[geeks] UPS and shipping morons

[Kurt Huhn]

> > In college I worked graveyard on the loading dock.  You do *not* want to
> > know how your packages are being handled.  No, really - you *DON'T*  ;)
>
> Tell us!  It could be an interesting story.

Well, to begin with - at the time all of the conveyor belts were *at least*
15 yrs old at the time.  There was no laser scanner for reading the bar
code - my guess was the bar code was strictly for appearance.  It was
entirely up to humans to ensure the packages were going on the right
trucks - inbound or outbound.

Because the conveyors were so old, they were undersized for the packages and
jammed regularly.  Mostly at corners and at transitions between belts.  When
a corner conveyor jammed, the package *always* was destroyed - that happened
3 or 4 times per night.

We had a fork in the conveyor that a human was responsible for making sure a
package went through correctly.  They were sorted by zip code, and
occasionally the human would make a mistake.  When that happened the first
loader in line was responsible for removing the incorrectly routed package
from the conveyor.  How was it removed?  Pushed, usually with some force,
off of the conveyor - which stood 3.5 feet high.  For a heavy package, like
a monitor, this was death.  Anywhere from 3 to 4 *dozen* packages met their
fate this way - EACH NIGHT.

On down the line there was a transition and a very steep ramp in the
conveyor to go up to an attached dock.  If the loaders in line before the
transition missed a package, the loaders at the top were responsible for
removing it.  Usually it was removed with a swift kick that sent it tumbling
down the stairs next to the ramped conveyor.  Normally, about 2 dozen boxes
were treated this way *EACH HOUR*!

In a lull in loading (like when a trailer didn't arrive on time) we would
play hockey with a small package using tube packages - or soccer with a
small package.  We usually destroyed 2 packages a week like this.

The most fun way to unload a trailer was to pull out the bottom package and
have an entire wall of boxes fall onto the floor of the trailer.  This made
it easy to put the boxes on the conveyor.

We had rolls of tape around to re-tape the boxes we destroyed.

Kurt