UPS laying off Technical hourly employees

[CBGB]

All you techs should grab your balls and quit that dump. It is a mindless do nothing, know nothing, dead end job. If you have any self respect start looking now. Competition out there is fierce so the sooner you start putting your resume out the sooner you will get something better. Just lie your ass off about what you did because if you tell the truth you'll never get hired.

I don't advocate lying, but TSCer has a point. I left UPS (Because of downsizing) in late February. I applied for over 50 jobs and only got a call on a few. I saw a headhunter and was told that I had good skills, but nothing of use to the market. He said what I did was too generic, and while it showed I had strong basic skills, it offered nothing to a prospective employer -- nothing that a guy from Geek Squad or a 2-year technical school couldn't offer for much, much less than I was willing to accept.

I got a job 5 months after leaving. It pays the same, the benefits are the same. I do have many more opportunities for advancement and learning than I had at UPS.

The bottom line is that you gotta decide to either accept everything and stop complaining or do something about it. It is my observation that all the complaints we had at UPS were accurate -- no training, meaningless IT work, reduction of skills -- no AD administration, ghost workstations and servers, etc. PAS deskilled the union hourly -- canned builds, OPIE, and other automated processes are leaving you guys with nothing but hardware skills.

If you stay, and there is another round of layoffs -- take the buyout and move on before you find yourself going from $20-30 an hour to only 12 - $15 an hour.

I'll go so far to say that if you really like techology, and have no plan for management or driving, but plan to retire as a UPS technician, you are foolish -- for the vast majority of remaining technicians, I don't think this will happen. Many years ago they took clerks downsized from the call centers and DI, and made them OMS. If you don't think they cannot take more downsized clerks and make them technology OMS people to do your very job, you are deluded.

I'm not saying UPS is bad, I'm just saying that you are in a job with no future and giving you no skills at the present.

I just found out that one of the best technicians I have ever met, who worked at UPS until being downsized, is working at Geek Squad -- not by choice. He is working there because even the best that UPS had to offer cannot convince a good paying company that he has half the skills he does.

I know that you don't want to hear this type of crap, but it is true. TSCer, at least, knows I am right.

Good luck to you all.

 

[TSGSurvivor]

I'm a senior tech that survived the cuts but in our district the morale is horrible. PMT, HDFS and missed SLA's are kicking everyones ass, Im just wondering how this will affect the upcoming ERI.

Ours will not be good Im sure...

 

[Rainman1]

I'm a senior tech that survived the cuts but in our district the morale is horrible. PMT, HDFS and missed SLA's are kicking everyones ass, Im just wondering how this will affect the upcoming ERI.

Ours will not be good Im sure...

My bet is that management will not care, not matter how bad it is.

 

[TSCer]

If you dont know already, ERI means nothing. We wrecked our mgt team every year and nothing ever happened. They deserved it and I was glad to do it but in the end it meant absolutley nothing at all. If you want to stick it to your boss just be a major slacker and anything they give you to do just it up. They wont ask you to do it again.

 

[cowscomehome]

I'm a senior tech that survived the cuts but in our district the morale is horrible. PMT, HDFS and missed SLA's are kicking everyones ass, Im just wondering how this will affect the upcoming ERI.

Ours will not be good Im sure...

I like the fact that you still believe in something -- like the value of ERI.

I took the damn thing for over a decade. I remember when it was done on a diskette.

Not one year did we ever lose a bad supervisor, manager, etc. over complaints in the ERI. Not once did they ever offer more training or more money. Not one damn thing we ever wrote-in was ever addressed.

The only thing that ever happened as a result of the ERI is that it became an element on our evaluation --

YEAH, YOU READ IT RIGHT!!! OUR FREAKING MANAGEMENT TEAM GOT UPSET AT OUR ERI SCORE AND PUT THE ERI AS AN ELEMENT ON OUR EVALUATION. In effect, if we gave a good score, we got a good eval -- if not, then not.

One of the techs had to call the 1-800 HR integrity hotline to have this investigated and ultimately removed from our evals.

Stop thinking ERI means anything. ERI to a management person is like SLA to us. It bothers us to miss the mark, but ultimately, our raise will be the same for doing little as it is for the tech who does it all -- about 3.5% -- that's it. Ok, maybe the best tech gets 3.75 and the worst gets 3.25%. For management, it is the same, they get crappy raises, too -- regardless of how poorly or how well they do.

After the first couple of years, management became desensitized to our beating them up.

Lucky thing for us all, TSG does get better with age -- right? I mean, I've given up on my life already, I'm just waiting on retirement day. I'll gripe for the next two decades, but I'll never try to better myself and get a job that I can truly be happy doing, or be excited about.

 

[gotbenies]

Stop it about the eri. ERI never solved anything.

Stop complaining and get your shinebox!

Stop complaining and swap that monitor, boy.



UPS, the public company, will come around soon to get some more of you. At least you got your A+ and N+, that'll get about $13 an hour at geeks on call.

You guys just don't get how ridiculous you sound by defending your worthless UPS tech jobs. Start a union, or give up. Either way, you are going to get screwed.

 

[beentheredonethat]

If you dont know already, ERI means nothing. We wrecked our mgt team every year and nothing ever happened. They deserved it and I was glad to do it but in the end it meant absolutley nothing at all. If you want to stick it to your boss just be a major slacker and anything they give you to do just it up. They wont ask you to do it again.

Good advice, if you intentionally friend things up, sooner or later you'll get canned. We had one guy in the district who screwed things up for years. Eventually he ran into a supv who wouldn't take it, documented the heck out of him, and got him fired. Nothing he could do, since it was so well documented how much he friend'ed it up. I don' think the tech did it on purpose, he was just in over his head, not amount of training fixed it.

 

[take it easy]

Stop it about the eri. ERI never solved anything.

Stop complaining and get your shinebox!

Stop complaining and swap that monitor, boy.



UPS, the public company, will come around soon to get some more of you. At least you got your A+ and N+, that'll get about $13 an hour at geeks on call.

You guys just don't get how ridiculous you sound by defending your worthless UPS tech jobs. Start a union, or give up. Either way, you are going to get screwed.

Take it easy on them. You and I both probably defended the positions at one time. Now that we are on the outside, we see how things really are in the tech world the job seems a lot less technical than it did then. Personally, I would pray I could stay at UPS if I didn't care about my skill level. It would be nice to coast by, swapping hard drives and scanners making $20 per hour. But it won't happen too much longer. Corporate is on to something with the cutbacks and when they see the ship can still stay afloat, they will keep cutting. Same as the driver that busts his ass to make 110 stops and get in on time. What does he get? 111, 112, 113........stops until he is over 9.5 then it's his fault.

 

[TSCer]

Good advice, if you intentionally friend things up, sooner or later you'll get canned. We had one guy in the district who screwed things up for years. Eventually he ran into a supv who wouldn't take it, documented the heck out of him, and got him fired. Nothing he could do, since it was so well documented how much he friend'ed it up. I don' think the tech did it on purpose, he was just in over his head, not amount of training fixed it.

Wow, a slacker who actually got canned, and a sup bright enough to actually pull his head out of his mgr's a*s long enough to see it? All in the same DD too? Rare indeed.

 

[Tivoli gone wrong]

OK so what is the deal with having to "solve" HDFS logs before closing them now? Isn't that the same thing they forced the TSC to do before closing them down? Do they think we are idiots? I'm not helping to create a "solutions database" for my replacements! I just put "fixed the problem" in everytime! ;-)
What is everyone else doing on this one?

 

[feduptsg]

OK so what is the deal with having to "solve" HDFS logs before closing them now? Isn't that the same thing they forced the TSC to do before closing them down? Do they think we are idiots? I'm not helping to create a "solutions database" for my replacements! I just put "fixed the problem" in everytime! ;-)
What is everyone else doing on this one?

I am doing the same thing. "problem solved" or "fixed". They can figure it out for themselves. Another weird thing I have noticed is after months of pouring over our PMT numbers all is suddenly quiet about PMT. I have not gotten any feed back on PMT in 2 and a half weeks. Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[Tivoli gone wrong]

Another weird thing I have noticed is after months of pouring over our PMT numbers all is suddenly quiet about PMT. I have not gotten any feed back on PMT in 2 and a half weeks. Has anyone else noticed this?

YES!
We were just talking about that today!
Not a word about PMT this month???
In fact, I "forgot" to plan at all this week no one has said a thing. We were getting multiple daily emails about PMT until this month. What is up?

Would love to hear from ex-TSC folks if you are out there about what things, in retrospect, took place leading upto the layoffs.

 

[TSG_Lets_Unionize]

I am doing the same thing. "problem solved" or "fixed". They can figure it out for themselves. Another weird thing I have noticed is after months of pouring over our PMT numbers all is suddenly quiet about PMT. I have not gotten any feed back on PMT in 2 and a half weeks. Has anyone else noticed this?

So think that beavis has moved on to other things? Or they just got enough false numbers to twist things the way they want?

1






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[TSG_Lets_Unionize]

I am doing the same thing. "problem solved" or "fixed". They can figure it out for themselves. Another weird thing I have noticed is after months of pouring over our PMT numbers all is suddenly quiet about PMT. I have not gotten any feed back on PMT in 2 and a half weeks. Has anyone else noticed this?

BTW you can also put in just a space

Or my favorite -figure it out yourself- works too!



-

 

[completely done]

Wow! It has been exactly six months since I left.

It took me a while to find a job.

I like my new job.

When I read your posts, I get that old familar burn in the back of my neck -- that stressful feeling that I don't get on my new job.

Six months later, UPS seems simply like a bad job I ditched -- while I was there, like many of you still are, it seemed like the only thing in life. If you are disatisfied and willing to feel a little more discomfort, ditch TSG. There is more to life than UPS and TSG.

No one who has left UPS and TSG has written back stating that it wasn't worth it, or that they didn't get a better gig. I'm the only one that wrote anything remotely negative, and all I stated was that it took me several months to land a job.

If you are over 45 years old, I get staying -- if you are not, I don't understand staying.

Oh, and on PMT, I still like COMPLETED and DONE.

 

[Anonymoose Cow Orker]

BTW you can also put in just a space

Or my favorite -figure it out yourself- works too!

-

How about solutions that can not be performed via NetOp, or lead to a situation that can not be solved via NetOp? Or solutions that offer specific steps that may appear valid to the layman. Or solutions that left the user without a PC. Or solutions that may offend the caller if offered....

"Replaced user."

"Booted from DS Win2K 5.03 floppy, answered YES to prompts."

"Uninstalled Symantec Anti Virus, informed user that Tivoli will automatically reinstall it if they leave the PC powered on for the weekend, and everything will be ready to go on Monday."

"Found insufficient disk space was due to the usual reason, downloaded porn. Confiscated PC and turned it over to security."

"Had user open case, power up the PC and insert and remove a pair of scissors into each slot of the power supply, while watching the screen to see when the problem cleared up."

If you hope to remain employed by UPS, you do not want to do this....

 

[I fix things]

YES!
We were just talking about that today!
Not a word about PMT this month???
In fact, I "forgot" to plan at all this week no one has said a thing. We were getting multiple daily emails about PMT until this month. What is up?

Would love to hear from ex-TSC folks if you are out there about what things, in retrospect, took place leading upto the layoffs.

i can say for my district nothing has changed. they still pound down the pmt numbers and when one of us screws up for one day, believe me we hear about it. Its all about the number. nothing more. We moved away from quality and good relationships with customers to just a number. And I know my management gets pounded all the time for a number. But it looks like every department is that way now.

 

[extscerthankgod]

[/QUOTE]
Would love to hear from ex-TSC folks if you are out there about what things, in retrospect, took place leading upto the layoffs.[/QUOTE]

Lets see, what were the events leading up to our closing. Hmmmmm. Well the job sucked, mgt sucked and we were having a typical I suck you suck meeting. We got onto the subject of unions and we mentioned that we didnt think being in a union was such a bad thing. That meeting ended right then and there. They then promoted a kid who had been there for all of 6 months I believe to specialist and transferred him. Shortly thereafter we were told that the tsc's were closing and we were done in three months. They transferred both the day and the night sups and made the specialists act like sups. Things definitely became lax, no usual little stupid meetings to talk about how you sucked. No supervisor hanging over you but specialists trying to work as directed. We gave them no mercy. Mgt did little things like bug our machines with keystroke proggies to make sure we didnt sabotage anything, basically trying to find a way to bust us. The immediate Mgt acted like they knew nothing and spent as much time behind closed doors as possible. We sat around and speculated and tried to figure out where we fell on the seniority list because they would not tell us. They finally came out with the job list and then explained to us how it was ok to screw us completely on the job selection. How we didn't understand basically and that we were too stupid to get it. Then we got to see the job list for like 10 minutes and picked our job or payoff. Then we heard through our friends in the other districts that they were promoting techs to specialists like crazy. We of course asked mgt about it and they totally denied it. They lied about everything continuously through the process. We spent the next 2 months or so doing as little as possible, letting the phone just ring and ring and ring and ring and well you get it. They threatened a few people with their jobs but in typical fashion did nothing about it. We ran the asylum because they wouldnt even talk to us. We would ask them a bunch of questions and they would say that HR was coming on a certain day and would answer our questions then. HR would show up and act like we were speaking a foreign language. A few of those little meetings got fairly heated. Mgt would let HR take a beating for a while and then would quickly usher them out. We would then go back to hanging up on people and mgt would hide in their offices.

Anyway if they stopped harping on you about PMT Id be looking for a new job. You should be doing it already. Cuts are a comin, down to the bone and then they will add only if they need to. Proven by PMT of course.

Check your brain at the door for that job cause a monkey could do it. You know thats why you stayed there. Grab your balls and get a real job.

 

[cannotread]

The job is incredibly easy. I know you think it is advanced, but it ain't.

After leaving, and consulting with a number of other driven-off exTSG folks, it is our collective educated opinion that the work being done in TSG could be done by high school kids or retired moms.

To think that you won't be replaced by non-union office clerks, or even PT hub clerks is sheer ignorant bliss.

Think about it;

*You don't have rights to add users or delete users. You can only add users to groups using a web-app that links to AD. Otherwords, you don't do any AD.

*You don't do DHCP -- other than IPCONFIG /RELEASE ../RENEW -- I'm talking servers.

*You don't do SMS -- no not the dumb UPS tests, I'm talking the MS product.

*You don't even know what VLans are, or how they work. You don't do routers or switches -- other than screwing them into racks.

*You cannot reboot your servers, or even work on them without going to a webpage making your makers aware.

*You swap eltrons and symbol scanners.

*You are not Dell, Compaq, Cisco, Microsoft, HP, IBM, Gateway, Linux, Unix, Apple, or Citrix certified. You might be A+ and N+ certified. Both are good, but they only open a door to entry level work, they mean nothing else.

*You send your equipment to someone else to troubleshoot and repair.

*You build everything from images.

*You don't fix workstation issues, you just backup and reghost.

*You don't do networking -- even our switches and routers are preconfigured, or have a download used to patch.

*You don't program or develop.

*You use PMT to measure your hours and minutes. What you put in PMT is less important than the requirement to just fill in something.

Seriously, I understand that credit should be given to folks for their years of experience -- experience is something that trumps book-skills and classroom education.

However, given that, it is realistic to think that several experienced Senior Techs could lead a room of custodian/janitorial employees to install PAS in an entire hub. In fact, given a little time and effort, those custodians could unseat the the technicians.

Like the other folks who post about being gone, long gone, from UPS TSG, I agree, it was the best thing that ever happened to me when the downsizing occurred.

 

[hit the nail on the head]

The job is incredibly easy. I know you think it is advanced, but it ain't.

After leaving, and consulting with a number of other driven-off exTSG folks, it is our collective educated opinion that the work being done in TSG could be done by high school kids or retired moms.

To think that you won't be replaced by non-union office clerks, or even PT hub clerks is sheer ignorant bliss.

Think about it;

*You don't have rights to add users or delete users. You can only add users to groups using a web-app that links to AD. Otherwords, you don't do any AD.

*You don't do DHCP -- other than IPCONFIG /RELEASE ../RENEW -- I'm talking servers.

*You don't do SMS -- no not the dumb UPS tests, I'm talking the MS product.

*You don't even know what VLans are, or how they work. You don't do routers or switches -- other than screwing them into racks.

*You cannot reboot your servers, or even work on them without going to a webpage making your makers aware.

*You swap eltrons and symbol scanners.

*You are not Dell, Compaq, Cisco, Microsoft, HP, IBM, Gateway, Linux, Unix, Apple, or Citrix certified. You might be A+ and N+ certified. Both are good, but they only open a door to entry level work, they mean nothing else.

*You send your equipment to someone else to troubleshoot and repair.

*You build everything from images.

*You don't fix workstation issues, you just backup and reghost.

*You don't do networking -- even our switches and routers are preconfigured, or have a download used to patch.

*You don't program or develop.

*You use PMT to measure your hours and minutes. What you put in PMT is less important than the requirement to just fill in something.

Seriously, I understand that credit should be given to folks for their years of experience -- experience is something that trumps book-skills and classroom education.

However, given that, it is realistic to think that several experienced Senior Techs could lead a room of custodian/janitorial employees to install PAS in an entire hub. In fact, given a little time and effort, those custodians could unseat the the technicians.

Like the other folks who post about being gone, long gone, from UPS TSG, I agree, it was the best thing that ever happened to me when the downsizing occurred.

Everything you said is 100% true. And if you don't believe him/her, leave UPS and get a real IT job. You'll be amazed at how much you don't know.