Human nature, this isn't the military. Open door policy, no?
I can honestly say that I have spoken back about stuff I have not agreed with and I'm still an employee of UPS.
Just the other day I was assigned 2 NDA stops in my EDD, completely out of my area. In an area I don't even go through. 3 other drivers do drive through said area.
I was instructed by the dispatch supervisor to deliver them when I questioned it. I didn't buy it. Then spoke with my on road supervisor who completely agreed that the dispatch supervisor had made an error. They were given to the correct driver for delivery.
Now if I had been like most of you here, afraid to speak up I would have added 30 minutes to my AM and made my own air commits questionable, let alone getting a lunch in and making commercials by 1700.
Now if you follow Tie's reasoning and he was the dispatch supervisor I would have been fired on the spot. No?
There are times when you absolutely need to speak up. If it fails you work as directed and don't worry about the problems that incur. You can always say "I told you so."
We are told daily that UPS wants us doing what is right out there. Yet some seem to scared to voice what they think is right.
LOL! You didn't "shove it to the man." All you did was MAYBE (and I doubt you have the cojones) tell a dispatch sup "no". Again, you didn't really do this, but we can pretend. Then you went further up the chain of command to someone that knew what the consequences of you delivering those letters would really be. That person then told the dispatch sup no with his/her actions.
Understand, what you said earlier and the situation you describe are two entirely different things. Mainly, a dispatch sup is a sup, but not your boss.
Here's a real world example that happened to me to show you what I mean. When I was a PT preload sup there was a day when two drivers were verbally going at it. It was pretty clear things might very well get physical.
As I walked up to the "scene" one of them said something that infuriated the other driver. I don't know what it was or what it meant, but it involved the name of a female. I don't know who he was talking about and I don't care. The driver that made that remark was facing me and the (now
extremely pissed) driver was between us with his back to me. He threw his diad behind him. It hit my thigh. If these weren't two grown men about to attack each other, I would have laughed because it was like a movie scene. Unfortunately, this was real and in the work place. When the driver took one step towards the driver that had said something mean, he must have saw his face. The driver facing me had his jaw dropped and was just staring at me (I think he was thinking "oh friend**, Mark just hit a sup with a diad, this is not how I wanted this to end)
The driver that threw it turned around to face me. I could see all of his built up machismo leave his body immediately. I just said "you're fired" and he said "I didn't know you were there." I said verbatim "I understand that and I whole-heartedly believe it, now lets go talk to Tom," (center mgr).
I guess it was lucky for the on roads that this was early enough that there were still driver's there that hadn't gone home. One of the extras must have taken Mark's route because neither of the on roads had to go driving that day.
When the center manager, me, Mark, and steward (from another center, same building) went into the office I had no idea what to expect. This was work place violence. Everyone knew it. Well, the center manager gave his spiel. It was pretty clear this was not the center manager's or the steward's first time doing this. It was like pre-rehearsed clockwork on both their parts. No arguing, just the normal responses on both ends. The center manager and I left the office so they could talk after the center manager was done.
I can only paraphrase what he said because I don't remember everything that he said to me. Basically, he said that he had to fire him now because he hit an employee with a thrown item. He then explained that me telling him he was fired was not "official" because I was not in (and certainly not above) his chain of command. All that mattered, was that I got hit. I could have been a porter, OMS, or preloader and it wouldn't have changed anything. My being a sup did not play into this situation at all.
After asking him specifics for future reference, he basically told me that all firings have to come from mgnt level. Not FT or PT sups. The only way you can "fire" someone from those positions is to create a paper trail on an employee so long that if forces the mngr's hand. One of the best lessons I ever learned at UPS.
*The obvious exceptions are workplace violence, insubordination, theft, and sometimes harassment (depending on witnesses)* But even with these, at the end of the day, all that matters is that a mgr or higher got involved and actually signed the sheets.
To this day, I am still glad he threw that diad. I have to believe that two people getting physically aggressive on a boxline would lead to both of them being injured much more severely than a normal fight. That driver lost some money in the deal. But had he not hit me with that, at least one of those driver's would have been pretty hurt and one would have certainly lost his career for good. There would have been no coming back.
