Don't forget to take your husband's personality into consideration. Mine has been at UPS since 2001, and has done several different jobs there. He despises working with someone breathing down his neck
and in particular disliked working alongside employees who couldn't put in an honest 3 hours work. He started driving part time evenings 2.5 years ago, pick ups only, then worked another 16 hours/week sorting. Aside from dealing with crappy midwest winters he loved the driving side and was able to go FT in April driving.
it IS very stressful for a variety of reasons:
1. swing (cover) means he is sometimes sent home if not needed. Since he's new to driving and is still learning routes, 4 weeks in a row his hours were around 25, and that meant small checks & lots of panic
Swing is the only way in this hub though to get to a regular route, so while we are taking a hit now, the hope is it will pay off (soon??)
2. So far his hours have been reasonable. On a normal day he's home around 5-6. Now, sometimes they have him do his old evening route in addition to the day route, so that means a home time of 9. I am assuming based on what I've read here that this will soon be standard...that he's working crazy long days all the time. Since i'm used to him being gone from 4pm-2am when he was doing the previous job though, which meant i NEVER saw him during the week (i work first shift) neither one of us feels that even a home time of 9 is a big deal.
3. Physically it WILL take a toll. He is fit, works out all the time, but the first month he was like old man river getting out of bed in the morning. You literally RUN all day long.
4. There is a lot of stress to make sure everything is perfect, and there seems to be very little room for error, doesn't matter if you're new and certain things have never been covered yet.
But, all that being said, he really likes his job. He is a people person, he likes to be on the go, likes the variety of driving and busy all day.
