FedEx Ground's Au Revoir

It's been many weeks since I last updated this blog. I am sorry. I fell through the rabbit hole, and other things. Allow me to bring you up to date. In case you are wondering what this blog is about right now, it's about work: finding work, working, work conditions, and so forth. 

My last job was at FedEx Ground, where I was a seasonal package handler. That assignment ended on January 5. I have a couple of things to say about that and FedEx Ground. 


The managers at FedEx Ground San Diego broke their promise of employment through January 11. That had been our initial agreement. FedEx Ground's "Peak Season" was not as "peak-like" as they would have liked it to be, so they decided to take it out on us, by letting us go early. In management's infinite wisdom, this turned out to be a big mistake on their part. The next few days after letting us go, they were slammed with an unexpected surge in packages. 


I learned this through Mara (a fictional name) who is a permanent package handler. She was working at the beginning part of a belt, pushing them down. The personnel down the line were failing to keep up with the packages, so they started falling off the belt and onto the floor. Barker, one of the very poor lead managers, tried to blame the chaos on Mara. Mara stood her ground, clarifying to Barker that if they had not let go of key seasonal workers so early, this would not be happening. She added that if Barker kept harassing her, she would quit. Barker, characteristically, backed off. 


In addition to letting go of us early, San Diego FedEx Ground also paid us with Citibank Pay Cards instead of a good old fashioned paycheck. Apparently, they wanted to be cut of all ties with us the moment we stepped off the dock on January 5 because before we left they issued us Citibank Pay Cards with the full balance of our wages up until that day. 


Pay Cards look like credit cards. You can claim your wages in different ways using them. They come with checks, so you can write a check out to yourself and take it to your bank, or a Wal-Mart. You can take the card into a Citibank branch and withdraw the balance of your funds. You can also use it as a debit card and consume until your wages have been spent. 


I don't like Pay Cards. I didn't like these Pay Cards, specifically, because they were issued by Citibank, one of the financial institutions that trashed the United States economy. So when I saw the card, I thought to myself: Do I want a card from such a crooked organization like Citibank? 


Pay Cards are a way for corporations to try to control your wages by encouraging you to consume, since they work like debit cards. They are also a way to make Citibank money through the fees it can charge you for using it as a debit card. 


None of this would have been a problem for me because I have enough discipline to take an instrument like this and figure out a way to get my wages without giving them one more cent of my hard-earned wages. This is what I would have done if SD FedEx Ground had not FUCKED UP in the issue of these Pay Cards. 


They made two major mistakes in processing them to us workers. One was that the checks that came with the Pay Cards were not processed correctly. These checks in order to be validated at any respectable bank, or a Wal-Mart, needed to be printed with a serial number across it. These checks were not. 


The second mistake they made was that they simply put some checks in the wrong envelopes. I learned about this mistake from my friend and co-worker Thomas. 


He told me that when he got home, management called him and said that they had accidentally given him another worker's card, and vice versa. As if this wasn't bad enough, they then expected for Thomas and the other co-worker to meet on their OWN time to exchange checks! Never mind that these people lived on opposite sides of the county! 


As for me, I overreacted to the fact that my checks were not printed with the necessary serial numbers across them. I thought that I was going to need to spend my way to my wages, rather than being able to claim them and then deposit them in my checking account (where they belonged). In my frustration and anger at FedEx Ground, I overlooked the option of going into a Citibank branch and using my card to withdraw my funds. 


This lapse of knowledge on my part resulted in a permanent schism between myself and a key manager. I called her and told her that they needed to do the Pay Cards RIGHT next time. She didn't take this very well and she never accepted responsibility for the fact that, indeed, they bore some responsibility for the Cards not being issued properly. 


But still, why in the hell did I need go out of my way to get my wages after the hard work that I gave FedEx Ground during their peak season? I had electronic deposit setup by the way. Why did I have to drive an extra ten miles, spend an hour on the phone with Citibank trying to figure out the original problem with my check? In a world where time is money, this driving around and phoning cost me MONEY. 


Did FedEx Ground keep me on the dock one minute more than they needed ME? No, they did not. Fuck FedEx Ground, and while we are on the subject, FUCK its consumers. Yeah! You! Fuck speed, Now, overnight - for patronizing an abusive, union-busting, predatory corporation. 

Nobody Knows Who They Work For

Chronicles from Peak Season at [a major U.S. shipping company] as Package Handler

Boss gave me a three-page printout first thing. A list of the routes and the drivers. Intrigued. Skimmed it. Confused because the routes weren't attributed to single individuals, but instead, generic delivery companies. 

Example: Routes 201 through 253 and 280 through 296: "Dave Miller's San Diego Fast Delivery Services." 

Each day I stage packages on pallets behind the truck of a delivery driver I see and talk with. Have always thought that these hard-working, friendly people owned their routes. Have always known [major U.S. shipping company] delivery drivers are officially independent contractors, but had always believed each one of those friendly men (I have not seen one female driver my entire time there) owned their route. 

I took a double-look at those handouts. Disillusion confirmed. Boss took away the handouts half-hour later. 

Engaged Jose, a driver, in conversation during a lull. 

"Hey, do you own your route?" 

"No, I work for Dave."

Dave is a red-haired, tall man who is always talking to drivers in small huddles. Little did I know why. I had always presumed drivers simply gravitated towards him because was good at solving the types of problems that arise for drivers inside the dock.

"So do you get paid by the hour then?"

"After 120 stops [deliveries], we get paid $1 more per package. I take home about $650 per week. It ain't bad, considering that we're done with work at about 3:30[pm]." And he's there, at the dock, from about 6am. That's a nine and a half-hour day, not including the commute.

"How many guys own their own routes here?" I surmise about 120 drivers during peak season. 

"Oh, very few. Maybe 5." 

All of this makes sense now. Considering that you need to buy, or rent, a delivery truck, and that you need other commodities, like insurance, a person needs a decent sum of seed capital to get started. Many of the drivers are young bucks, many Latinos. Young bucks generally don't have seed capital. 

Later I'm talking with Ron, my buddy and co-worker. We're both stressing it because Chandra has already asked us twice if we want to go home yet at just under two hours of work. We tell her no, knowing that at some point she's just going to stop asking, and look for something to do. 

"Man, what happened to the good ol' days when you were guaranteed a certain number of hours!?" 

Ron is in his late fifties. 

"Those days are long gone! Today is all about "efficiency!" "the bottom line!"

"Man, I've been at jobs where even if things are slow, you just slow down. You don't get asked to leave!"

"And during the peak, we put out. Put out like a good hooker."

"Well even during the course of the day. I mean, just an hour ago, we were hustling and now that it's slow they just want us to leave!?"

"Hey! Did you know that all these drivers are Independent Contractors?" 

"Yeah. It sucks! My wife told me that I should try to get a full-time job as a driver, but she didn't know how things work around here. I told her that the drivers here are IC's. They are not guaranteed anything, they're not guaranteed hours, they have no benefits. If one of them gets hurt, they don't have anything! It's rough!" 

"I knew from the beginning that they were IC's but today I found out that most of these drivers don't even own their own routes."

Ron looked at me interested. Curious. 

"I talked to Jose about it. Man! I thought it was bad enough to do this as an IC,  but to be the employee of an IC? How much must that suck?" 

Almost one hour later (Ron had long ago been "asked to leave") I clocked out and joined a small crowd of other package handlers (many of them in their late late teens and early twenties). 

 Bo, a young, energetic Latino was happy about the size of his paycheck. 

"Yeah, $237 dollars! Too bad this is going to be the last fat paycheck. Next week's gonna be like $100 again."

His co-worker showed him his paycheck which was $250. 

"Dang! You rollin!" exclaimed Bo. 

"But it's because I'm earning $13 per hour." 

"You know, I'm almost at 1000 hours. As soon as I get it I'm applying for benefits. They take it out of your paycheck, a dollar something for dental, two dollars and a bit for health. Dat's good!" said Bo, while dragging on a Marlboro. 

Just as he did this, a driver in glamorous pearl white Lexus sedan with completely tinted windows and designer wheels made its way out of the large [major U.S. shipping company] driveway. 

When Bo took stock of the car he began a sort of celebration of this fellow person's luxury car. The two other young men around him agreed and joined him. They all looked at the speeding car with lustful eyes, likely hoping to one day own one just like it. 

"That's Dave there. Dat man owns trucks, dat man owns contracts, dat man has monay!"

United Statesians

As a matter of fact, Latin Americans the world over take issue with the United States' appropriation of "American" as the generic term to describe themselves. A superficial skimming of Spanish-language newspaper articles about the United States will show a trend toward the shifting of calling citizens of the United States the specific "Unitedstatesian" ("estadunidense" in Spanish) and not the generic "American." The same goes for Unitedstatesians' habit of referring to their country not as "the United States," but as "America."

The fact of the matter is that continental America consists of three major land masses known as South, Central, and North America. As any updated Atlas will verify, the United States is in North America, sharing its space with Canada (to the north) and Mexico (to the South).

Spanish-speakers, by the way, spell "America" with an accent on the "e," forcing a different pronunciation of it as well. In the Spanish utterance of "America," the "e" is extended, thereby liberating a different musicality to the beloved and highly-symbolic word, "America." Because, let's face it, from the beginning when the European explorers ran into this continent, "America" has meant a lot. It's meant opportunity, freedom, equality, and democracy. 

The United States, however, was not the only country to fight for and win freedom from its former colonial oppressors. The United States, shares with all of its neighbors, above and below, a historical process of developing a new national identity, fighting wars to win independence from European colonial powers, and aiming to establish new nations under democratic government.

Some may argue, initially convincingly, that the United States was the first to do so and has been the most successful, and therefore, has the right to claim the symbolic identifier of "American" for its own citizens. Non-Unitedstatesian Americans, though, would beg to differ though, on many points. For starters, after the United States (as the Thirteen Colonies) won independence for Britain, its government rampaged westward taking the land from Native-Americans under the dubious policy and mantra of Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism, respectively. As if this alone were not enough to disqualify any valid claim to "American" as an exclusive descriptor for United States citizens, in 1973 the United States government helped the Chilean military to topple a democratically-elected president, Salvador Allende. 

In the meantime, citizens of Latin America have fought long and hard to establish democratic countries, usually in defiance of United Statesian corporate interests which have always actively undermined these efforts.

So, no. The United States does not win rights to "America" or "American," these words which erstwhile have meant "opportunity, freedom, equality, and democracy" just because it was the first to win independence from Europe, and definitely not only because it's the most powerful country in continental America and in the whole world.

Any right to that, non-United Statesian Americans would argue, would need to be won by actions to enhance opportunity, freedom, equality, and democracy for everybody, and not just citizens of the United States. For example, end the silly embargo against Cuba (another citizen of America) which has done nothing to promote political liberty on the island and has only secured conservative Cuban-American votes in Florida for any pandering political party.

Each citizen of America, from Alaska to Cape Horn, is an American. "American" should not be exclusive to citizens of the United States. United States citizens should call themselves United Statesians, without feeling like their any less "American" for it, and without forgetting that they share the American Dream of opportunity, freedom, equality, and democracy with their northern and southern neighbors. 

And as the most privileged citizens of the world (still, in spite of the recession) are responsible to ensure that others enjoy it, even if they have to challenge their own government.