"Safety means doing exactly what we tell you to do."

[lhexa]

This is a much-delayed entry detailing my new job (well, I got it a month and a half ago) at UPS (United Parcel Service)... a job so exhausting that it has killed off much of my free time. It's the reason why I've once again started neglecting this journal. Well, now that I'm back in college (that might deserve a few descriptions), and don't have the opportunity to loll around all day, there should be some more activity here.

The job is a Sunday through Thursday job (or a M-F mornings job, depending on how you look at it). It starts around eleven PM, except on Sundays, when it starts at 9:30 PM. The nature of the work has changed several times while I've been there, and has been tending towards longer hours recently. It started off with a four-day orientation, from which came the above quote. The group was fun-spirited, so that part wasn't too bad, though we were split up completely, and I think about half have quit. Each class ended with a visit to the "Hub" (which I had toured three times before being hired), which is a five-or-so acre factory-like location where I would eventually work. There are six major sections: one where packages are unloaded from trailers (I'm glad I rarely have to do that; the expected rate is a package every four seconds), one where they're loaded into capsules later taken to the airport, three that load them onto trailers (I work in one of these), and one where they're loaded into trucks for local delivery.

For two weeks I worked as a loader, until by the grace of some divinity I landed a better position. As a loader I was expected (towards the end) to load an average of one package every ten seconds (350 PPH, to be more exact). The plan for new employees is to move them through various "phases" of increasing difficulty, but what happened was that although I was on phase one for the first week, afterwards I was moved between the second- and third-heaviest loads due to the section being under-staffed. This is phase four or five. My personal idea of hell is now built around the task of loading. You go to your bay and enter a trailer so long that its far end is smothered in shadow (seriously, many of them are around fifty feet long). The fan at the entrance penetrates five feet into the body-temperature space; air-conditioning is non-existant. You set up the rollers, and the packages start coming, often demanding to be carried the length of the trailer upon getting stuck. Some fortunate souls have extendible conveyor belts, but these are rare due to their bulk. For every package a label must be found and scanned with a ring-mounted laser, and woe to you if the wrong package goes in this trailer. You build wall after precarious wall, your masonry restricted by the random variety of incoming parsels, hoping that none of your numerous mini-oubliettes or sagging boxes causes a section to fall. This is guaranteed to happen eventually if you play this twisted game of tetris too fast, though I'm slow and don't have that problem. You start loading the boxes and bags with more and more speed, but the incoming rate is always too much. Inevitably packages pile off the sides of the rollers at the chute, and the light is gradually blocked out as you are trapped inside. An eternity later you fill the trailer almost completely, pushing the grudging rollers and chute back and shut, digging through the fallen packages, only to find a cart outside heavily laden with the dreaded, over-sized "irregs". If working by myself, I would have been expected to fill around three trailers a night.

As I later found out, most bays are loaded by a team of two (sometimes three or four) people, but that wasn't what I experienced during my third week there. Plus I'm a mediocre loader, although my two trainers liked me and gave me deceitfully high marks. Anyway, the job was otherwise good enough for me to persist, though I don't know how much longer I would have lasted as a loader. It pays eight-fifty an hour, which is decent, and'll be up to ten per hour next week. Overtime starts at five hours in a night, which is great now that I have the opportunity to work that late frequently, and double overtime hits at eight hours. I don't look forward to reaching that, as the 6:45 Sunday this week ruined what started out as a strong week, but perhaps in a few months I'll be able to endure it. What makes this job unique in the world of part-time employment is that it includes medical, dental, and optical insurance, as well as partial tuition reimbursement. They pay for detox too. The union is very strong.

There's a test (run off Microsoft Access) that you can take in order to get a dollar-per-hour raise. It's simple in concept (associate zip codes with colors), but potentially very hard to pass: you have to identify 150 numbers in less than seven and a half minutes, getting no more than three wrong. I did it on my sixth day (on my fifth attempt, I think) by memorizing the simpler sets, and quickly looking at the study sheet for the rest. I told my supervisor and trainer, so that they'd be sure to give me the raise. Nothing happened for awhile, until the last day of the third week, when I was moved to the "sort slide." This slide is sixty feet long, four feet high, and eight feet deep (all rough guesses), the bulk of which tends to be filled by the packages that are continually brought in by a conveyor belt. These are sorted into seven other belts and slides; the expected rate is a package every three seconds, weighing twenty pounds on average (though they go up to seventy). I was overwhelmed, yet I immediately preferred it over loading (though at the time I thought the move was temporary or tentative).

I had certainly been sore after loading, but it didn't surpass what I had experienced after heavy exercise. The first full week of sorting was an ordeal such as I had never experienced. My arms were too weak for it, and it didn't help that nearly half the packages must be lifted overhead. From the weight I was losing before upping my diet I estimate the job consumes around a thousand calories per hour, until 2 AM or so, when it calms down. During the first full week of this (my fourth week at UPS), my stomach sent a continual pang after the first hour, and after break each day (ten minutes, occurring two and a half hours in) I would be staggering as I left. I was perpetually sore, of course. The next week was much better, although I still wasn't eating enough. What this meant, however, was that I stopped getting sent home early, and now I go into overtime every day unless I find some way to leave early. At least my endurance is still growing, so perhaps someday I can do eight hours without dying. Also, to finish explaining things, the sort slide people (there are nine of us, plus a supervisor) are apparently the "elite" of the UPS... which means that one or two of us gets sent wherever there's particular trouble, and most of us stay after most have left in order to do various tasks (thus the overtime). At least the job no longer represents hell to me, although it is markedly Sisyphean... I often finish sorting all the packages at my spot at the exact time when the next bunch of them arrive.

Oh, and I certainly can't finish this without describing the Hub. It's humongous, of course, and while I'm there it's likely to have a hundred trucks inside and two hundred trailers at the various bays. About half is the cage area, which is fairly open, and the rest is a dense warren of belts, ladders, catwalks and slides. At one spot there are three levels of platforms; the sort slide for my section is itself elevated ten feet off the ground, and nearby are four layers of conveyor belts. I've become lost inside numerous times, mostly because my section is the farthest one from the entrance, at a quarter mile as the crow flies (assuming the crow isn't masticated by any machinery along the way). One day last week this was my route out: climb down a ladder from the bay, up another ladder, traverse a catwalk in order to bypass a thousand-foot belt, climb down from it, take the main corridor awhile, cut through the belt repair area, take a little side corridor until I get to the trucks, go past the mechanics' area, climb a short fence, get yelled at by a mechanic, climb back over the fence, go around the trucks, past the cages, out the door and through the guard shack. The funny thing is that except for the fence/mechanic mishap, that's the best route I've found. *grins* The catwalk traversal depends on which side of the long belt I find myself, but it sure is fun.

Okay, I'm finally done. Comment so that I have more reason to get into this journal thing.

Comments

[broken-bokken.livejournal.com]

So, where's the big machine that sledgehammers your package before you get it? It's really odd for me to attempt to conceive of these huge postal "factories" when our local UPS station consists of two drivers, a guy who does everything else, and an aspiring giggolo who washes the trucks.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

That would be the other packages, especially the ones filled with bricks, nails and such. And I'm surprised that your station is so small, considering how many packages I see to Alpine.

[raki.livejournal.com]

Wow. I'm amazed you've managed to make a job that's so prosaic sound so poetic. I know it hasn't been poetic for you, working there, though. Hope it eases up soon.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It's not likely to ease up, but my strength and endurance are slowly increasing.

(Heh, prosaity sounding poetic in prose...)

[wickedorin.livejournal.com]

So, it is entirely possible that hell could be comprised of a number of people loading and unloading boxes. That's much more interesting than fire!

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was originally going to include a note about the contrast between Christian and Greek hell... one focuses on physical pain, the other on futile labor.

[wickedorin.livejournal.com]

Or, in this case, both!

[holophote.livejournal.com]

Nicely done, thanks. Also, this strikes me as the sort of document that 100 years from now, will be regarded as a true cultural curiosity, in the same way that we look at industrial practices of, say, the late 19th century... :>

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Well, first it would have to be unearthed from the mass of 21st century weblogs... perhaps if search engines get much, much better.