People Never Wonder how Hard Someone Busts

People never wonder how hard someone busts their butt in order for them to receive their packages safe and secure. They do not know the process which allows them to receive their belated birthday gifts, Nike shoes, and their laptop chargers. They do not know the hardship people face day and night, but I know. Don’t worry I will enlighten you about all of it. I was just a young whippersnapper when I enter the midnight shift at FedEx ground and I was totally naive about the working class world.

I thought I was just going to go in 4 hours and move a few boxes here and there. It was going to be a punch in punch out job. Then you get paid by the weekend. Boy was I a dumb*** for think work anything less than what it is.

So when I started at FedEx they explain to what were the expectations of the job. I would work from Monday through Friday midnight schedule. Every day I was expected to load and scan for 2-3 doors and each door contain a trailer. Each door was going to different destination like: Tulsan, Texas, Portland, and so on. Each trailer had a shoot (a long metal slide) that packages would come down from the conveyor belt and into the trailer. They would come in and land on the rollers which were installed in the trailer. So once the package would come down, it was my job to scan each package and load them on to the trailer without getting backed up. There was two part of loading a trailer. I had to load the belly which was the part of the trailer with flaps underneath four feet down and I would need to fit as many packages as I could. I would also have to keep adjusting the flow of the package coming down because when the boxes would come down they would scatter everywhere. It was also my job to ensure that boxes keeping coming down in my direction. After I finished loading the belly I would close each flap one by one. Once I did all 24 of them I would close them all and start building walls out of boxes at the beginning of the trailer. So the hardest part of the job was trying to be a Tetris wizard and try to load all these different size boxes into a perfect wall. Each had a different shape, size and weight. It would be a pain trying to organize them because some of the boxes would be really small but heavy and others irregular size that needed to be angled differently. My walls could not have any gaps between them. The main requirements for FedEx where to safely load and scan every box I came in contact with a minimum of 350 boxes an hour. So by the ended of the four hours I would load 1000-1200 boxes a day and could only miss scan 2 percent of my load. The most annoying part to do was walking back and forth making sure my boxes came down.

After a while of making so many mistake at the job, it began to come to me easier and I got used to it. However, the one things I could not get used to working at FedEx was the working condition atmosphere. I have work every different shift at FedEx and each one have their bad conditions. My first shift at FedEx was the midnight. My biggest issue working the graveyard shift beside heaviest load in all the shift, the trailer is freezing that you see your own breath in the winter or people call out the most was the time. When I would go in every one in my family would go to sleep and it affect me mentally seeing my family going to sleep and I would be saying “Bye I’m going to work.” Secretly thinking Oh my god I just as sleepy as them, Once I got home to sleep I could not go to sleep because my body would not let me sleep with sunlight. Then I would have school and then work again. I would only receive 2-3 hours a sleep a day. I could not function and my life was terrible. After 7 months in midnight shift I switch to day sort and it was not as bad. However, there was one condition in the day that would bother me was the heat. I would be in a trailer without insulation for 4 to 5 hours and it would be 90-100 degrees outside. Every time I would lean on the trailer, it would burn me. The only things that kept you cool were shorts, water, and a little fan that was in a 30 feet trailer that you could not feel unless you were 5 feet away. No matter how much I got use to the workload, I would always be dealing with those conditions.

Although, in FedEx I would not have to deal with customer so that was pretty cool. However, we did have to deal with managers. Managers at FedEx were above average. Things were good at FedEx if you had a great manager. Someone who was more of a leader than a tyrant. Every manager at FedEx was once a package handler themselves and would know the struggle, but manager were always switch every few months. There were times I got a manager who forgot how it feels to be a loader and were just terrible. They did not know what they were doing and wonder why their number weren’t so hot. However, there were times I got managers who were amazing harder working people. Who remember your pain and would mentally and physically help you at your time of need. Those were the managers that I was proud to work for and I work hard for.

Aside from the cool managers at FedEx, there was a lot of interesting people at FedEx. There were people who would take their job serious and load every package as fast and safely as possible. Who were hard working people and were praise for it. And then there were people who kick boxes and threw stuff around. It’s not that they were bad works, they just didn’t care. I was the kind a person who was serious about his job but once in a while would not care one day. I would not kick or damage though. The people a FedEx had character, each one had their own story. They were more than mere package handler and all had lives outside of their work. My trainer was an artist who did painting on side of his job. I am not an artist but his work were pretty good. There was other college student as well who were studying and going to school after work. They knew the struggle of a long work shift and still having to write a 5 page essay by tomorrow because you procrastinate nights before. There were people who were working to pass the time because they did not know what they wanted to do with their life. Which was fine and they taught me a lot throughout my time. Taught me about life experience, things I did not know and seconded experiences. Mostly everyone would help each other out because we were all a team.
My time at FedEx was an experience that I would not forget for years to come. It taught me the value of hard work and helped me build character. The roots that I build at FedEx are still a part of my current work ethics today.

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