Overpaid Union Thug
Well-Known Member
I absolutely hate peak season. It wasn't so bad as a hub/center employee but as a driver I've never liked it. I'm fed up with dealing with helpers and the helper boards. Why the do we need them??!!. I'm tired of getting stuck with the many (not all) helpers that are lazy and hearing all of their varied, yet, similar stories about how their previous jobs didn't work out so that they ended up becoming helpers instead. I'm tired of management waiting till the last minute every year to put TCDs on and then freaking out when the experienced drivers don't want to come of the routes we want to run. Then we have to go bail them out after we finish whatever route we end up on.
What I'm most irritated with is November. The first week or so we get helpers forced down our throats for a whopping two hours and later that progresses to 5,6,7 hours but with a dispatch that covers every corner of the delivery zone our center services. That's real effecient! And all of this while TCDs are laid off and missing out on the valuable experience that they WOULD DEFINITELY benefit from in December when peak REALLY starts. But that is potentially a whole other thread by itself. The dispatching is pathetic. There is no logical excuse for why the routes can't be more condensed. I approached one of our upper management members about this and was told that we didn't have enough volume to condense the routes. I just walked away. This really all goes back to one recurring problem at UPS. The "STOPS PER CAR" metric. Until the company decides to ditch this destructive and useless metric the mess will continue.
End of rant.
What I'm most irritated with is November. The first week or so we get helpers forced down our throats for a whopping two hours and later that progresses to 5,6,7 hours but with a dispatch that covers every corner of the delivery zone our center services. That's real effecient! And all of this while TCDs are laid off and missing out on the valuable experience that they WOULD DEFINITELY benefit from in December when peak REALLY starts. But that is potentially a whole other thread by itself. The dispatching is pathetic. There is no logical excuse for why the routes can't be more condensed. I approached one of our upper management members about this and was told that we didn't have enough volume to condense the routes. I just walked away. This really all goes back to one recurring problem at UPS. The "STOPS PER CAR" metric. Until the company decides to ditch this destructive and useless metric the mess will continue.
End of rant.