MrFedEx
Engorged Member
Here are my predictions for Peak 2013:
1. Peak will be an incredible disaster, a "Perfect Storm" of new hires, DRA, and overall corporate incompetence. The "overflow solution", where Express takes over some Ground shipments, will be an abject failure.
2. Ground and Express drivers will finally be determined to be "different". The Ground parolee box monkey can do certain defined straightlining tasks, but is incapable of higher order decision-making. Management will finally realize that there IS a difference in the skill-set involved and will predictably "handle it" through slogans, new cheerleading acronyms, and more forceful threats. Peak will be so bad that even Memphis will realize this fact.
3. Christmas Day will be mandatory. You had better try and run out of hours as soon as possible.
4. Both Express and Ground will be overwhelmed. My guess is that Express will be delivering Xmas gifts until 12-31 or perhaps even later if there are major outbreaks of bad weather.
5. Individual customers who ship with Express on 12-22 and 12-23 are going to be disappointed because it won't absolutely, positively, get there overnight. In fact, it will take at least 3-4 days. The word will finally start to get out that FedEx is a farce.
6. Management will blame everyone but themselves for being woefully unprepared and understaffed. Many Express locations cannot handle what they have now, especially locations that are already short 10-15 people.
7. There will be violence. I'm figuring that a lot of people are going to lose it this year. Who can really blame them?
8. Major customers are going to be extremely disappointed. I can hardly wait for the messages saying "deliver all Amazon", or "deliver all Apple", etc. There will be so many service failures, RDLs and WDLs, and FUBARS, that a recipient will be grateful just to finally get their package...days late.
9. Upper management is finally going to be exposed as clueless. It will be bad enough that regime change will be considered. Watch for MT3 to be "pursuing new career opportunities" in January. Others may join him. This will be a good thing, as Martha Stewart likes to say. Hopefully, a lot of them go down in flames.
10. Ground will be affirmed as the darling of the company and even more resources will be shifted to Fred's cash cow.
11. Our Call Center Network will be re-evaluated and restructured, because Peak will be the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of their absolute incompetence.
12. There will be a wave of managers either retiring or downgrading immediately after Peak. Again, it will just be the final straw for these folks.
13. Fred S will acknowledge the disaster, but only in passing, and will do nothing of substance to alter our course away from oblivion. DRA will be temporarily suspended and re-worked, but still allowed to live on.
14. Your station floor will be covered with pallets of undelivered and un-attempted freight, much of it decomposing and making your warehouse smell like the inside of a hotel dumpster.
15. Bad attitude employees will become the norm and WAD will be SOP almost everywhere.
16. FedEx is halfway down the toilet. This peak will be the Express death spiral. The opco will continue to exist, but will have to be rebuilt, which will take years.
17. Wall Street will finally notice that this is an organization run by morons. The stock will start to fall accordingly.
Get back to me around the first of the New Year and see how close I have come to predicting the future.
1. Peak will be an incredible disaster, a "Perfect Storm" of new hires, DRA, and overall corporate incompetence. The "overflow solution", where Express takes over some Ground shipments, will be an abject failure.
2. Ground and Express drivers will finally be determined to be "different". The Ground parolee box monkey can do certain defined straightlining tasks, but is incapable of higher order decision-making. Management will finally realize that there IS a difference in the skill-set involved and will predictably "handle it" through slogans, new cheerleading acronyms, and more forceful threats. Peak will be so bad that even Memphis will realize this fact.
3. Christmas Day will be mandatory. You had better try and run out of hours as soon as possible.
4. Both Express and Ground will be overwhelmed. My guess is that Express will be delivering Xmas gifts until 12-31 or perhaps even later if there are major outbreaks of bad weather.
5. Individual customers who ship with Express on 12-22 and 12-23 are going to be disappointed because it won't absolutely, positively, get there overnight. In fact, it will take at least 3-4 days. The word will finally start to get out that FedEx is a farce.
6. Management will blame everyone but themselves for being woefully unprepared and understaffed. Many Express locations cannot handle what they have now, especially locations that are already short 10-15 people.
7. There will be violence. I'm figuring that a lot of people are going to lose it this year. Who can really blame them?
8. Major customers are going to be extremely disappointed. I can hardly wait for the messages saying "deliver all Amazon", or "deliver all Apple", etc. There will be so many service failures, RDLs and WDLs, and FUBARS, that a recipient will be grateful just to finally get their package...days late.
9. Upper management is finally going to be exposed as clueless. It will be bad enough that regime change will be considered. Watch for MT3 to be "pursuing new career opportunities" in January. Others may join him. This will be a good thing, as Martha Stewart likes to say. Hopefully, a lot of them go down in flames.
10. Ground will be affirmed as the darling of the company and even more resources will be shifted to Fred's cash cow.
11. Our Call Center Network will be re-evaluated and restructured, because Peak will be the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of their absolute incompetence.
12. There will be a wave of managers either retiring or downgrading immediately after Peak. Again, it will just be the final straw for these folks.
13. Fred S will acknowledge the disaster, but only in passing, and will do nothing of substance to alter our course away from oblivion. DRA will be temporarily suspended and re-worked, but still allowed to live on.
14. Your station floor will be covered with pallets of undelivered and un-attempted freight, much of it decomposing and making your warehouse smell like the inside of a hotel dumpster.
15. Bad attitude employees will become the norm and WAD will be SOP almost everywhere.
16. FedEx is halfway down the toilet. This peak will be the Express death spiral. The opco will continue to exist, but will have to be rebuilt, which will take years.
17. Wall Street will finally notice that this is an organization run by morons. The stock will start to fall accordingly.
Get back to me around the first of the New Year and see how close I have come to predicting the future.
. I don't think so.
