grgrcr88
No It's not green grocer!
No one has ever told me not to use the triangle method anymore.
Damn, these franchises should all get together and all have the same rules!!!
Latest Flavor of the Month: Send Agains
- Thread starter Overpaid Union Thug
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No one has ever told me not to use the triangle method anymore.
Damn, these franchises should all get together and all have the same rules!!!
thessalonian13
Well-Known Member
I hope you are filing grievances for sup's shuttling work. It should be drivers doing that.
Bubblehead
My Senior Picture
cino321
Well-Known Member
The more work I bring back the less of a split I have the next day from another route.
Used to be that if I cleaned up the route and didn't bring back too many send agains I'd have a nice light day the next day, now if I clean up the route I get a split off another route to bring my stop count up to whatever magical number they decided it should be that day.
Used to be that if I cleaned up the route and didn't bring back too many send agains I'd have a nice light day the next day, now if I clean up the route I get a split off another route to bring my stop count up to whatever magical number they decided it should be that day.
PASinterference
Yes, I know I'm working late.
I agree. I dont have send agains on purpose,but I dont indirect.The few times I tried I got into more trouble than it was worth. Crazy neighbors etc......
Bubblehead
My Senior Picture
I've had the same experience.
Unless the consignee leaves me a note or calls in asking me to indirect to a specific neighbor, I don't.
Unless we are familiar with the parties and their relationships with one another, how do we know it to be a viable option to indirect?
I still don't understand this hatred of send agains.
As was earlier mentioned, with the exception of a huge over 70 or a Select Comfort bed or the like, it's just one more stop toward my magical max number of stops for tomorrow.
Enough send agains and my area is smaller and easier to negotiate the following day.
Follow the methods and use common sense and let be what it will be.
pretzel_man
Well-Known Member
The reason for the "hatred" of send agains is that they are expensive. The most expensive portion of the cost of servicing a package is the delivery cost.
A send again can double or triple this cost. It is also a service that most competitors do not offer (three delivery attempts). In some areas the post office won't even go to a person's residence, but UPS does.
Therefore, send agains are always monitored. Some of the contract services include only a single delivery attempt. Its to control this large cost.
This being said, it is not the driver's issue and cannot be fixed with just a blanket statement. If you are doing your best to follow the methods and indirect a package where appropriate, that is all you can do. Saying that no driver can have more than x send agains is a ridiculous statement.
Unfortunately, there are also drivers that do not try and properly indirect a package.
P-Man
Bubblehead
My Senior Picture
I understand the issue from a managerial standpoint.
It was the hatred of send agains I hear repeatedly from drivers (other than UpState, we already know he's "special") that puzzles me.
DS
Fenderbender
I agree p_man,but in a lot of cases with sig req pkgs,it's actually a LOT less time
consuming to just leave an info notice asking for delivery instructions.It's usually
an expensive or badly needed pkg,and it makes the customer clue in that if they
want their pkg they have several options at hand.I do this all the time and 9 times
out of 10 the cust will call the center for a redirect,or make some arrangement to
have someone available to sign,and quite often opt to just pick it up at the center.
soberups
Pees in the brown Koolaid
You need to grieve this. Shuttling misloads is bargaining unit work. If they want them shuttled they can have a part-timer put some browns on and pay him if no drivers are available.
soberups
Pees in the brown Koolaid
If there are no hourlies "available" then the solution is simple; pay the most senior part timer the appropriate rate for the time that the sup spent handling the packages.
In my building there are over 100 names on the list for part-timers who want to go full time. Every one of them is "available", the company just wants to get the work done for free.
soberups
Pees in the brown Koolaid
Thats all well and good but the bottom line is that no matter what the driver does in these types of situations, the company will find fault with it.
If he takes the time to follow proper indirect methods, he will be even more overallowed than normal and his SPORH will not meet company expectations.
If he shortcuts those methods in order to meet the impossble expectations, he is exposing himself to the liability of having to pay for an expensive DR claim when a package comes up missing.
Any action he takes to get off of one of your reports will simply cause him to show up on a different one.
It is this way by design. The company is attempting to set up a win/win situation for itself by creating a production standard that pretty much forces the driver to DR everything, while at the same time being financially liable for anything that comes up missing.
If the company were truly honest about reducing send agains, it would use creative pricing to encourage more customers to use the basic service product. Or, it would agree to not hold the drivers responsible for missing packages.
But, in typical UPS fashion, the company is not at all interested in a solution. It only wants to manipulate a metric.
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The Blackadder
Are you not amused?
One we have got of late is being told to check our cars for misloads at 11. But they dont want us to waste time in the back of the car fixing the load. Now at 11 I have maybe 15 stops off a few airs left and a lot of bulk too. How and why would anyone think this is a good idea for me to waste time trying to find a misload that I might not even have.
Overpaid Union Thug
Well-Known Member
I was hoping you would comment on this matter. I always like reading what you have to say about how things ACTUALLY are at UPS.
pretzel_man
Well-Known Member
Maybe you will end up on another report... Maybe not.
I won't apologize for that. Running an efficient business requires balance. A balance of Service, Cost, Research, Maintenance, etc. Its hard to be perfect in every area.
A pilot makes adjustments all flight long. Their instruments give "false positive" warnings all the time.
While some operations (maybe many) may inappropriately manage the metric, the truth of the matter is that you don't want the accountability. No metric is perfect and somewhere along the line every each is described as ineffective...
Ov/un is no good. SPORH is no good. NDPPH is no good. Three day lock in rides are no good. SEAS service reports are no good. Corporate CSI is no good. ERI is no good., etc.
You point out the faults and then want to throw away the baby with the bathwater.
I do understand that a metric is just a proxy for a true measure. Some measure cost, some service, etc. When management loses sight of what the metric is supposed to measure, we have a problem. I've said that before and I still agree with this. I won't try and justify poor management. This does not make the metric wrong as you would like to assert.
Send agains are a problem. Drivers should do their best to properly reduce them. A blanket edict from management is not appropriate. Neither is justifying doing nothing by complaining about the metric.
P-Man
Buddybrown
Well-Known Member
Thanks PMAN!
Before I bought a TUPSS, I spent some time working in a call center, where I worked my way up to manager. Let me tell you, you're not alone when it comes to dealing with numbers. Telemetrics have nothing on a call center phone. As a call center manager, I could order up a report showing me which buttons you pressed on the phone, for how long, and how long you waited between pushing the buttons. I could also record every call you would take, and even listen in to you when you weren't on a call.
And not only was there a seperate department of people who's sole purpose was to spend their days listening to calls, then scoring them, there was another department that sat and watched real-time data on what everyone was doing on the phone, and would call me if someone was on a call for too long, on a break for too long, or anything for too long.
Each morning I would get a report with no less than two dozen metrics for everyone's previous day, and a half-hour into my day I had to report to my boss' office for a huddle with all the other team supervisors to discuss those previous day's metrics. There were two kinds of supervisors in those meetings: Those who bragged about how their team hit the goals, and those who explained why their team didn't hit the goals.
We had a number of different teams that did different things, so each team also had some unique goals. My team hit our unique goals out of the park. Our the client for whom we were taking the calls praised our company many times for what my team did, and it was thanks to my team that my company achived a big bonus payment two quarters in a row.
But they considered team supervisors to be comodities that could be traded anywhere in the company. Supervising was supervising. So when another client left the company, and some team supervisors had to be laid-off, they compared us all head-to-head, and only considered the metrics that were common to every team. So even though I could point towards two quarters of bonuses for the company that were the only reason we were in the black for those two quarters, I got laid-off.
I've always been critical of managing by metrics. I've never thought it was a good idea. Those metrics can help us understand part of what's going on, but they never, ever tell the whole story. And I have seen too many times when a company relies too much on the numbers. The companies are essentiallly letting the computers manage the company, and supervisors are turned into nothing more than messangers for the computers. I sometimes wonder why they don't just hook-up a voice chip to the computer, and let it talk to the workers.
I'm old enough to remember when managers actually managed. You didn't always agree with the manager, but you knew he had a job that not just anyone could do. These days, the only skill you need to be a manager is a thick skin. You don't actually manage people. You read reports, and act on the abnormalities before your boss reads his reports, and asks you what you're doing about those numbers. No one cares what customers are saying (unless they're taking some survey that can be reduced to some numbers). All they care about is what those reports say.
I started writing this hoping that sharing this would help everyone feel better. The old, "I guess the grass is just as yellow all over". But now I'm just sad that yellow grass is all over.
There is a bright side for you guys: Your union. It may have it's flaws, too, but I can tell you that it's the only reason why you can have a long career as a driver at UPS. There's no such thing as a long career in a call center. Eventually one metric or another will take everyone's job. (On the other hand, one of the reasons why call centers are very, very rarely unionized is that no one wants to fight to keep those jobs.)
It's been years since I've had a union job. (I was even once a local president.) And even though I'm a small business owner who's peers are mostly anti-union Republicans, I'm pretty certain that I'll make it to my deathbed as a pro-union Democrat. As I see it, strong unions are the only protection the working man has from becoming a slave to report-spitting computers. Fair wages and benefits are only half the story. Unions and management sitting on opposing sides of the table is the best way to keep humans in the equation.
Sorry for being so long winded.
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