Comment by spike021 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spike021 | Hacker News Reader

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>Now I see the Amazon delivery people, and they look majorly stressed out as if they are on the edge of collapse. Many times they are delivering things at 10pm desperately trying to meet their quotas.

Even UPS sounds.. not great. I have a friend who's a delivery driver for UPS and especially this time of year he has days where his truck is loaded with 250-300 parcels and they're basically all supposed to be delivered by evening. They even hire temp guys as runners who ride along in trucks to help the drivers get the packages dropped off quicker. Not only that but if they do clear their truck and they have fellow guys in their route who still have a load to clear, they tend to be asked to stick around and help take that load. But it means 10-12 hour or more shifts in some cases.

It's the Amazon/online shopping craze, and seems like it isn't a very easily scalable problem.

RE: UPS - The hours aren't bad. You get overtime past 40 and are generally glad when it happens. If you work at a normal pace you won't get into trouble for productivity with your boss, and you're never at risk of making less money because you're not productive enough. UPS guarantees you a certain number of hours so you don't get trapped committing to a job that ends up only giving you 20/wk

What sucks about the job is how brainless and repetitive delivering packages is. It is nice that everyone is typically happy to see you, but conversations typically don't get very far past "hello" and "goodbye"

I don't know what it's like working for Amazon, but if it's typical gig economy BS, they are getting shafted by hidden costs and have bad incentives to make rushed and sloppy deliveries while overburdening themselves

Repetitive yes, brainless no. Every day is the same problem and you need to figure out the best way to solve it. You also get paid for the number of hours the computer says. Finish your route in 5 hours and getting paid for 8 was pretty rewarding. I also stayed in great shape and you get to hang out outside all day.

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