To start this story I am going to jump back to earlier in the week and then to the end of the night on Thursday.
I had hit 161pph (packages scanned and loaded per hour) at some point during week three. For the first few days of this week I was hovering in the upper 150s, but then I dropped on Wednesday and Thursday. I think this is because there were more unloader/sorter pairs working and thus the rate of packages was higher. This slowed me down, because if you don't keep up with the rate the packages come to you then you get a jam. When you have a jam, you need to stop what you are doing and go and fix the jam. This means at least three to five few packages loaded in that hour for every jam.
So, Thursday night my supervisor, Nick, decides to have a second "talk" with me. He gets out my little preseniority workbook and shows me that my speed has been going down. He commends me for not having any misloads, (my streak has actually been going long enough that I will be mentioned in the newsletter now, and no misloads makes UPSers really happy.) but he then got back into being serious. He said that the speed was unacceptable, that most people do better, and a bunch of other stuff. Finally, he said that he wanted me to jump up to the next bracket Friday and hit at least 275pph.
Oh wait, he also said that he wouldn't really have a space for me on his PD (The area that he supervises) if I didn't get up above 300pph by Day 30. (This makes sense, because by Day 30 I am supposed to be able to hold my own, which means that I do my job without causing other people to stop doing thier jobs to come and bail me out. Furthermore, my load averages 1200 packages a night so I'd need to hit around 300pph to handle that on the heavier nights.)
OK, so now I'm back to Friday. I take Nick seriously even though he is typically just a goof-off kind of guy. I decide I'll eat a banana and drink an Amp before work to get me more pumped than I had been lately. Also, I got to sleep in because there were no classes. So, I get to work, I'm pumped. I am holding my own for the first hour... running completely clean. Then, the supervisor directly above Nick, Louis, comes and tells me to get out of the feeder.
I'm confused by this, but I am hyper so I just hop on out. (Louis is a really, really nice guy, but he is also the boss. Something that you wouldn't notice except for the way he is dressed because he is just so chill and nice -- probably how I'll be if/when I run something) Anyway, he tells me that I need to go do the Gainesville load. I have never done any load except Brooksville, and I occasionally helped Carlos in Leesburg, but I would always use his load chart there. So, I tell Louis this in three words and then ask him for a load chart. He hands me one, and off I go...
Now, when I walk into the Gainesville feeder I see Santiago (his last name) in there loading and he is going fast. (By the way, Santiago is the fastest loader in our section and one of the fastest in the building) So, I am a little puzzled and I immediately ask Santiago how Gainesville compared to Brooksville. He tells me that it is easier, but there will be more packages. "How is it easier?" Oh, well, anything with a 326_ _ ZIP code is loaded, and then there are just a few other ZIPs that go too.
Fine, I start loading, but before I even get to that I laugh to myself, because I see what Nate has been complaining about for all this time. IF Nate unloaded feeders coming from Orlando (which is pretty likely, because they'd come from either Orlando, Jacksonville, or maybe another facility in Georgia) then I could see why he complained so much. The feeder was a mess. The walls Santiago builds were definately going to fall when the unloader comes. Santiago was fast, and his poor load quality probably had something to do with it.
This just made me laugh to myself again and again. I was also thinking about how shocked the guys in Gainesville were going to on Monday morning when they saw the truck loaded by the book for a change.
Anyway, I ran the whole night in Gainesville completely clean. No jams or packages piled up too far. Oh, btw, Jams aren't possible at Gainesville because it is at the end of the line and the chute is short. So, I kicked butt. When I was done for the night I had to load over 20 irregs (Irregular packages... usually over 70lbs) into the feeder, but I had help.
So, when we went to get pizza, Nick checked my scanny thing and it said that I had done close to 1,000 packages. Nick did some math and he said that I hit somewhere around 290pph, so he was happy, and I got the odd slice of pizza!
Yea! UPS is fun!
Yup, I remember one time when I the boxes fell and I was actually completely covered up to the arms in boxes; I had to dig my way out. I also remember a couple of times when an irreg had been improperly loaded on top and came crashing down on me: there was one time when one narrowly missed my head. Those feeders were pretty crazy things, in them, injury was innevitable. I'm glad I got out of them when I did.
Posted by: Nate at April 5, 2005 09:17 AMGood job David! Way to work it at UPS. (: Keep up the great work!
Posted by: Joy at April 7, 2005 02:01 PM