I've worked on multiple shipping and loading docks. If you haven't had this type of work experience it would be difficult to understand that the entire line is one big connected system. If just one person stalls their part of the process, the other pieces both upstream and downstream are affected. And believe me, everyone on the line instantly knows who is falling behind and you'll begin to feel the eyes on you immediately. If the issue is not resolved quickly, the entire line might need to stop, which is rule #1 that you don't ever do. Sometimes you just get behind and realizing you need to catch up quickly, 0 fucks are given. If you're stacking and shipping a pallet every couple minutes then you're not going to care about a single case or two being damaged. Is the box torn open because you threw it? Fine, turn it around on the pallet so no one can see the tear - problem solved. Is the supervisor riding you for being too slow? Fine, I'll show them who's slow, because it isn't me - look how fast I can do my job (without caring about what gets broken). Your job isn't to care what happens to these thousands of mystery boxes you're handling each day, it's just to get them out the damn door on time.
The mood issue is real as well and it's less about personal feelings in general and more driven by how you're being treated at work. Any shift in the normal routine can set the mood of the entire warehouse and in return lead people into not caring. It could be announced mandatory overtime or even something as simple as removing something from the break room. Retaliatory action isn't seen as an inconvenience against the customer, it's a middle finger to corporate. You treat us like shit and we're going to make you feel it too, proxied through customer complaints about broken or missing items. Some individuals do go off the rails and it's usually related to some sort of perceived slight against them by the company. A lot of these could have been squashed if the manager didn't throw up their arms and say there was nothing they could do about it; take it up with HR. Most of the time if someone in corporate had just listened to the issue and let the employee get it off their chest, that would have been enough to calm the anger. What many white collar employees in the front office don't realize is how seriously some small and inconsequential issues can matter to blue collar laborers. This could go on and on about blue vs. white collar relations and management practices, but the point is that it's not about the customer so much as it is about internal politics and maintaining the status quo.
I can corroborate most of this. Basically it's a stressful job, with low pay, weird hours, and very high turnover. Some people handle the stress better than others. Generally when people leave, it's because they burn out, or reach some kind of "last straw" moment, or get physically injured (often the back, from lifting improperly and/or too fast). The company doesn't care, they're just using you up and they'll hire a new one when you leave.
"Fragile" and other special instructions printed on the box are kind of insulting if you think about it. On the one hand, I'm a "professional" doing this for a living, so it's not like I need instruction from your I've-never-loaded-a-truck ass. And on the other hand, do I look like I have time to give your precious package special attention and follow your additional instructions for how it should be handled? It will be handled like all the rest. Maybe worse now that you pissed me off.
My pet peeve was the packing. If you've done a proper job of packing, i.e. fulfilling your responsibility to secure your stuff, you quickly find you don't need to proclaim "Fragile" on the outside. But if you don't pack well, and then write "Fragile" on it, you're kind of trying to transfer your responsibilities to me, and deserve a lesson.
This was judgmental young me talking, by the way. It's been a while since I did this. But speaking of judgment I also should mention the ultimate worthlessness of most of what people went to the trouble to ship. I handled a lot of B2B stuff, such as a region's worth of cigarette advertising for all the (insert name of convenience store chain here) in that region. Invariably marked "Fragile."
Just another example of how we all need to consider the lives, emotions, situations, feelings of others before jumping to conclusions. Life is never as simple as it may seem.
That all makes sense, but it doesn't explain why shipping workers would be EXTRA careless with items marked fragile. I would expect equal carelessness with all packages.
I believe it does:
"Retaliatory action isn't seen as an inconvenience against the customer, it's a middle finger to corporate. You treat us like shit and we're going to make you feel it too, proxied through customer complaints about broken or missing items"
As a customer, if my box arrives smashed I am angry.
If my box arrives smashed with a "Fragile" sign printed on it, I feel insulted.
I guess in the second case the complaint is going to be worse and the reputation of the shipping company damaged even more ("They can't even deliver a 'fragile' parcel properly")
I don't think that Atari was a gleam in the founders' eyes when I last worked on a loading dock. Probably the most complicated devices we schlepped were irons or coffee makers. I do remember rough handling of stuff, but it was stuff that would stand it--paper goods or canned soda.
Having said that, I can see how physical exhaustion and stress would lead to careless handling of goods.
Working at a large brown shipping company, I've never seen anyone go out of their way to mistreat packages marked as fragile (or anyone talk about doing it).
That said, it's policy not to treat packages marked 'fragile' differently. Boxes get reused a lot, and a sticker like that has very little correlation with it actually being fragile. (60lb box of bolts? Fragile! 2' by 4' mirror that shatters from a 1 ft drop? Not fragile!)
For bicycles in particular, the issue IMO is that they're typically packed terribly, while being large and awkward enough to be handled with all the other large and heavy (70-150 lbs) stuff.
Damages will occur, it's just a matter of statistical frequency at a scale of 20 million packages per day handled by 100,000+ employees. Frequently, the damage won't even be discovered until delivery, and then there's no easy way to attribute the damage properly. That means aside from particularly egregious stuff where it's obvious you screwed up (say, laying a 55" TV flat and dropping a 30 lb box on it) you have to go way up the management chain to find anyone who cares. At a lower level, easily measured metrics like process rate are far more important.
If everyone in management you ever interacted with only measured your performance by LOC written, how much time would you spend refactoring?
I edited my comment because "gleeful" was misleading. All of them said that the primary reason for the rough treatment of packages was because they're trying to keep up with production and that they're incentives (bonuses) are volume base. It's a demanding job in a very fast paced environment. The people also have their managers coming by to periodically yell at them to "pick up the pace" or other more colorful language.
The guy who said he purposely damages things was burnt out from working there for 5+ years. It brought out a side in him that I didn't know existed honestly. I was pretty shocked when he told me about it. Outside of work, he was extremely chill and fun to be around.
I work as a postman. People don't really send letters any more, so a large and increasing percentage is packages. Many (most?) of my coworkers hate their jobs, and their lives, and are deliberately rough with packages, especially if they look expensive.
"I'm unhappy with my life so I'm going to make other people unhappy too."
How about these people do something with their incredibly valuable short lives other than being miserable? Unless you're in chronic pain of some kind, being alive is a gift. It's a treasure. Every moment is precious.
Just a guess regarding shipping, but a general observation that probably applies there as well: appearing significantly more careful than average will make you seem weak to your peers.
On top of that they would hate you for demonstrating that it could be done better, like being the guy who does not drive n over posted speed limit (n varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but is a positive number almost everywhere). And bosses probably expect speed and care, in that order, but that isn't the main mechanism.
That's not always true. It might seem like it is easier to be careless, but if we're talking about any item over just a couple pounds in weight, you're going to hurt yourself being careless as opposed to being cautious.
There is a monumental difference between throwing 20lb packages all day vs. picking them up and setting them down. Your body will tell you that it's just not sustainable in the long run if you want to live without persistent pain. You can very easily learn this by observing anyone who's done the job for more than a year or two - they might look like they're being lazy but they are really just trying not to hurt themselves. You might throw one or two in anger, but repeatedly throwing packages for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 48 weeks will make you regret it. There is nothing more painful and hopeless on the job than a mechanical injury you feel in every single box you move. You learn to do it without hurting yourself and this almost never involves being careless with the package. The consequences might not come from being reprimanded about broken items, but it will come in the form of injury and pain.
I'd say being "careless" means dropping that 60-80lb package to the floor instead of gingerly doing a squat with it, even 10 of those a day and your back will thank you unless you have impeccable form. "Use existing equipment" - perhaps a familiar phrase, one that protects your joints but not necessarily the packages.
I did not intend it that way. They handle something on the order of thousands of packages per shift. They aren't putting in extra work to be rough with even most of them.
> Every one of them said that they (and all of their coworkers) handle all packages on a scale ranging from rough to purposefully damaging. One guy told me how he targets boxes marked Fragile for extra abuse when he's exhausted/angry/having a bad day.
But it does look like at least some are worth the extra effort to damage?
A bonus based on damage/late customer reports on boxes that passed through the facility is more likely to work than simply increasing base. Put everyone’s (extra) cash on the line and aligned with customer outcomes.
Sort of a tragedy-of-the-commons bonus, then? Individual employees have the power to block bonuses, but not the power to ensure that they are not blocked, under this plan.
More likely a community policing of the commons. It’s not like Joe is secretly taking a package into the men’s room and smashing it. He’s doing it in full view and awareness of his co-workers in all likelihood. “Hey Joe, stop that, you’re killing our bonus!”
Is it envy? “Screw this guy getting his fancy TV that I don’t have.” If not, what?
It seems needlessly cruel. I assume these are good people?