Neverhoodian said:
Two months. I applied for UPS earlier this year because it's a union company with good benefits. Also, my father happens to work there (he's on the verge of retirement now). Too bad the center I worked at was batshit crazy.
Ha - mine was Fedex Ground, I lasted only 3 weeks. That was more than most though - they hire around 20 people a week, and everyone from my group quit the first night except me (I was desperate for cash at the time). Funny - our 'training' was just some manager explaining to us how far behind UPS Fedex was in volume of packages handled annually (though you wouldn't know it while working the belt). To make up the difference they worked us like indentured servants, without the union benefits.
First off, I was never properly trained. I got some musclehead who wouldn't tell you how to do something properly, only to bark at you when you did it wrong. It didn't help that other supervisors and drivers had their own conflicting methods they wanted me to use, meaning I was frequently second-guessing myself. The workload was insane as well. Boxes came down the belt so fast that you couldn't keep up. Nobody could. I had to work through my breaks in an attempt to catch up, and I STILL wasn't able to meet their insane numbers.
Yep, same with Fedex. Except when they hired me, they told me I was going to be the guy that sorts packages by zipcode and nudges them onto the right conveyor belt (the relatively easy job), but when I showed up the first night and asked for directions, they told me I was going to load the trucks from the belt (this was minutes before the shift began). I hadn't received any direction whatsoever for either job anyway - I had to dive right in and learn as I went, which resulted in a lot of mistakes, all of which I was verbally abused for right off the bat by both the managers and the other workers along the belt, who had to deal with packages I missed. Not that I would have gotten them all if I had known what to do - they came off the belt so fast it was physically impossible to read off the zipcodes, get them off the belt and on or near the truck, and get back before another package belonging to one of your stops passed by (not to mention that you eventually had to scan each with this pos armband scanner and place it in a specific corner of the truck based on zipcode). I almost broke down into tears during my first shift it was so bad. I went to the manager who interviewed me during the hiring process, asking about the job I was originally hired for, and he also verbally abused me (a sudden drastic change from the friendly guy of a few days prior). I was so desperate that I stayed on anyway.
I stayed late for hours on every shift to finish - they wouldn't let me leave until I finished loading everything, no matter how long it took (and the driver would sit there cursing me to hurry up during that time). I couldn't physically handle working through the one short break I got each shift - though I found out later they were giving us illegally short breaks anyway (~5-7 mins instead of 15 once per 5 hour shift [which would always end up being 7 hours for me]). I was always so delirious from exhaustion that I didn't notice.
The breaking point was misroutes (e.g. sticking a package in the wrong truck). I was routinely assigned three trucks to load simultaneously, each with a carry capacity of 800 packages (and they were ALWAYS filled to the brim). Loaders are not allowed a single misroute. Not one. Every time a loader gets a misroute they're pulled aside and read the riot act the next day. One morning I was told that my misroutes were becoming an issue (one or two per day, the horror!), and at this point it wasn't looking good for me staying on. The supervisor finished with a snide comment about me "not sleeping well tonight."
Thank God I usually only was responsible for one or two (large) trucks per night - I can't imagine 3...but Fedex's rules were a bit different for misroutes; if the package didn't get delivered properly, you would find it sitting there in your truck the next night, and you'd be held responsible for sorting that along with your normal load for the night (which was always at least the maximum capacity of the truck, if not more - not even including a 'flex' which is a rule where anyone on the belt can ask you to accommodate up to an extra 100 packages if they want because they can't fit them in their truck, even if yours is already full to capacity [somehow I was never given this option to 'flex' to others myself]). Additionally, if less than 99 percent of the total packages for the entire facility handled on a given night were misroutes, a random person working on the belts was fired (not necessarily the person most responsible for the misroutes, or I probably would have been fired quickly). They reminded everyone of that second rule at the start of every shift - you know, for morale building.
Turned out that little remark was prophetic. That night I worked myself into a frenzy thinking about my job. In the midst of it all, I had a sudden moment of clarity. I knew that if I were to go back to that place, I'd probably lash out and do something I'd regret later. I called up the center early that morning and told them I wasn't coming to work that day, or any other day for that matter.
For my part, I lived in constant dread of having to go to work for the time I was at Fedex. I was in college at the time too, but I was so tired I would either sleep in and miss class, or drag myself to school and end up sleeping in class. Ended up doing terribly that semester and having to spend the following semester on academic probation (unable to take normal classes) as a result.
One day, I came in to work, walked up to my truck about 5 minutes before the shift, and it was nearly full of packages, all because the truck hit a bump in the road or something and they fell into the areas of the truck assigned to the wrong zipcodes, and so weren't delivered (and/or someone decided to flex me a couple orders before my shift even started). I knew that shift was going to be a nightmare, and I snapped right there and quietly walked out without saying a word to anyone.
I knew I did the right thing as soon as I had hung up. When I told my dad about it he understood completely. He's been working at UPS for decades, and he says the job is far more stressful for new hires now than when he first got on. Indeed, he told me that he probably would have quit after three days if he were in my spot.
Funny you say that, because I noticed that the only people working alongside me at Fedex were people who had either been there for their whole lives basically, or people who had been there a matter of days like me. Yet the managers were all not much older than me (I was 18 at the time, they were probably late 20s), and they had the cushy jobs of just telling everyone to work faster and harder while not lifting a finger themselves, meanwhile people 30 years their senior broke their backs every night for chump change. I can't imagine being there that long; I'd sooner kill myself - no exaggeration.
Fedex eventually called me a couple days after I left, and I told them where to send my last paycheck, and that's it. I also told my dad, and he was pissed at me (because he knew I needed money and had been without a job for awhile before Fedex). He didn't know what it was like, so he thought I was just being a lazy good-for-nothing. I had to borrow money from my mom to pay rent for the next month before I got a decent job. That was fine though - it was like the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders the moment I finally worked up the nerve to quit.
Also, I received a letter sometime later telling me I could claim a few bucks as part of a class-action lawsuit against Fedex for those illegally short breaks I mentioned earlier.
I guess what I'm saying is, I know your pain.