Your lunch starts when you shut the engine off and work is done. Let them try to take your job simply for breaking trace for two minutes of driving to a place where you can sit down in a cool/warm environment. You can break trace some to get to a place to eat. Breaking off area is a different story. Dont do it. You do not have to take a break in your truck, especially if they want the engine off
telematics?
- Thread starter captw74
- Start date
Mr Fedex
Banned
LOL oh god, I feel sorry for me and it hasn't even hit yet! They've done the relooping and my stop count is supposed to be 90-110. That's ok cause I do that anyways. The weird thing they did though is take away my tiny resi route that put me to 90-110 and gave me two others that'll put me to 110-130, lol.
just interested
Well-Known Member
Are the interpretations posted anywhere? Those of the Master Agreement as well as the supplements?
FracusBrown
Ponies and Planes
So how does a non driving worker on a road crew take his lunch? Does the law require the driver to drop him off at the place of his choice? I'd say it means you can take it where ever you choose, but the employer isn't required to get you there. You might not have to sit in the truck, but I can't see a law forcing the employer to provide transportation.
Now that I think of it, where does a pilot take thier lunch? At the airport of their choice?
soberups
Pees in the brown Koolaid
All of the road crews and construction workers I have ever seen in my area have porta-potties brought out to the job site or they tow one along on a trailer. If they are working outdoors during the winter, they either sit in the vehicles and run the motor to make heat, or they find a sheltered area and use a portable heater.
Common sense would not require the company to cater to each drivers dietary preferences by allowing unlimited personal use of company vehicles simply to drive to a favorite restraunt. Common sense would, however, require the company to either (a) allow the driver to drive a reasonable distance in order to find a restroom or (b) have porta-potties brought out to the delivery area. Common sense would also require the company to allow the driver to operate the vehicle heater during winter months, if for no other reason that the windshield will fog up without heat and the driver will have to run the heater anyway before he can resume work.
Peeing and pooping in the bushes, and sitting in a cold truck for an hour during lunch might be a great fantasy for some tight-assed I.E. person looking to save a buck, but in the real world it wont fly.
FracusBrown
Ponies and Planes
I thought the point was that a driver is entitled by law to take a lunch break away from the work area. Sitting in the truck with the engine running wouldn't accomplish this would it?
Common sense seems to indicate that most people stop to eat and use the restroom at a location along their normal path, hence the abundance of such places along the more commonly traveled routes. I agree that their should be a reasonable exception when there is no logical place to do either.
pretzel_man
Well-Known Member
I've seen ridiculous things on both sides....
I have seen some managers try to make a driver travel to a reasonable lunch on their own time. I think this is absolutely wrong and a lawsuit wating to happen.
I have seen drivers travel a very unreasonable distance to lunch on company time. This is also wrong.
Of course, the driver is in the position to be disciplined over this.
I wish a consistant reasonable nationwide policy would be set on this. You may think this is a conspiracy. I do not. I think its more of an issue of not being a priority.
Maybe we will agree on this one???
P-Man
browndevil
Well-Known Member
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UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)
Well-Known Member
Just do what I did--buy your house (or condo in my case) on your delivery route.
stevetheupsguy
sʇǝʌǝʇɥǝndsƃnʎ
And many other issues.
soberups
Pees in the brown Koolaid
I think you and I are in perfect agreement on this one. The problem starts when we try to use the word "reasonable".....its a word that can be pretty difficult to quantify in the metrics-obsessed culture that is UPS. Its a lot easier to issue blanket, absolute statements...even when they are totally ridiculous...than it is to trust your people to just do the right thing.
Reasonable people will agree that a driver on an urban or mall route has no business breaking trace on the clock for any significant distance when he already has multiple bathroom and restraunt options. Reasonable people will also agree that you cannot expect a driver on a rural route to sit in a freezing truck or be denied sanitary restroom facilities simply because the company wont allow him to "break trace".
This particular situation is one that will heve to be resolved on a case-by-case basis.
browniehound
Well-Known Member
I love this post Sober because I think you hit the nail on the head for all the major points regarding lunch and idle time.
Seriously, how can corporate mandate an hour lunch to a driver in Presque Isle, Me (poor bastard, lol!) and not allow him to idle the truck in January? It rarely gets above 20F the entire month. There has to be some law against this, no?
Doesn't matter, UPS earns hundreds of millions of $'s every quarter but will not provide heat for its employees during their forced hour lunch?
Think about this because its insane! Imagine another company like a bank or doctor's office. The boss says "Ok time for lunch, but you have to sit in the room with no heat to eat".
Only at UPS. Only at UPS I say...
FracusBrown
Ponies and Planes
I think there is a reasonable expectation that you don't sit in the truck with the engine running when there are reasonable alternatives. Most routes have reasonable alternatives. I don't think they expect you to freeze to death to save a pint of fuel. What they do expect, is that you don't use the the pint of fuel if it's not necessary.
What percentage of routes have no public place with heat on the route?
soberups
Pees in the brown Koolaid
There you go using that "reasonable" word again.
"Resonable" does not appear in the UPS corporate dictionary.
Here's how the process works. Telematics reports on our idle time, and some idiot with too much authority and too few brains sittiong in a cubicle someplace reads that report and sends an e-mail to the manager that his center's "idle time" is excessive. Said idiot then pulls a random metric out of his fat ass and mandates that the center in question will not exceed that amount of idle time for any reason.
The center manager has no choice in the matter. He will either generate the metric that the idiot in the cubicle is demanding, or he will be fired and replaced by someone else who can.
The idiot in the cubicle has heat and air conditioning and a bathroom 30 feet down the hall. This idiot has probably never even been to the center in question, but he knows all about what goes on there because he reads a bunch of Telematics reports and has lots of maps, and 24 years ago he even drove a package car for a few weeks before he got promoted into management. This of course makes him fully qualified to micromanage the center from a distance, and to make important decisions about idle time that will save the company lots of money.
Minor details such as drivers who need to use bathrooms or have heat during the winter mean nothing to this idiot. The only thing that matters is the metric.
soberups
Pees in the brown Koolaid
There are many routes in my center that might have public facilities available during the AM business deliveries, but then in the afternoon they cover rural areas where such facilities are either nonexistent or few and far between.
Or the facilities might be available, but getting to them during the lunch hour or when the need to pee arises might involve breaking trace.
The problem becomes even more acute when we start eliminating routes and hammering people with 12, 13 or even 14 hour days, as has been the norm at my center for some time now.
There is also quite a bit of chauvanism at play too. Its pretty easy for a guy on a rural route to pull off the road someplace and take a leak behind a tree, or to pee in a cup in the back of the truck and dump it in a ditch. The ladies dont generally have the ability to do this.
Catatonic
Nine Lives
The repeated use of "idiot" makes one wonder what the appropriate term is for you?
and the bathrooms are not 30 feet down the hall ... an exhaustive study indicated that the optimum distance would be 253 feet but in reality they are on average 281 feet (which is still within the range of the error of the study).
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stevetheupsguy
sʇǝʌǝʇɥǝndsƃnʎ
Where do you think this person came up with this great metric?
Catatonic
Nine Lives
The repeated use of "idiot" makes one wonder what the appropriate term is for you?
I could not come up with a word (lexicon-challenged just doesn't work) so it will have to be a phrase: "synonym challenged person".
bham brown
Well-Known Member
I used to have a route with no public place with heat. And it wasn't rural, just all residentials. It was within a half mile of several places to eat, but I was told that I could not eat at those locations since they weren't on my area. I used to brown bag it and that was fine til they told me I couldn't have the engine running while I was at lunch to stay warm in the winter. I tried to run the engine as necessary trying to generate a little heat but was again talked to over that and was told that I could not have any idle time during lunch. Instead of fighting again this winter I bid on another route that came open.
I admit I am in the South and it doesn't get as cold here as in the North. But there were a lot of days that were in the high 30's and 40's for the high temp.. For a Southerner that is cold...
