How far in the hierarchy does the incompetence spread?

[BigFatRat]

Dear fellow trollers and forum addicts,

I got a new update; my package has been rescheduled for the 29th. That's 8 days late. Admirable! This ETA makes me feel warm and fuzzy again!

The driveway is shoveled out, the Christmas lights are jolly alight and I'll be waiting for the driver with warm coffee, tea, or decafeinated drinks, whatever's kosher. I realize I am just a humble paying customer who has no right to bitch, moan, or otherwise complain (how horrible!) on a forum owned by UPS employees who risk their lives in the line of duty every day. Amen!

 

[Mike Hawk]

No disrespect for anyone, but this guy is partially right, UPS screwed up this time really bad. Yes the weather is out of our control, but bad weather is no excuse for incompetence in dealing with it.
UPS could have ran weekend sorts to catch up on backed up volume, but that would have cost them double time on Sunday, didn't happen.
At my center our air has been late every day, usually around 9:30, it doesn't get dispatched till the next day and gets scanned as EC even though it could have been shuttled like any other day, they just don't have the man power because they short staffed themselves.
Management put any package they could that didn't get delivered in the EC trailers, late air sometimes, whole routes other times, left in building, anything that didn't make service, total lack of honesty there.
If they were more honest about what they locked in the trailers there might be only 2-3 instead of 5 trailers, which could have been sorted through to make Xmas gifts available for pickup before Xmas, but no they are sealed until next week.
12 hour curfew for all employees means insiders can't go out as helpers so drivers with sick helpers or simply not enough helpers are not delivering as much as they can(with a helper).
Curfews on PT supes means the local sort can't finish their sort so the preload does, now the preload finishes an hour after the driver start time, an hour less stops delivered.
The PT supes force me to brickload the heaviest resi truck with 550 stops and 800+ pieces because they are trying to limit the number of trailers they roll, but none of the drivers will finish anyways so adding work just means more send agains. Now this guy will deliver 200 stops digging through his truck all day rather than 300 if he wasn't brickloaded and could move around in his truck.

I could go on and on but you all get the point, UPS management didn't start this mess, but they made it much bigger than it needed to be.

 

[UnconTROLLed]

To BigFatRat:

The bottom line reading some of this thread: most of the people you talk to here are not the ones that think freely. We are assigned a job, or bid on it, and do it the best we can. There are some exceptions of course.

What about the cleanup crews, national guard, or whatever is necessary to get the streets cleaned and safe so UPS guys can get packages out? This is a very simple question that probably has an equally easy answer. I am not 100% sure the particulars of your region, though, so I will not assume this is the big issue or not.

Here in the northeast we had 2 feet of snow and one crippling ice storm in a week and a half but still manage for the most part to move on and get packages delivered. I would assume (outside of the Cascades and other mountainous terrain) that your region is less prepared for frequent significant winter storms and the impacts, overall.

 

[brownrodster]

UPS could have ran weekend sorts to catch up on backed up volume, but that would have cost them double time on Sunday, didn't happen.

At my center our air has been late every day, usually around 9:30, it doesn't get dispatched till the next day and gets scanned as EC even though it could have been shuttled like any other day,
.

Can't run weekend sorts if the drivers are out of hours. WE legally can't go over 60 hours. That gives me a couple hours I can work on the weekend without going over 60.

Shuttling out late air was a huge fiasco in my center. First of all they had thousands of late air everyday and couldn't fit them all in the shuttle trucks. Second of all the drivers went way out of their way and wasted much time to meet the shuttle trucks only to pick up a sh**load of packages they wouldn't even have time to deliver.

 

[BigFatRat]

What about the cleanup crews, national guard, or whatever is necessary to get the streets cleaned and safe so UPS guys can get packages out? This is a very simple question that probably has an equally easy answer. I am not 100% sure the particulars of your region, though, so I will not assume this is the big issue or not.

This is true, for the first two days of the snow storm the plows were nowhere to be seen. Seattle is chronically unprepared and every time a few snowflakes hit the road the whole shebang shuts down and no one goes to work. The city caught up on Monday and by Tuesday things started to look decent. You people in the northeast live with this every winter and you seem more prepared. We're lightweights around these parts...

 

[Mike Hawk]

Can't run weekend sorts if the drivers are out of hours. WE legally can't go over 60 hours. That gives me a couple hours I can work on the weekend without going over 60.

Shuttling out late air was a huge fiasco in my center. First of all they had thousands of late air everyday and couldn't fit them all in the shuttle trucks. Second of all the drivers went way out of their way and wasted much time to meet the shuttle trucks only to pick up a sh**load of packages they wouldn't even have time to deliver.

With Xmas last week and New Years this week there would have been enough spare DOT hours for full Sundays.

Yes not all of it can be delivered, but we get about 1 P1000 bricked with air each day during peak, with the close drivers coming back to grab their own air and meet neighboring routes, and air drivers hitting up the further areas it would be possible to get what is deliverable out to the drivers, after all shouldn't premium air have some priority?

 

[brownrodster]

With Xmas last week and New Years this week there would have been enough spare DOT hours for full Sundays.

Yes not all of it can be delivered, but we get about 1 P1000 bricked with air each day during peak, with the close drivers coming back to grab their own air and meet neighboring routes, and air drivers hitting up the further areas it would be possible to get what is deliverable out to the drivers, after all shouldn't premium air have some priority?

No, the priority goes to getting the most packages delivered in the least amount of time. The problem is more and more packages building up everyday. Spending a few hours to deliver a handful of air adds to the problem. We have a small timeframe to try to get caught up before more new volume arrives.

 

[Mike Hawk]

Getting the air on time is not the issue, I think it should be attempted though. This time of the year air commit times are out the window anyways, but I think air that comes in late should be shuttles tot he driver so he can attempt what he can in trace, most of the air is resi stuff on near Xmas time anyhow so they will be able to nab it on the back half of the route. Six bucks for ground starting and thirty bucks for air, if you pay five times as much I think there should be a little urgency in getting your package delivered on the right day, if not at the right time.

 

[longlunchguy]

BFR, I want to admit, first of all, that I didn't read the entire 109 responses to your post. However, on the first page I sirmised that you're upset about our failure to deliver your package as promised. I apologize to you on behalf of United Parcel Service. The reasons your package was delayed were documented by the 30th post. I hope you have reason to avail yourself to ous services in the future, and I know we will do our best to accomodate you. Once again, on behalf of the entire organization, I apologize for not delivering your package at the time and date promised.

 

[longlunchguy]

Is that better?

 

[dannyboy]

Dear warm and fuzzy

What day did you think it would be rescheduled to. The 28th? It just happens that the 29th is the first working day of the week.

Now, as a reality check to your warm and fuzzy, when monday rolls around, if UPS can get to your delivery, they will. If not, late monday night, it will be rescheduled for the 30th. And then guess what? If they can not get to your delivery then, you will get rescheduled again and again.

BTW, I am sure that the reason the UPS man has not delivered you is because your driveway is not cleared off. Now that you spent all that time cleaning it, there should not be any reason at all for you not to get your package...........

Schmuck. Still warm and fuzzy?

d

 

[New Englander]

Guys...he came here and vented. Good for him. Now leave the TROLL alone and he will not grow.

Simple concept but hard to do.....try it though.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Shame on me for taking the night off from BC and going to dinner and a movie. I missed all of this and have just now spent this morning getting caught up.

A foot of snow here is merely a nuisance while a foot of snow in an area with an annual snowfall (according to Wikipedia) of 13 inches can be crippling. An objective view of this would lead to the conclusion that much could have been done on both sides to alleviate this situation. UPS could have added sorts on both Sundays and hired additional helpers, rented additonal vehicles and/or brought in workers/vehicles from neighboring unaffected centers. The city of Seattle shares part of the blame with their inability to deal with the aftermath of a snowstorm. Opening up the customer counter for customers to P/U their pkgs would be a logistical nightmare which could have the potential to escalate in to a situation none of us wish to imagine.

Patience and perserverance are what will get our co-workers in Seattlle and the surrounding areas through what Sober described as an "unmitigated disaster". Be safe first and foremost and best of luck to you all.

 

[wornoutupser]

I had to "google" that one ;-)

You can keep my package for a while, it's in good company. At least it will have a good time among 50,000 of his kind.

I'm tempted to magnify this little suburban weather incident to national scale. Philosophically speaking, no UPS involved. Remember after Catrina, fingers were pointed left and right. But while the magnitude of the damage could not have been easily predicted, thinking in retrospect, the subsequent catastrophe situation could have been much better managed. Police had fled, trucks with aid were stuck, fema pretended not to have known how bad New Orleans really was, not enough buses were sent to evacuate, and so on. Certainly a lot of people in positions of power blamed their incompetence on the "act of God". Is anybody learning anything from past events? We are the nation with the most resources at our disposal, yet out vital systems stumble and crash every time the weather gets a bit frisky. Since I'm in a doomsday mood, it makes me think that "The Day After Tomorrow", that catastrophe flick with Dennis Quaid, is actually an example of the good weather-crisis management...

Oh Mr. Rat,

You really stepped on my toes with this post.

I drove Florida in the area that all three hurricanes hit a few years back and let me tell you a few things.

1) People with common sense PREPARE fo storms and SHOULD NOT expect the feds to come get them.

2) I see you as nothing but a troll that should go away. Perhaps you are the president of Fed Ex as well?

3) Hurricane Charlire took my roof off of my house that Friday night as well as severely hurting the homes of most of the drivers in my center. Despite this, almost every one of us WERE DELIVERING the following Monday while we had to chain saw our way in to most locations. UPS DID THE JOB and we STILL hd to go home at the end of the day and try to work on our own homes and our neighbors homes. I was personally without power for 9 days after Charlie but I went to work every day to service my customers.

4) As far as I am concerned with my 20 plus years at UPS, you can go cry in a corner!

 

[pickup]

After my own thorough and meticulous investigation, I discovered that numerous times, his package was put on the appropriate package car only to return with the same car every night. Delivery driver wrote on package "Where's this place called Lonely Street?"

Apologies to Andy Williams and any members who are too young to remember his song.

 

[brownrodster]

A foot of snow here is merely a nuisance while a foot of snow in an area with an annual snowfall (according to Wikipedia) of 13 inches can be crippling.

UPS could have added sorts on both Sundays and hired additional helpers, rented additonal vehicles and/or brought in workers/vehicles from neighboring unaffected centers.

.

Actually we got several feet of snow in 11 days while we usually get 1-3 inches per year.

How do you hire enough helpers 1 week before christmas??? It is challenging enough to find people willing to do this job and keep them.

Every center within hundreds of miles is affected. all of Washington is experiencing this. And much of oregon is.

 

[Re-Raise]

As you can probably tell I am proud of the company I work for and the people I work with. UPS does have the "flaw" of running their business on a very tight schedule.

We don't have extra employees in the wings , or extra time allowed in the flow of packages to adapt to some weather situations. If we were less efficient on a daily basis under normal situations people wouldn't be as likely to notice when we fall behind.

For example, I have no idea when a letter I mail will reach its destination. Also if I call in an order to JcPenny the say you can expect delivery in 3 to 5 weeks. No one thinks twice about this.

We set the bar so high under normal conditions people freak out when we can't fly our trucks through the sky to get them their pakages on time, even when they can't get out of their driveways.

 

[BrownBlue]

FYI, BigFatRat, I'm up in NW WA, over the course of the weeks worth of snow, we have been able to deliver about 85% of our volume each day, but we are still more than one whole days worth of volume behind as of now. But we still get in coming volume every day on top of that. Yes UPS understaffed itself because of slow economy, but you really have to be a grinch to expect everything on time in this hilly area when it snows and freezes. And as far as the competition, Fedex express up here has been completely shut down for half the week, and only in town deliveries and pick ups the rest. Fedex Ground, in our area, large hub, has just started to deliver again at any capacity on 12/26. It really sucks when you bust your balls all day and night in dangerous conditions, and some a-bot whines that they didn't get their package. Chill out man, we are trying. I'm also really tired of getting stuck when I'm delivering just to avoid comments from people like you. People plow or shovel you driveways if they are more than a 100 feet long!

 

[tieguy]

No disrespect for anyone, but this guy is partially right, UPS screwed up this time really bad. Yes the weather is out of our control, but bad weather is no excuse for incompetence in dealing with it.
UPS could have ran weekend sorts to catch up on backed up volume, but that would have cost them double time on Sunday, didn't happen.

if your employees are buried in snow and not coming to work during the work week then they won't show on the weekends either. Other problem would be your drivers can't go out since they are probably out of hours. Run them on sunday and they might be out or close to out by friday.
If the roads are clean then working weekends is a good idea if the most of your secondary roads are still covered then working weekends would be a waste.

 

[Re-Raise]

I have a question. The term troll is used here a lot and I know it refers to trolling in fishing where you drag a line slowly to see what bites.

What would someone gain by making up a story just to elicit responses? Wouldn't they just be wasting their own time?

There is no reward on this or any other site for having people respond to your posts is there?

I know that clown BBAG used to just make up stories and see who answererd. Is it really just boredom on their part or a complete lack of a real life.