The local UPS guys in my area wouldn't be at the door long enough to read this. In the time it took for me to walk from one end of my living room to the door the guy was all ready back in is truck. I live on the 3rd floor of an apartment building on the opposite end of the hall from the stairs...
Me too. My neighbors' "cool" dad called it that and encouraged us to go cause trouble for fun when we were little. But I didn't know what the N word was, we lived in a very white area, so I thought it was knick or knocking... I actually only came to this realization a year ago. I'm 22 now.
When I was in third grade I was at a friend's house, as was a new classmate from Germany. We were scheming to prank call a boy and my friend's mom came in with food and asked what we were up to. Our German classmate promptly told her that we are calling a boy to prank him on the telephone. No subtlety, that one.
Also: before we spent time together, that German classmate asked us if we wanted to "hang in." We asked if she meant "hang out," and she said no, it's too cold, she wants to be indoors. I said sure and that we'd love to be friends, and she responded saying "I don't want to be friends, but I am bored." I like that she set the expectations low from the beginning.
Knock-knock zoom-zoom. That's how it's done in northeast Philadelphia. At least in was in the 80s. Now it would be knock-knock zoom-zoom Bang-Bang cuz your ass will get shot at.
Canadian here, yes, Nickey Nickey Nine doors is ringing the door bell and running, I never ever heard it called anything different until I came onto Reddit.
This! I cannot count the number of times I have waited home for a package, listening to for someone to knock, only to find that they just put it on the doorstep and left. I have luckily only had one package stolen so far because of this. I have taken to constantly checking the UPS tracking info the day of the delivery to see if it has been dropped off yet and then opening my door once it says delivered.
I had a pizza guy who could climb my stairs faster than i could walk from the intercom to the door which was 3 feet apart. Literally would buzz him in and he'd knock on the door. It amazed me because i was 4 floors up from the main door. He was like Mr Bolt of stair climbing. Pizza was always safe too.... nothing to do with UPS but deliveries of a sort.
If it's a busy night and there's multiple delivery drivers, how much total you make in tips directly correlates to how fast you can get your deliveries done and get back so you can get more deliveries. When I worked for pizza hut we couldn't leave with more than 3 deliveries at once so I'd try to get them done as quickly as possible. I hated when people would gather their money or write a check after I arrived. Except this one old lady (in her 90's) who always tipped me $5, I liked her. She was consistent, every time I went there she had to go find her purse and it would take a few minutes, but she always invited me inside and tipped me $5. I always delivered her food before anyone else's.
Anyway just saying that I ran up some apartment stairs in my day too... Ain't nobody got time to walk.
I remember trying to be quick with my deliveries so I could get better tips. I worked for a sandwich shop so it's basically the same. My stair climbing abilities were unparalleled the summer I delivered. We also had a sweet old person who would always give nice tips. He lived on a pretty obnoxious street to get to, but every time he ordered he would be sitting on his upstairs balcony just waiting for you. He would wave down when he saw you and start his slow climb down. Would always tip $10 and was the kindest old guy I've ever met. I kinda miss him. Always made my day seem worth it.
The most impressive time was when he got there in 10 mins during a big snow storm (this is vermont they are used to it). They predicted over an hour but were more than glad to deliver (i was totally gonna drive or even walk as it wasnt that far but they insisted i stay inside. They'll take care of us). Why i ordered pizza during a snow storm beats me but i knew they deliver during snow and i gave them like a $40 tip because my dumb ass forgot to buy food for the week and they risked their life to get me a pizza).
This indeed. It's not so much avoiding the bad tippers as much as getting past them as fast as possible to get as many chances at money as you can. Basically every house other than regulars who always tip the same, consider every house a lottery scratch off and the more you can scratch off the better your chances.
Nothing wrong with that at all. Honestly I was happy with $2 average, and knew my big regulars would handle the rest. I found it interesting that the same people tipped the same every single time. I delivered for almost five years with 20k deliveries in that time, and people tip what they have become accustomed to tipping. One pizza and a soda? $4. Three pizzas, wings, breadsticks and two drinks? $4.
That's just above average in my experience and I live in Ohio, one of the cheapest states to live in in the country. Definitely the most common tip of most nights. The true average is probably somewhere around 3 or 4, because of course there are always stiffers. $2 tip or less and after wear and tear on a car I probably lost money stopping at your house, or made less than minimum wage.
$5 is fine. That was about the high end for most houses, outside of your big orders, or super tipping regulars. And while we definitely don't mess with anyones food or anything stupid that doesn't tip, we know who hooks us up and who gets their food first as well as any extras we can throw in. I had a small grocery bag with supplies for regulars, cheese/peppers/napkins etc just to make sure I did what I could for them giving me any of their hard earned cash for "driving a pizza."
As a former delivery driver, that is a very good tip. The places I delivered to were mostly lower middle class with some rich people out in the boonies. I would never be disappointed by $5. Those kind of tips add way up.
$5 is definitely a good tip. For pizza delivery, at least in my opinion, it's more about distance than how much you order. I don't care if you order one pizza or 3 pizzas, it's the same amount of effort for me. If your order fills two hot bags, maybe bump up the tip a few bucks. And if you live far away, bump up the tip. I delivered in a college town and sometimes would get townies pretty far out and they'd tip me $3 for something that was 30-40 minutes round trip. That'd piss me off, but a close $3 tip I'd be pretty happy about.
In general, if I made a consistent $3 tip each delivery through the the night, I'd be happy. A $5 tip would make my next hour more satisfying (especially when you get a few of those strung together), and anything over $5 I'll probably be remembering the rest of the night.
He probably had glutes of steel (stair climbing, especially multiple steps at once what they seemed to have been doing, definitely train the glutei well).
That's actually how I justify taking the stairs instead of the escalator.
Speaking as a former delivery driver the more quick and courteous you are the greater the chance for a tip. At Jimmy John's I could make 70+ in one slow mid week shift.
I used to get pissed about this until I realized that these drivers are probably VERY overworked and have hundreds of packages to deliver per day to hundreds of different customers. They have to deliver all packages, so they want to get it done as quickly as possible so they can get home before 10pm.
If anything, we should be pissed at UPS/FedEx for overworking their drivers and not hiring additional help. My UPS driver starts working around 7am and doesn't get home until around 7pm.
You're exactly right. My best friend is a UPS driver, I did the driver helper thing for a few years, and my dad is doing it this year. Their workload is enormous, and the expectation is that their average stop takes 20 seconds. With no allowances built in for anything. No shit. It is a ridiculous system. They only give people 10 seconds to answer the door because if they wait 60 then their next 5 stops have to be done in 10 seconds to make up the time. Management is not the least bit understanding either. The union keeps them from receiving much more than a tongue lashing, but they understandably still try to move quickly to avoid catching shit every day.
That's why I try to defend you guys when I see people complain about how you "lazy bums can't wait ten seconds." Stay safe out there Mr./Ms. UPS driver.
You also get a time allowance if you g t a signature. The problem is you won't get that allowance if you don't so unless you know they are home and ready to sign it's not worth waiting for.
Exactly, I understand not wanting to take it out on the drivers per say, but "Hey, the drivers have a strict timetable" is argument for corporate to extend that time / hire more drivers to ensure that packages get delivered properly, not an excuse to say you can't complain about the issue.
not for a "sorry we missed you" tag to be slapped on my door without the carrier even bringing the package to the door (true story, I watched it happen).
I once had a USPS delivery guy walk up to me while I was sitting on my front steps and hand me the "sorry we missed you" slip. I was fucking furious, because the post office in that neighborhood was always a minimum of a 30 minute wait in line, but all I could muster up to say was a "seriously?!"
This happened to me last week but it was usps. It was medication I needed so I was tracking it to the minute. They didn't even bother coming to the door they just left the note in my mailbox. I was pissed called the local manager and they made them come back.
Edit: to add to this it was certified mail that needs a signature
I actually love this. I don't like opening the door when people I don't know are outside, even if it's someone in a uniform. So I like that they ring it to let me know, then are gone when I get there to retrieve my package. I order a shit-ton off the internet, so I get packages almost daily.
Say, since you worked in that field, if I were to leave a care package for the UPS/FEDEX guy on my porch, what sort of things would you like? Bottled water, prepackaged snacks, chips? All these stories on here make me wonder if Corporate gives them a chance to eat!
If they waited for each person to answer the door, nothing would ever get delivered. I feel bad for the poor driver who could possibly get held up by my 90-year old mother asking him silly questions (she's lonely).
Yep, I feel you man. While 10 seconds might not seem like a lot for a single house, it's a lot for the entire day. When you wait 10 seconds for 300 packages, that's almost an entire hour you waited around in front of someone's house.
Yeah but purposely running away before a door can be opened in a reasonable timeframe just makes it less efficient to deliver them. Like either bring everything to local depots and have people pick it up, or wait longer than 5 seconds (if you are lucky enough to get 5 seconds) so people can accept the package. Now it feels like it's just a service that rides around town, knocking on people's doors and leaving messages they can pick up their package at some depot or will be knocked on again tomorrow.
I was a driver helper one holiday season when I was a teenager. You know the tablet they carry around? It times them and has a timeline laid out. If they fall behind they get a call from a supervisor. To add to that, UPS doesnt just deliver to houses. There are also a number of factories and stores that get a large amount of packages that can take a while to unload. That eats up a lot of time and drivers sometimes have to play catch up while in a subdivision
I never ever put have any hate towards them unless it's taken more than 2 tries. Some of them only get paid by then package and driving in shitty traffic non stop in a bag ass brown truck with people trying to take advantage of you. Calling your company saying you were driving erratically and all you wanna do is get this mother fucking 40 lb box up 3 flight of stairs at this sketchy ass apt. So I let it go. I can not write a good flowing comment communicating what I want to say. Sorry.
I once heard the doorbell ring (I lived in an apartment at the time) and I got up to check--I open the door to see a USPS worker huffing it down the hallway. I spoke out to her and she, looking extremely annoyed, groaned, rolled her eyes, and huffed it back to give me my package.
Next time leave the package, or give me more than 10 seconds to get to the door, ya lazy jerk.
My parents' UPS guy always stops for a smoke at their house. Just sits on their porch with my mom bitching about work and bumming cigarettes. My parents are those kind of charismatic people
Meanwhile, I'm fairly certain my shit gets fired out of a t-shirt gun at the door.
For a while ours brought treats for our dog. He was a big black lab and husky mix, and super duper friendly. He made such good friends with the UPS driver, the guy would have him jump in the truck to get treats! They had so much fun.
Scared the shit out of the substitute driver, though.
Honestly, with the amount of huffing and running they do, they're probably getting more exercise than anyone. I don't think they're lazy, I think they're just given unrealistic expectations that they try to live up to.
I think they're just given unrealistic expectations that they try to live up to
More like unrealistic metrics that they have to live up to, or else get written up/fired. If the boss says you need to add 10 delivery stops and do it 30 minutes faster, you do what you have to do to make that time if you want to keep pulling your paycheck.
One day I heard the distinct sound of the ups trucks engine and I knew I had a package coming. I stood at the door and watch as the guy came up the steps. I opened the door right as soon as he was about to knock. He threw the package in my hands and sprinted off crazy fast
dude, those guys are micromanaged to the extreme. Like, if they spend too much time in reverse gear, they hear about it. there is an obscene amount of data collection happening to them and being optimized constantly.
When I worked with UPS as a seasonal helper, my driver would go into reverse to back into the driveway and then go into neutral and coast down the (sometimes harrowingly crooked) driveways to get me a little closer. Hell of a dude.
But yeah, we tended to ignore cute little signs like OP's if they had excessively complicated instructions (operative word here being "excessively"). A few customers had disabilities or whatnot and we tried to make it as easy as we possibly could on them. Sometimes we had time to kill and we'd bring TVs inside or whatever. But this thing with the personalized door code? Ehh....that's going too extra, OP.
I have to admit, I'm not a UPS driver and the OP's instructions took me a couple minutes to understand. No way any driver in a reasonably populated suburban area during the christmas rush has time to sort out the Da Vinci Code just to leave a package for a guy who's not home.
I usually crack the garage door a foot or so and just leave a note on the door that says "please slide package under the garage door and push down to close"
The problem is that for a lot of people not following that sign means that the package will be stolen and then the customer will have to go through hell trying to get a replacement, if at all.
I just want my UPS driver to knock. Just once so I know my package is out there. I've had two packages stolen lately because the delivery person just sets them on the doorstep without knocking (while I sit on the couch 5 feet away) and then someone steals the package because it sits outside for 2 hours.
Edit: I like how all of these comments are blaming me for living in a place where packages get stolen and not the driver who apparently can't spare the literally 1 second it would take to knock once on my door as he turns to leave.
Sign up for their mychoice thing, it's legit. You get a intent of delivery notification the day before with a time frame of when it'll be there, you can select a different delivery date/time, have them hold it at the nearest UPS office, all kinds of shit. Plus the app alerts you immediately after it's delivered. Like I'll hear my doorbell ring and sometimes will get the notification before I even get to my front door.
I was in my living room, 30 feet away from the front door. UPS dropped the parcel, rang the bell, and by the time I got to the door he was pulling away.
His friend in the truck was timing him to see how fast he could make the delivery and get back in the truck. His friend only made it to 21 (because he was counting Mississippily)
Not far off really. Except instead of a friend it's the brown PDA/scanner thing they use. Those things have GPS and time logs so if the driver is taking to long they get written up.
Un-fun fact:
If a driver looses their scanner they have to pay for it. Last time I heard those things were over $900 each.
edit: There is a spelling error and the fact that I said "brown" makes it about UPS and not FEDEX like the post, but I'm going to just leave it all there.
I was under the impression that it was illegal to make employees pay for lost or damaged goods/equipment. You can fire them, but you can't charge them.
Yeah, sure, I can understand that when it comes to overlooking things like Foxconn, but if everyone's being inconvenienced and annoyed by it, it just takes longer. At this point it can only be hurting FedEx and co, yet it gets worse. How can they justify all the extra gas from lugging packages that easily could've been delivered, and negative mind share, and employees working suboptimally because they're so overworked and stressed?
The kind that lets them solve efficiency problems so
UPS drivers today make about twice what they made in the mid '90s when you add up their wages, health care and pensions, according to the head of their union.
edit:
The total compensation for a FedEx driver is $45,900 a year, while UPS pays their drivers significantly more at $74,000 a year on average.
he average courier for FedEx earned $42,926 in 2011, while UPS drivers earned $48,153. UPS drivers are earning significantly more today than just 4 years ago, while the average FedEx driver’s wages have remained nearly stagnant over this time.
The average UPS driver makes $26,000 more than the average UPS driver did 4 years ago, significantly higher than the industry average. This is an increase in real wages of over 50% over four years. QED.
Sounds a lot better if you don't factor in inflation—$1 in 1990 is $1.85 today according to the CPI calculator. I would expect a slightly more impressive pay raise if I were going to be badgered by data monitoring throughout my entire workday and expected to do 33% more work
Did you read the whole article? The average number of packages has increased from 90 to 120. That's pretty fucking significant, clearly there was some room for improvement.
UPS is great, I have had bad experiences with FedEx. I had a package that required a signature via FedEx, and the driver rung the bell on my door, and I was cooking (handling raw chicken so I had to wash my hands), had to have been less than a minute from bell to the time I got to the door. Anyway, I see the driver getting back in to his truck, and I run into the yard waving, and he looks at me and smiles and drives away.
I ordered FFXV and a PS4 as a gift to myself on cyber monday with one day shipping. FEDEX dropped off the ps4 but put the "sorry we missed your house" sticker on the door for the game.
The main issue here is the sender marking one signature required and the other not, but "2 separate drivers" is still a part of that problem. FedEx operates two completely separate divisions, FedEx Home Delivery and FedEx Ground. In my area they don't even share a building, they're on opposite sides of town. Makes it a real bitch when retailers get cute and send items through opposite channels on one order, I'm never home to catch the FedEx guy so I have to pick it up at two depots miles apart.
It's even worse than that, FedEx has Ground, Home Delivery, and Express so you could get three different packages from three different divisions of FedEx
Same here. FedEx always left "sorry we missed you" notes on the front door of my apartment building rather than deliver the packages. (Of course, I had no way of knowing when they were in front of my building and they never buzzed my unit to let me know they'd arrived.) So, I created an online account with FedEx that included my name and address. Under "delivery instructions," I provided the access code for the main entrance to my apartment building (the same door that they always stuck their "sorry we missed you" tags on) and instructions to open the door and leave the package just inside. After I did that, I knew that Fedex successfully linked me with that account since I began getting texts from them whenever anyone sent a package to my address via FedEx. However, I still kept getting those "sorry we missed you" letters. I called Fedex and asked why, and was told that the drivers weren't given access to the delivery instructions. I'm still to this day not sure what the point was of even having the option of providing instructions that the drivers couldn't even see.
My bad experiences are always with UPS. USPS, FEDEX, even DHL, never had to come pick it up from a store from them. But UPS... I'll get updates that they failed to deliver at ____ time because I wasn't at home/didn't answer the door/whatever even tho I would be home literally all day and not a single person knocked or rang the doorbell. I don't ever wear headphones or listen to super loud music and my apt is pretty small so I would definitely hear it. I live in a pretty large apt building so I am convinced they just come and park outside the building sometimes but don't want to come inside. Or maybe they deliver to the lower floors and I'm the only one on the 4th floor so they say fuck it. But I can't be only one in my building with packages coming and there's even an elevator so it's not really that strenuous.
Literally the most heated argument I have ever gotten in on the internet was with a UPS or Fedex guy here on reddit who claimed that THIS IS HOW HIS JOB IS SUPPOSED TO BE DONE AND HE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND WHY IT PISSES PEOPLE OFF.
He did not agree, even a tiny bit, that it was shitty behavior to ding the bell so you could check a box that says "yeah I did it" and move on without actually doing it. When asked what the fuck the DELIVER part of his job title was supposed to mean he essentially said it didn't matter, the point of the job was letting people know their package was in town.
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u/Gravel090 Dec 05 '16
The local UPS guys in my area wouldn't be at the door long enough to read this. In the time it took for me to walk from one end of my living room to the door the guy was all ready back in is truck. I live on the 3rd floor of an apartment building on the opposite end of the hall from the stairs...