The observations won't stop when the 1800 managers leave and the micromanagement definitely won't stop when they leave. If you think management will now start looking the other way and pretending they don't know your out there working unsafely then you will be dissapointed in april.

You are correct!
It's only just begun.
With the advent of telematics it will no longer take several on car supes and the center manager many days of hit or miss observations to discover your patern of neglect.
It will only take them, or the computer, a day or two to discover that every day, at a certain time, on a certain split, to figure out that Driver A runs this area with his seatbelt off and his bulkhead door open.
Don't get complacent in light of current events.
Big brother is watching and you will be caught.
Get comfortable with the fact that you may not get to Little Timmy's ball game and settle in for the long haul.
You made the conscious decision to do this job like many before you.
Accept that your resume is not impressive enough to warrant you other alternatives.
If it is, go for it already.
Now take the their money when they act a fool.
It's just a game, be a player.

 

[UPSSOCKS]

Then it looks like we arent cutting enough dead weight off of the payroll.

Union employees keep my job safe and secure, as long as you guys continue to screw up, work unsafe and fail to follow proper methods and instructions - my job is secure.
You want to screw management, start doing things right. Until then, thanks for job security.