Workin’ Overtime

 

How about a break from all of the insane things going on in the streets and the hurricane barreling towards the U.S.? I’ll write about something much more relaxing: the ramifications of the deadly pandemic and accompanying lockdowns.

This isn’t a sob story: It’s just a perspective. I know a lot of people have had it way, way worse.

I’ve been a delivery guy for a couple of years. I’ve made it through some peak seasons, where for at least the month of December, we’re all out working until 11:00 or later every night. It’s always a difficult month. It’s physically taxing, seemingly neverending, and psychologically difficult. The road conditions are dangerous, especially when you’re driving a tin can with rear wheel drive. But we know it’s coming. We prepare, mentally, to be at work all hours of the day. And then it peters out in January and things go back to normal.

This was different. We had about a month of normalcy after the last peak before all retail shops closed and everyone discovered the magic of online ordering. There was no mental preparation period and all of a sudden we were completely swamped. For weeks and months on end, all through the summer, guys were going out on the road with enough work to keep them busy until 1:00, 2:00, and sometimes even 5:00 am. We don’t actually stay out that late, both because of common sense and because of DOT regulations. Even absent regulations, there’s a point at which you don’t want to be pulling into anyone’s driveway at night, or creeping up to their door. There were rumors of a driver in the state who took a rifle round through the windshield when he pulled into a driveway at night. Could’ve been an exaggeration, but it’s not crazy to think it happened.

When you have a day and a half or two days’ worth of work on the truck, some of it gets left at the building, and some of it just comes back to the building with you. And more keeps coming in. Sorry, Hellofresh. We’re in okay shape now, but there was a long stretch where we were barely treading water, hopeless to actually catch up. There’s a 60-hour cap on how many hours we can work in a week, but the higher-ups can get exemptions to push it to 70. That’s not crazy, but because we can’t start until the trucks are loaded, we can’t start until 9-10 am. We’re also “contractually obligated” to take a 1-hour lunch each day. So a 60-hour week means getting home around midnight, Monday-Friday.

It was a frustrating time, made more so by customers frequently approaching us demanding to know why they hadn’t gotten their package yet. The explanation that the truck was literally full floor to ceiling front to back did not often calm the type of customer that didn’t intuitively grasp that we were well overcapacity. Articles like this are comical, with one frustrated customer quoted as follows:

My husband and I were talking about it later going, you know we feel, you know it’s bad enough that we’re waiting for something but there’s hundreds of people still waiting for stuff and there’s no rhyme or reason.

Emphasis mine.

I know I’m lucky to have had a job that I could still go to. One complicating factor for a lot of people (not me) is that they have wives and kids at home and, for a while, were supposed to be somehow also teaching their kids 3rd grade when they got home at 11:00-12:00. Some of them were about at their wit’s end. Do you want to open up the schools? Rally the unions.

I should add: for every nasty customer, there were several who left out homemade cookies and Gatorade. It wasn’t too bad, all in all.

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There are 9 comments.

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  1. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I don’t understand why the companies didn’t hire more drivers. And if they can’t find drivers at what they are currently paying them, keep increasing the pay until the applicants show up. Go high enough and they will. The courier services need to find the pay and benefits levels that attract the drivers the company needs. 

    Everyone–the sellers and manufacturers and the customers–needs to accept that prices are going to go up to meet the demand. The sellers will have to either lower their profits to accommodate the higher delivery services or raise their prices and accept fewer sales. 

    Exhausting the delivery crews is the not the most moral or the best business answer.  

    I’m sorry you’ve had such a terrible time these past few months. 

    • #1
  2. Tex929rr Coolidge
    Tex929rr
    @Tex929rr

    MarciN (View Comment):

    I don’t understand why the companies didn’t hire more drivers. And if they can’t find drivers at what they are currently paying them, keep increasing the pay until the applicants show up. Go high enough and they will. The courier services need to find the pay and benefits levels that attract the drivers the company needs.

    Everyone–the sellers and manufacturers and the customers–needs to accept that prices are going to go up to meet the demand. The sellers will have to either lower their profits to accommodate the higher delivery services or raise their prices and accept fewer sales.

    Exhausting the delivery crews is the not the most moral or the best business answer.

    I’m sorry you’ve had such a terrible time these past few months.

    I haven’t worked in private industry for a while, but when I ran a manufacturing plant in the 80’s and 90’s we had to run at a very high rate of overtime (IIRC around 40%) for a sustained time until hiring someone made financial sense.  The high cost of benefits and the direct costs of hiring and training made it very expensive to bring on new staff.  In a business environment like the one described here with such great uncertainty I would be even more reluctant to start staffing up. It’s worth noting that despite the increased volume in package deliveries all the dedicated delivery companies seem to have it figured out now.

    • #2
  3. Al French of Damascus Moderator
    Al French of Damascus
    @AlFrench

    Tex929rr (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    I don’t understand why the companies didn’t hire more drivers. And if they can’t find drivers at what they are currently paying them, keep increasing the pay until the applicants show up. Go high enough and they will. The courier services need to find the pay and benefits levels that attract the drivers the company needs.

    Everyone–the sellers and manufacturers and the customers–needs to accept that prices are going to go up to meet the demand. The sellers will have to either lower their profits to accommodate the higher delivery services or raise their prices and accept fewer sales.

    Exhausting the delivery crews is the not the most moral or the best business answer.

    I’m sorry you’ve had such a terrible time these past few months.

    I haven’t worked in private industry for a while, but when I ran a manufacturing plant in the 80’s and 90’s we had to run at a very high rate of overtime (IIRC around 40%) for a sustained time until hiring someone made financial sense. The high cost of benefits and the direct costs of hiring and training made it very expensive to bring on new staff. In a business environment like the one described here with such great uncertainty I would be even more reluctant to start staffing up. It’s worth noting that despite the increased volume in package deliveries all the dedicated delivery companies seem to have it figured out now.

    The lockdown was supposed to last two weeks.  With the end just over the horizon, hiring didn’t make sense.

    • #3
  4. Al French of Damascus Moderator
    Al French of Damascus
    @AlFrench

    ExcitableBoy: This isn’t a sob story: It’s just a perspective. I know a lot of people have had it way, way worse.

    A perspective that I had not considered.

    But what do you mean by “You want to open up the schools? Rally the unions.”?

    • #4
  5. ExcitableBoy Inactive
    ExcitableBoy
    @ExcitableBoy

    Al French of Damascus (View Comment):

    But what do you mean by “You want to open up the schools? Rally the unions.”?

    I imagine a petition signed by hundreds of essential workers with a message along the lines of: “We showed up to work when you needed us. Now it’s your turn.” Might have some force. At the very least, it would force local leaders to condescend to a bunch of their own voters and make noises about “science”. 

    • #5
  6. ExcitableBoy Inactive
    ExcitableBoy
    @ExcitableBoy

    MarciN (View Comment):
    And if they can’t find drivers at what they are currently paying them, keep increasing the pay until the applicants show up. Go high enough and they will.

    Pay is not the issue. Guys with more seniority make close to six figures, as well as probably the best health insurance in the country. We were short-handed already. It’s hard to find people who are both willing and able to do the job.

    • #6
  7. Charlotte Member
    Charlotte
    @Charlotte

    Thank you for all your hard work! Grocery store guys and delivery guys have been going nonstop for five months. I want all of you to make zillions of dollars.

    • #7
  8. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    Charlotte (View Comment):

    Thank you for all your hard work! Grocery store guys and delivery guys have been going nonstop for five months. I want all of you to make zillions of dollars.

    Not to mention those hard-working forklift operators at grocery distribution centers. I already had over 40 hours in this week then worked 12 hours Friday night/Saturday morning.

    • #8
  9. Charlotte Member
    Charlotte
    @Charlotte

    Randy Weivoda (View Comment):
    hard-working forklift operators at grocery distribution centers

    Them too!!

    • #9
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