UPS Driver
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William Rosario
Interviewed by Paul Vee
I am a "Full-Time Package Car Driver" for UPS. I've been doing it for ten
years. I started because I was a student and I needed a part-time job. I went
for an interview for what I thought was "Part-Time Loaders." When I got there
they said it was for drivers. So I filled out the application, and they called
me back three days later.
It was the first real job ever in my life and, at the beginning, it was pretty
overwhelming. UPS is heavily fortified. You've got to show a pass to get in the
gate. So like, every day, you go in, you change into your uniform in the locker
room, and then you go downstairs for the morning meeting. Every day there's a
meeting in the morning to tell you what you did wrong the day before. Every day.
They get you all together in a group, all the drivers and everybody, and then
they yank you in the office and yell at you personally for about five minutes.
It's like roll call, like, you know, a police station show. Except they just
yell at you. At UPS, you're never told what you did well.
They're like a military organization. They check you over for appearance,
everything. They make sure your shoes shine, your tee shirts can only be white
or brown--they can't be black, your socks have to be brown or black. Your shoes
have to be polished.
Then, after the meeting, you go to your truck, which is already loaded and full
of gas. All you do is drive and deliver. You have a route set up for you every
day, with a specific number of delivery and pick-up accounts you do. And you
have to deliver every single package. If you bring one package back without
attempting to deliver it, they can fire you right there.
But, the most important thing is: "Don't spill your coffee." You know, don't
spill coffee in the truck. The most important thing is to not spill hot coffee
when you're driving. Forget the UPS rules, just don't spill coffee. That is the
unwritten number one law of driving a truck.
And you know, the service you give people all depends on how they tip you at
Christmas. People who don't tip you at Christmas, you **** them. They get
dropped off late in the day and picked up early. Or, you drop 'em off and pick
'em up at the same time. The people who have coffee and doughnuts, and the
people who have cute women working there, you deliver them first.
Zippy Printers are the worst ****ing account in the world. They're ****. They
gave me a bottle of Asti Spumante for Christmas. These people should give me a
hundred dollars, easy. They're a pain in the ass. They want an early delivery,
they want a late pickup. These people, they pretend they're your friend, but one
problem, they're on the phone, calling in major complaints against you. It's
bull****.
But some people give me great stuff for Christmas. Newland Candy gave me five
bottles of great wine. And then there's a place called All-time Hardware on my
route now. They let you use their phone. I call everybody I know. They have a
television, they have coffee. They have doughnuts and bagels every morning. And
they have good bathrooms. That's what you really learn at UPS: who has a good
bathroom, who has a clean bathroom, and who has a paper, and who has porno for
the bathroom.
You run into a lot of porno in bathrooms, especially in industrial
places--factories and things like that. Cresti and Sons had some of the most
bizarre porno I'd ever seen in my life. Stacks and stacks of it. And the
Desposito Tool Company is a prime stop. Always coffee cakes and doughnuts in the
morning, hot coffee and two stalls, which are both very clean, and on each
toilet, in each stall, at least a foot-high stack of current, good porno. Things
like Leg Show, Gent, Club--good porn--not Playboy. Double-D Cup. [Laughs] And
there's somebody who has a major foot fetish who gets something called
Toe-Sucker Magazine.
Normally, you work around eleven hours a day. Average is around ten hours a day.
The most stops I've ever done in one day was at Christmas, once, like 240, with
a helper. That's 240 separate doors and there's guys who go out on cars at
Christmas with 400 stops and two helpers. When you get a helper, and you're the
driver, you're like the captain of the ship. You're Kurtz. [Laughs] You're
Captain Kirk, and you slave the **** out of your helper, usually. Although I
guess it depends a little bit on how they treat you. If they're pricks, you
slave the **** out of them. I had a helper who was a nice guy. We used to smoke
pot and get coffee every morning. But basically, they're totally dependent upon
you for the day, so if you get somebody who's a prick, you slave 'em. You drop
'em off in, like, a three-block area with a hand-truck and say "I'll pick you
up." Then, you go and get coffee.
Sometimes I start the day and I just realize I can't do it. I can't keep
working. A couple of times, I called 'em, told 'em they had to come get me. I
said I was sick. They loved that. But usually, when I'm out there, I just do
everything I can to not actually work. I mean, on my stops, I watch television,
make telephone calls, flirt with secretaries, call my girlfriend, call my
friends, go shopping, read the newspaper, go swimming in the summer at a motel
pool.
You can get caught at this stuff. I've already had three trials. One was the
"Milk Shake Trial" for getting a milk shake. One was for insubordination. And
one was for wearing a tee shirt. I was wearing a Bob Marley tee shirt, a white
tee shirt, in the summer. Somebody ratted me out for the tee shirt, and we had a
supervisor who didn't like me and this other guy, so he followed us. He was
jealous that we went to a pool every day cause we had great tans, and he was
pissed. So he hid in the parking lot. He didn't even say anything to us. He just
watched us and went back to UPS and filed a report. And then they filed a
complaint with the union.
So I had these trials. They were held on work days, you know, by appointment.
And at the trials there was my Division Manager, my Manager, the Supervisor,
myself and two union representatives. Like Nuremburg. And I had to explain
myself. But I got off every time. I mean, we're Teamsters, and the only thing
they really will fire you for at UPS is stealing packages or being drunk on the
job. Now I've done both of those, but I've never been caught.
And my relationship with my supervisors is generally pretty workable. It's
functional. But you can never trust them because they're company people. And the
managers at UPS are worse. UPS treats their own people--the managers and
supervisors--worse than they even treat their drivers. It's like the theology is
"**** rolls downhill." So you can never trust anyone, and every driver has this
attitude. You know, it's "us against them." Totally.
Some of the other drivers are decent, though. Some aren't. I've met nice guys at
work. I've met decent people. I've had some of them to my house for dinner. And
I love to drive. That's my favorite thing. I live to drive. But do I like the
work? No. There are too many hazards: accidents, sprained ankles, disc problems
in my back, massive wear and tear on your body from carrying all these packages,
stress, anxiety--I've had dreams about this job. Anxiety dreams. And I've never
been robbed, but lots of guys I work with get robbed. The guys who work in
Passaic and stuff like that. And there's auto accidents. And on Halloween, they
throw rocks at the truck. In Passaic, they throw rocks and bottles. In Clifton,
they throw eggs.
I've been chased by dogs. When you're chased, you gotta run back to the truck as
fast as you can. Always run to the truck. And slam the door. I haven't ever been
caught by a dog, but I know somebody else who got attacked and ended up in the
hospital. I've learned a lot about dogs at UPS. Nice dogs, bad dogs.
And it's hot in the summer. You will literally lose five, six pounds in August.
I drop every year. It's physical work. I mean, you could never do this job for
thirty years. There are guys who do it, but they end up with major physical
disability. I'd like to stay another year or two, then I'm leaving. I want to go
back to school and study Buddhism, or psychology, which is really what I like.
Besides, I have a problem with authority figures. I hate wearing a uniform and
dealing with people who are real *******s. I hate having to deal with someone
that you can't stand, five days a week and having to take their ****. You cannot
say a word at UPS. If somebody treats you like **** and calls you any name they
want, says this or that to you, you cannot say a thing cause, in UPS's eyes, the
customer is always right. I hate having to eat crow.
But I've gotten laid because of the job. I deliver to a lot of womens' clothing
stores. Like I used to do a shopping mall on one route. And there's lots and
lots of forty-year-old divorced women, thirty eight and forty--really still cute
and really still hot--really nice, really sweet. I've gone to dinner with them,
I've gone to their house. But you know, no divorcee ever greeted me at the door
in her undies, or anything like that. I always had to set it up for later. And
I've heard plenty of stories about guys having sex on the job, but I think most
of those guys are liars.
