My fellow former UPSers,
I already know that you guys both love and hate and hear this kind of stuff, and I know that I'm gonna get flamed for this post (which I enjoy anyway) but I already resigned my preload position at my hub this morning. I know most of you are going to say "this is just how it is," but the hub is terribly understaffed and completely mismanaged. Preload sorting alone was short more than 20 people today and had a ton of volume. When I walked in the door (at the "official" start time of 3:55am, even though pay starts at 4:30am), the preload ops manager greeted me and introduced me to one of the PT sups working on Saturdays. I asked the sup where he wanted me at and he pointed me out, so I headed over to the belt. I was working two sections of the belt, two people unloading each of the two trucks, by myself. Most others were doing the same. The sup was all the way down at the other end of the belt working it himself (which is in violation of the local contract). I was waiting for him to head over so I could tell him to get someone to cover me because I didn't want to leave everyone else with packages all over the floor while I was busy quitting, so I caught him a few minutes later and told him to find someone to cover me as I was about to walk out in the next few minutes. He basically said "okay no problem" and walked away. About another half hour went by and he walked by again so I told him I gave him fair warning and I was leaving the belt on and walking out. He started freaking out and begged me not to leave. He said "I know it's a lot of volume today and someone should have told you that you were working two trucks that both have a double unload," so obviously I said, "well, actually, you are the one that should have told me that," and he got visibly mad, said he wasn't the sup "over here," (no one was apparently) and called the ops manager over. I told the ops manager (as he himself is helping me sort packages) that the hub is horribly understaffed and that he's not supposed to be having the sups working the belt. He goes "well of course I know this, we're more than 20 people short on the belt today." I said, "that's fine, I'm not 20 people." He begged me to stay and asked if I wanted to go somewhere else in the building (but then said "there's really nothing open anywhere else") and I ended up walking out anyway. As I was walking out at 5:30am a bunch of people who should have been there at 3:30am wanted to show up all of the sudden.
I do feel bad for walking out and I really didn't want to, and I think I would have enjoyed the job otherwise, but I'm not gonna deal with people running a hub like it's a daycare. No wonder UPS in general is losing contracts to *ing FedEx.
