by horror popsickle

Created on: January 01, 2007   Last Updated: April 17, 2007

I have worked at FedEx for about 8 months now, and would like to share what actually happens there. I wrote this a while back on paper, and now its here for all to read.

FedEx, if you've worked there you'll understand what it means. For those of you whom don't here is a run down. You start your job at say, 9pm. You walk into the main building and take a slight right. Near the men's restroom(where random gangsters enjoy spray painting and putting up gang slogans(that only their gang members understand))there's a group of machines where you punch in your slave id number. After you clock in, you wait around for a bit, smoke a few cigarettes, and then wait for first shift to get off. After they get off, you wander to a window(where random sticky notes hang that no one ever reads)and knock, then wait while the goober gets off his machine and hands you a scanner. A ring scanner, you slide the scanner into the thick smelling tattered sleeve that lies along your arm, and punch in a few numbers, and whether your outbound or inbound. You smoke a few more cigarettes and then wait for the managers to come and gather everyone up for a meeting. There are meetings before every shift.

The meetings usually last about ten minutes, and usually its about some dumb bull crap such as how many packages went through, or how crummy of a job everyone is doing. They mention a few god-like scanners and tell everyone else they should be just like them. They speak of safety, but I'll go into that soon. Then they yell at everyone to get to work.

Here's the fun part of the job.

Everyone lingers to their stations. The main dock has six or seven trailers, where packages flow along a conveyor belt and into the trailers. There is usually one over night trailer, that is supposed to be the most important trailer, which isn't really, especially the way these guys run the dock. You work for three hours non-stop. And by non-stop I mean NON-stop. I'm not complaining at all, this isn't a hard job, but some people are built for it, and others aren't.

Now, during this working frenzy they expect you to be safe. Here's the problem, how can you be safe when you have to work as fast as you can? If you don't work fast enough, they yell and scream at you. Safety is a big issue, I know plenty of people whom have been crushed, smashed, and bled for this company, yet they still yell at you to go faster. Anyway, after all of the 'work' you take a ten minute break, and try to inhale twelve cigarettes as fast as you can. After that, you work another two hours and then run on home and cry yourself to sleep. Or in my case, hope that you can wake in a few hours for class.

*Note to people sending through FedEx, UPS, or any other shipping company.
Your packages don't mean crap. They will be thrown, smashed, squashed, and jumped on. And if you shove a fragile sticker on them, they will be hurt a bit more. People at shipping companies don't get paid enough to delicately place your packages in a truck by themselves. Full trailers are loaded, there are a thousand something packages in each FedEx truck, and someone had to load it. It probably wasn't me, because I do an okay job. Although my walls aren't perfect...

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