But they arent improving safety or service.
The observations are typically done on drivers who are closer to the building and are easier to find.
The goal is not safety or service, it is to meet a quota and to allow the management person in question to generate enough reports, paperwork, and warning letters to justify their job and maintain the illusion that they are contributing something worthwhile to the company that cuts them a paycheck.
If this is the case in your center, that's a shame. I don't like doing observations any more than you like being observed, but it's a necessity. I don't know what you're doing unless I go out and take a look. Does that sometimes lead to discipline? Sure. But more often, at least from me, leads to an "attaboy" or a suggestion that the driver in question should think about changing how he does this or that.
It's pretty comical that every person in this thread representing UPS management acts like "area observations" don't turn around into discipline. It's also laughable that you act as if you don't specifically target certain people and let others go off the hook with safety violations. You aren't going out with the intentions of insuring people are working safely -- the sole intention is to invent an infraction and create a case to fire the person ASAP. I work in a bonus center and up until this year it was unheard of for someone who makes bonus to be disciplined for ANYTHING. Fast-forward to the new flavor of 2010 at UPS -- go out and harass drivers who are more than 1hr under and 1hr over. Not only have I seen this in person, I was told by a manager that this is what they are being instructed to do now. Anybody who falls outside of the extremes of -1hr/+1hr is targeted by management and harassed on a daily basis up to and including termination. Managers are giving out outrageous warning letters for bizarre nitpicking violations to justify their own existence. A few weeks ago a driver here got a warning letter for not pulling in his mirror while parked. Meanwhile the allowances are the worst I have ever seen, I don't even understand how people are even making bonus anymore. I'm maxed out and have been for years as far as stops go, I have no extra time in my day outside of my lunch and break. If you are a target of this production harassment, start documenting everything (dates, times, names, comments made by management, etc) and put it into a file at home. The way this company handles itself in regards to targeting and harassing people is a ticking lawsuit bomb.
This post is all the hell over the place.
Yes, I've given discipline for findings from an observation, but only after repeated "offenses" - i.e. a driver who didn't use his four-ways on two consecutive observations might get a warning letter. But usually, it's just a situation where you review the observation with the driver and instruct him what you would want him to do differently while praising what you saw that was positive.
Do you sometimes "target" individuals for observations? Absolutely, but it's people who have poor safety records or have been observed riding dirty in the past, not bonus drivers. But observations need to be done on all drivers. Our center manager took a driver out of service for not wearing his belt while being observed and this was, by his own words, "my best, safest, driver". If we have 75 drivers in the center, he'd be 75th most-likely to be driving without his seatbelt or to disciplined for anything, really, and there he was driving with no belt. I'd rather we find this out from "spying" than because he, say, falls out of a moving package car.
The attitude of some people here about management is so over-the-top sometimes that I almost think it's an act.
