I have never seen a more disrespectful and arrogant group of people other than IE. Now I'm relatively young myself (mid twenties)and am a college grad using UPS for health care and to go back to school, but I am not presumptuous or ignorant like these guys seem to be. I know I don't know all there is to know about UPS and don't claim to or act like I do, but I bet I know a whole lot more about real world hub operations than these jokers.
Today we were getting nailed at the end of the day and we're all struggling to get all the work on the trucks and low and behold the IE guys decide to observe and critique today. Our Metro Division Manager and Preload Manager were patrolling the line too giving the whole atmosphere a tense feeling (well not me so much as I'm used to it). We were wondering what the deal was. Then IE starts telling someone they need to clean up their area. My response? DUH. Did you think he was just going to leave it there? Then had the nerve to tell me I should be arranging "this" truck in stop for stop order or PAS doesn't work. My response was well what about the other ones? why is this one special? How about you try dispatching the shelves semi-evenly so that is even remotely possible and I'll worry about it. However, when the 5000 section has enough packages to fill half a truck...that becomes difficult. Or how about placing a section that is on the shelves and needs to be (and always used to be) a bulk stop in a bulk position seeing as there is an open one (I normally put it there, but when I'm out...the driver gets one messy truck) I know how PAS "works" (or doesn't in this instance) thanks. He then asked if I voiced these concerns before? I said I had been since PAS started and what has changed? absolutely nothing. I haven't lately because I had been doing it since October and nothing happened. In the "on paper" world that most of those IE guys know, they don't get why certain things happen. Like missloads or stacking. Missloads are inevitable at some point so long as human beings are sorting and loading the cars, DEAL WITH IT. The PAL system itself is also dependent on human beings to work (whether it be the SPAs or DCAP) and therefore is also susceptible to errors. Depending on the preloaders to catch all the random faults of this system is asinine. Then lynching the line supe when we don't catch all of them is equally foolish. Its almost as if they think we make mistakes on purpose.
When our we get there we're behind already as our cages are already charged, unlike the belt to car mini-center we have in addition to the two boxlines known as the MDC. It used to be the primary started when we did, so there was no calm before the storm to empty the cages before the bulk of our work gets there, I believe at least that has changed. The MDC was the first area to get PAS and it worked decently there, but less so when they brought it to the boxlines. There could be any number of reasons why (maybe even the differences in methods I cited, but I don't really know). So if you're getting slammed by one stop, in order to keep up and get out and off the clock when you want us too, yes stacking is necessary at times.
From what I saw we never had this many service issues on the old system and we even had perfect service day challenges and could meet them (the reward was coffee and donuts which is usually much appreciated). Perfect service now is almost a pipe dream...or at least in PAS' current form. It is easier to learn, I am NOT disputing that. However in efficiency and accuracy....its just not there yet.
Its just sad that between all of us (drivers, preloaders, management) I know we worked together we could undoubtedly get this to work better, but they don't want to hear it, they're convinced nothing is wrong and that we're the sole reason it isn't working....funny why would a hub full of decent hardworking preloaders just up and decide to start "sucking" on purpose? Why did this also start when our hub went live on PAS? Coincidence?
