What the tie fails to understand is that it isn't the folks in IE who are establishing time standards that has made UPS successful, as opposed to the folks running General Motors. What has made UPS successful is the boys (and girls) in brown, out there hustling, running their ass off every day, not because some guy at a computer terminal has set a standard, but because they want a life with their family, some time of their own after work.
I've done this for 30 years, on the same area. I've seen the standards change, I've seen managers play around with the routes to make the number work better. I've worked as hard as I can go, every day, for thirty years. I push it every day. There have been times I've been a hero and times I've been a zero when judged by the operation reports. Funny thing, I've worked the same pace, using the same methods every day. The single biggest factor that has affected my performance has been the quality of the vehicle which I've been assigned. No kidding. And, that factor cannot even be measured by the good folks in IE.
I'm not saying the department is poor at it's job. Nor am I saying that it is not highly respected by others in the industry doing the same job. But, I'm saying that tomorrow morning, if the company announced that they were going to eliminate the IE department completely and outsource it to two guys in Southeast Asia, our life in our centers would go on pretty much the same. And, we'd all go out there and bust our ass tomorrow and go home and enjoy our lives.