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<blockquote data-quote="curiousbrain" data-source="post: 969509" data-attributes="member: 31608"><p>I can only speak from my own experience, but it (as usual) is not as cut and dry, or as black and white, as that.</p><p></p><p>The reality is that a good preloader is hard to judge from the beginning; for many reasons - let me enumerate <strong>some</strong> of them.</p><p></p><p>1) Some employees are only in it for the union protection/benefits. In this case, they are the best employee until they make seniority; once that happens, their performance/attendance/etc drops like a rock. So, the obvious question is why not move them somewhere else? The answer, sadly, is because if you move them, who will you replace them with? Someone who sucks even harder, to be plain about it. If you think your current loader sucks, wait and see what the guy from unload does when you direct him to load. I suggest you bring a shovel and a wheelbarrow to work that day.</p><p></p><p>2) Most new hires are young; not all, but most. What this means, from a supervisory/people perspective, is that they, as an individual, don't necessarily know how to deal with intense pressure/stress, similar to what is heaped upon them during UPS preload (or other aspects of operations, obviously). So, maybe they do well for the first few months, but then they realize that the pressure is never going to stop, the cardboard will keep flowing, and all that lovely stuff. At a certain point, some people just crack and stop caring - but, they've already made seniority, can't really be fired, and the alternative (as suggested above) is even worse.</p><p></p><p>3) Some people who, initially, had a plan to deal with the stress mentioned in the previous point, eventually (sometimes after years of service) give up. Who can blame them, we are all simply human and even the best of us will throw up our hands eventually. Yep, that means you get a crappy load as a driver; eventually, you will probably throw up your hands as well and just laugh because the company pays your OT. That is the mentality of some preloaders, as well.</p><p></p><p>4) Replace people with new hires. That, sadly, is not an option as far as I can tell; reason being, a building is already staffed to its quota - if you can't fire anyone, you are stuck with what you have. The problem then falls on the shift managers/part-time supervisors as to why "you didn't train them right", which is as stupid a question to ask as anything. Because, as intimated earlier, there is no way (good training or not) to predict how a person will act when pushed into the fire that is UPS; even after years, if you have a "good judgement of character", you still can't replace that crappy loader with ten years in because ... generally speaking, you can't fire people.</p><p></p><p>It is so easy to say "Well, the managers/supervisors are bad; that's why the preloaders are bad". This is ignoring the inherent problem of <strong>people</strong>: no one can predict what a person will do when put under tremendous pressure. I am not excusing the awful behavior that goes on elsewhere, because a lot of soups/mgr's don't give a crap, but for those of us who do - understand that until human nature can be quantified in a specific way, so that we know exactly how a person will behave under the conditions that exist when your package car is being loaded (extrapolated out for months and years on end), we simply do the best we can.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="curiousbrain, post: 969509, member: 31608"] I can only speak from my own experience, but it (as usual) is not as cut and dry, or as black and white, as that. The reality is that a good preloader is hard to judge from the beginning; for many reasons - let me enumerate [B]some[/B] of them. 1) Some employees are only in it for the union protection/benefits. In this case, they are the best employee until they make seniority; once that happens, their performance/attendance/etc drops like a rock. So, the obvious question is why not move them somewhere else? The answer, sadly, is because if you move them, who will you replace them with? Someone who sucks even harder, to be plain about it. If you think your current loader sucks, wait and see what the guy from unload does when you direct him to load. I suggest you bring a shovel and a wheelbarrow to work that day. 2) Most new hires are young; not all, but most. What this means, from a supervisory/people perspective, is that they, as an individual, don't necessarily know how to deal with intense pressure/stress, similar to what is heaped upon them during UPS preload (or other aspects of operations, obviously). So, maybe they do well for the first few months, but then they realize that the pressure is never going to stop, the cardboard will keep flowing, and all that lovely stuff. At a certain point, some people just crack and stop caring - but, they've already made seniority, can't really be fired, and the alternative (as suggested above) is even worse. 3) Some people who, initially, had a plan to deal with the stress mentioned in the previous point, eventually (sometimes after years of service) give up. Who can blame them, we are all simply human and even the best of us will throw up our hands eventually. Yep, that means you get a crappy load as a driver; eventually, you will probably throw up your hands as well and just laugh because the company pays your OT. That is the mentality of some preloaders, as well. 4) Replace people with new hires. That, sadly, is not an option as far as I can tell; reason being, a building is already staffed to its quota - if you can't fire anyone, you are stuck with what you have. The problem then falls on the shift managers/part-time supervisors as to why "you didn't train them right", which is as stupid a question to ask as anything. Because, as intimated earlier, there is no way (good training or not) to predict how a person will act when pushed into the fire that is UPS; even after years, if you have a "good judgement of character", you still can't replace that crappy loader with ten years in because ... generally speaking, you can't fire people. It is so easy to say "Well, the managers/supervisors are bad; that's why the preloaders are bad". This is ignoring the inherent problem of [B]people[/B]: no one can predict what a person will do when put under tremendous pressure. I am not excusing the awful behavior that goes on elsewhere, because a lot of soups/mgr's don't give a crap, but for those of us who do - understand that until human nature can be quantified in a specific way, so that we know exactly how a person will behave under the conditions that exist when your package car is being loaded (extrapolated out for months and years on end), we simply do the best we can. [/QUOTE]
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