I was hired in the end of September before peak, thinking that I was not a 'peak' driver. I was given a 'bulk' route that was 100% business customers in an extremely high traffic, congested area. I was consistently 2-3 hours over scratch depending on the day, and this was AFTER I knew what I was doing. I was told by my immediate supervisors not to worry because the route is completely 'Un scratchable'. During my ride alongs, I was told that I was smooth, and I was doing what I was supposed to do, and again, this route isn't scratchable. Fellow drivers would regularly tell me that they would never in a million years want that route because of how labor intensive it was. Not that it was a requirement, but I wasn't given a driver helper during peak, while other drivers with easy Resi did. There were several times I would be on a busy street struggling with my hand truck loaded with literally 500 pounds of packages for a single stop and I'd see across the way another big brown truck stop and a driver AND a helper would jump out, each carrying 1 small package apiece for a quick delivery - back in the truck and gone before I even was able to unload my first hand truck. Ahhhh - makes the blood boil, but I digress. I voiced my concern, and was told not to worry about it. Right at the end of December, my supervisors started adding residential to my route. As luck would have it, it was all 'slow' residential - meaning lots of apartments that had no access codes, requiring you had to ring individual bells and wait to be buzzed in, etc. My days just got longer, and if I fell behind, there was no catching up - there wasn't anything 'fast' that could help you out - you just fell more and more behind. Each day they would make sweeping changes to my route, trying to figure out what they could do - which of course made it difficult to get any kind of rhythm. It wasn't until the beginning of the 2nd week of January that they figured out how to restructure my route to be 'scratchable' - they essentially removed just over 50% of my bulk stops, and added a boat load of really really fast resi (still keeping those slow ones). I ran this route twice. The first time, was 2 hours over scratch, the second time was just under an hour over scratch. I was confident I could scratch this route, as at this point the remaining hour could have been shaved simply by applying a better understanding of time of day traffic patterns and knowing by what time to be out of specific areas, off of specific streets etc. At the beginning of my 3rd day on this route, the axe fell - I was told I was being let go because of my numbers. I was told that it was the Division Manager's decision, and my supervisors had explained to him that my numbers blew because I was on an Un scratchable route since my hiring. I asked about my hiring status as a full time driver, and was told (news to me) that you are considered seasonal if you don't finish your 30 day qualification before peak starts. It turns out I was just a few working days shy of qualification by the official beginning of peak. Ya, they probably could have mentioned that when I started, but water under the bridge. It's worth noting that during this entire time, not a single person EVER mentioned a requirement for me to scratch on this route. In my conversations with my peers, near the end they were all stressing - talking about how management had talked to them about having to scratch by 'x' date or having one more week to scratch or they are gone, etc. Meanwhile - me? Nothing. Nada. No such conversations.
Anyways - Division Manager pulled no punches and stated that he would have to make exceptions for everyone if he made an exception for me. Regardless of the route I was given. Sounds lame because it is, but ya, obviously they can say/do whatever they want because ultimately I'm a nothing. A peon. I wish I had known more going into this. I would have been extremely vocal from the start that they need to give me a route that is scratchable. Pisses me off being treated me like a mule, and my 'get the work done regardless' mentality taken advantage of, and then being kicked to the curb with the 'try again in March' response, knowing full well that the several full time driver positions/routes opening up soon (just in time for me to be able to successfully bid on due to the complete lack of seniority in the entire building), will be long filled by 19-20 year olds who were hired after me and had skate routes and driver helpers during peak. It's absolutely mind numbing. I come from a career background where as a manager, your JOB is to protect those below you - not screw them over, so it's a bit of a change to so callously play with people's lives like this. And no, I wasn't the only one cut, but it's even more frustrating that they now don't even have enough people to run the routes they have effectively - now I hear that they have local managers running pieces of routes to cover, and the remaining drivers, depending on the route, can't come close to scratching because they have the increased load of the drivers who were cut. To say that I'm disillusioned is an understatement. Hard for me to work for a place where a spreadsheet commando can make such decisions, regardless of the reality of the situation, or what local management says on the matter.
