[Amps] A Crying Shame

[noll amidzich]

As a college student in the early 70's, I worked at UPS one summer taking
packages off a conveyor and loading the docked trucks. It was the most
grueling and demanding work I had ever done. (guess I was meant to be a desk
jockey :-)

A continuous loop conveyor partioned by color coded cages housing the
packages would rotate before us. Our assignment was to empty the packages
from our assigned color coded "cages" on to the dock and load the truck (by
address sequence) before the next revolution of  new packages came down the
line.

If our cages weren't cleared when the conveyor passed in front of our
assigned truck the line supervisor gave us hell; if the packages were not
loaded in the truck in the correct address sequence , we caught hell from
the drivers (and I certainly understand why). Delicate handling of the
packages just wasn't a priority. I never heard any complaints about damaging
the contents of a package (but I'm sure that DID happen on occasion). I
always worked up quite a sweat (and was in pretty good physical condition).
It seemed like the harder I worked, the faster the packages came.

 I just wanted those packages out of the cage and in the truck as FAST as
possible, by whatever means it took to do so.

Noll  W9RN
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Tope" <W4EF at dellroy.com>
To: <n4gi at tampabay.rr.com>; <amps at contesting.com>
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 12:33 AM
Subject: Re: [Amps] A Crying Shame


> I dunno about FEDEX, but I had a room mate in college
> who worked part time unloading trucks for UPS. At that
> time (and I assume it's still the case) they were under
> tremendous pressure to maintain a very high unloading
> "rate" (boxes/hour) at the hub where he worked. Even
> in the dead of winter he would come home from work
> soaked from head to foot in his own sweat.
>
> At the rate they were going (probably in the many
> hundreds of packages/hour), I can't imagine that they
> had time to read warning labels. I think they only thing
> they looked for were red and blue label boxes which
> got special treatment in terms of being taken to the
> "head of the line" for sake of processing speed, but
> not necessarily more careful physical handling.
> Otherwise, I think they just grabbed stuff and threw it
> onto the conveyor belt as fast as they could go
> (no other way to make quota).
>
> The best thing to do is to pack everything under
> the assumption that at the very least, someone is
> going to pick it up and throw it 3 or 4 feet onto a
> conveyor belt with some random orientation
> relative to the "this side up" label.
>
> 73 de Mike, W4EF...............
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <n4gi at tampabay.rr.com>
> To: <amps at contesting.com>
> Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 6:53 AM
> Subject: Re: [Amps] A Crying Shame
>
>
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: ka1xo at juno.com
> >
> > > Twelve "Fragile" stickers. Arrows. Big
> > > letters: "Do Not Drop: Glass."
> >
> >
> > Note that a bored min. wage box handler has ZERO reason to treat a
> "fragile" package any different than a "non-fragile" one.  Marking your
> delicate ham goodies is naïve and only an invitation to the chimp to keep
> himself entertained....
> >
> > I received a linear amplifier via UPS last year.  The shipper of the
unit
> was nice enough to mark "this side up" on the top....  After a good
chuckle,
> I opened the box, got out my tools and started re-assembling the mess.
I'm
> still finding disconnected things inside the sucker several months later.
> >
> > 73,
> > Blake N4GI
>
>
>
>
>
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