Case 9: Doug I heard voices inside as I walked up to the door. I knew that the people inside would answer if I knocked. So, like any good UPS man would do, I walked swiftly up to the door. I stuck the InfoNotice that I had already filled out in the truck onto the door and walked quickly away. Ah, I thought, another job well done.
It was the second attempt that I had just made. I had knocked the day before, but only as lightly as I could. I don’t care how many packages I deliver, in fact, UPS is happier that they have to make more than one attempt on most deliveries, because in the end, they make more money. I was loyal to the Brown, and I wasn’t wavering.
After not delivering the package, I hopped into my brown vehicle and drove the rest of my route. I ran into a couple of people and was forced to actually deliver their packages, but luckily I managed to keep most of the people away from their packages. After my “deliveries” I drove to the ocean about 15 miles away. When I got there I went into the back of my truck and went over to the pile marked, “Aquaman.” I grabbed the packages and carried them over to the shore. I, then, went back to truck and got my baseball bat.
When I arrived back to the shore, I got ready for the best part of my job. I took the first package and picked it up. It was heavy and was shaped a little odd for what I was planning to do. The first thing I did after this was to take the baseball bat and hit the package until it was shaped correctly. Then, since the label was still showing, I coded the package as delivered and then dropkicked it into the water. I got good air and was pretty proud of it, if I do say so myself. I turned after some of the ripples had started to die out. I picked up a small package that was addressed to a Mr. Jack Hanson. It was small, about the size of an orange and the sender was marked as Periwinkle Jewelers. I coded the package as delivered and then threw the package straight up in the air and caught it. It was the perfect size. I picked up the bat and tossed the package up in the air again. As it came down I swung my bat as hard as I good. I missed the package that time, but a UPS man never gives up, therefore I picked the package up and threw it up again and swung. This time I made contact and watched the package sail a good way before it hit the water. I continued to do this until all the packages were coded as delivered and indeed delivered; although it was only to Aquaman.
The next stop in my day was to go back the UPS terminal. On the way there I listen to my favorite radio station. I sang at the top of my lungs. I love when part of my job is to “deliver” parcels to Aquaman. We only get to do it every other week and I was I glad that it was my time. Nothing relieves your stress like knocking a package into the sea. People have asked me before, “But Doug, what is so stressful in your job?” I tell them that it’s stressful driving all day, but that’s only part of it. What I don’t tell them is how hard it is to sneak up to a door and not deliver a package. Sometime, it can’t be avoided, but I really hate when my sneaking fails and I have to give the package up.
It’s also stressful writing out all of those InfoNotice papers and attaching them to the doors. My hands are always so tired by the end of the day.
I arrived at the terminal and entered through the Union Member entrance. I was greeted by 3 other drivers discussing their day on the couches in the Union Break Room. The three men looked up as I entered the brightly colored room.
“Hey Doug,” called Marty, “how was your delivery to Aquaman today?”
“It was great! I love how stress relieving it is. I got some great distance today to, better than usual. It must be all the workouts I’ve been doing lately.
“Probably,” replied John, “I got much better distance after I started lifting weights.”
“So,” called Jake, “how many packages did you have to actually deliver today?”
“Only 2,” I answered.
“Nice! Marty had to deliver 4, and he did the best out of all of us. John had 5, and I had a really bad day. Everyone seemed to be outside today, so I had to deliver 10. I hate how happy and relieved people seem when they get a package from us. We do our jobs as well as we can. I can’t help it if doing my job is more painful than it should be because of those assholes who order packages.”
“It’s okay, Jake. That’s why we try not to actually deliver the packages, and when we do why we try to break things or give them to our main man, Aquaman.”
“That’s true.”
“Hey, is the boss in? I had something that I had to ask him.”
“Yeah, I think he’s in the office.”
“Great, I’ll stop in to see him after I check in and see what packages I have to take off the truck. Stupid people and their “Will Call”.”
“Don’t worry about that,” replied Marty. “From what I hear, they are planning on changing the phone service, so the stupid customers won’t even be able to get their packages as all. I’m sure Aquaman will be happy about that.”
“Yeah, he sure does love the packages.”
I walked out of the break room and onto the main floor. I saw Rebecca working behind the counter.
“Hey Becky, how’s it going cutie?”
“I told you not to call me that, Doug. What do you want?”
“Do you have the Will Call list for me, sweetie?”
“I do. Please stop calling me sweetie, baby, or anything else. I can’t wait to quit this shit job. You all suck.”
She handed me a piece of paper with my Will Call list on it and as I walked away from the counter giving Becky a wink as I did so. I got to my truck quickly and opened the back door. I tossed all of the packages around looking for the 5 packages on the Will Call list. Hopefully, I thought, I’ll break one or two of the items while I do this. That will teach those stupid Will Call people. Who do they think they are? Why do they want their packages? It’s not like they deserve them or anything. What did they do? All they did was sit behind their computers like the losers they are and point and click a few times. That’s all. Then they expect their package to just show up when they want it to. I have news for them though. We at UPS don’t believe that the customer is always right; we believe that assholes like them should get what they deserve. And what they deserve are broken packages and lost parcels. We do what we do because we believe that it is the right thing to do.
After I found all the packages for Will Call, I threw them into the bin waiting at the end of my open truck then I threw the packages inside the truck around rearranging them so that my job would be easier tomorrow. The only thing that would be better than doing what we do each day is if we didn’t actually have to carry the packages to the door each day. Some of them are heavy and it sucks pretty bad that we have to bring them along. With my packages all arranged, I hopped out of the truck and closed the door.I decided that it was time to pay the boss man a visit so I went to his office door and knocked. He asked me to come in, so I slowly opened the door. My boss was great, but it was hard to stand being in his room. He kept it at a sweltering 100 degrees in his office and his choice of décor didn’t help the cause. The room was painted red with orange flames dancing around as trim. His red leather guest chairs were sitting in front of this black and clear glass desk and his own chair, which was a large comfortable looking (if it wasn’t 100 degrees) red leather chair was turned away from me so that I couldn’t see him sitting there.
I stayed standing until he asked me to sit down. Nobody likes to sit in his chairs, and most people try not to come and visit him, but I had to talk to him about something, so I had to try to bear sitting in the chairs for a little while. You stick to them when you sit down and the leather just isn’t great when it makes noises every time you move.
As I sat down, the leather chair in front of me started to turn around. My boss’ red eyes felt like they were burning holes in the back of my head and is hair, which reminded me of flames dancing seemed to burn my eyes as well. I tried not to look at him as I began the conversation.
“Hello, my dear master, Satan. I have come to you to ask you something that has been weighing on my mind for the past few months.”
“What is it, my minion? What have you come to ask of me?”
“Well, sir, I have been with the company now for 7 years. I have been a good employee even having my wedding in the middle of winter so that I would be around for all the summer months. I have enjoyed my time so far with the company and I am beginning to crave more in the company.”
“What exactly are you asking for?” Satan looked me up and down, wondering what he should do with me. His glare froze me for a moment. He and I had had a good rapport as of now and I was afraid to do anything to destroy that.
“Well, sir,” I began. “I was hoping that you would keep me in mind if any spots should open up in management, sir. I love this company, you know that.”
“I do? Of course, I do. Doug, you have been a great employee so far, and since you have already sold me your soul, I will keep you in mind for the next promotion. However, you will have to keep in mind, that promotions cost something and you don’t have your soul to deal with anymore. I will have to come up with something else for you to give me when the time comes.”
“I do understand, Dark Lord. I will look forward to serving you more when the time comes.” I stood up at this time and heard the awful noise emit from the chair. I backed out of the room give Satan one last bow before I left. Satan really is a good guy, I thought. I wonder what he will ask of me when the time comes.
It was time to leave at this time to go home. My 12 hours there that day were over. It was time to go back to my lovely wife. She was didn’t please me the way this job did, but then again, nothing did. I suppose she was good enough though, I mean, for a woman. I went outside and hopped into my fire red convertible that the boss had given me for my years of service last year and sped on home to my wife, who was probably waiting to yell at me again, just like always.
I pulled into the driveway after going the long way there. I detest going home to that witch wife of mine. If I could, I would stay with my friends all the time. They’re a good bunch of guys. I can’t do that though, so I go home. She’s waiting for me in the living room when I step inside.
“Hi dear, the neighbors have invited us over to their house for dinner tonight. I called your cell phone to ask you, but you didn’t return my calls.”
“You know I don’t like you calling me at work.”
“I know, but I just wanted to give them an answer. Last time that I gave them an answer without you saying yes or no first, you yelled at me.”
“So, that’s what this is all about? I can’t believe that you would say things like that. It’s not all me, you know.”
“Well, I told them, maybe next time because I couldn’t get a hold of you.”
“Oh, so now they think that’s I’m unreliable!?”
“No, I told them that you had a lot of work today and sometimes you are in places that your cell phone doesn’t work.”
I couldn’t believe that she was bringing up all these things that she considers shortcomings. I went into the kitchen and sat at the table waiting for my supper. She called to me from the other room.
“Your plate is in the microwave. You can get it yourself. I’m going to bed.”
I couldn’t believe that I worked all day and now I have to get my own food from the microwave. She only works in a school as an Instructional Assistant. Working in a school can’t be nearly as stressful as what I have to do.
I got up and got my dinner. It was cold so I had to microwave it for a few minutes. You’d think she could wait till at least 9 or 10 to cook dinner. I don’t really care if she has to be to work at 7:00 am. She doesn’t need as much sleep as I do, since her job isn’t too hard.
By the time I’m done with dinner, I decide to stretch out on the couch and watch some TV. I blast the TV real loud so that I can annoy my wife like she annoyed me earlier today. I was sick and tired of her disrespecting the man in this household. I watched TV for a while until I was tired and then I clamored into bed and fell fast asleep.
I woke up early in the morning the next day, right around 8:30. My wife had been gone for about 2 hours already and it was nice to have the house to myself. I made myself some bacon and eggs with the bacon in the fridge marked “dinner tonight.” I figured if she wanted bacon for dinner she could go and buy some. I was hungry for bacon now.
After breakfast I jumped into my car and sped off to work. People weren’t moving fast enough this morning so I honked at every guy that took more than a millisecond to go when a red light turned green. I also had a record day on the interstate and cut off three people in a row, they almost got into an accident. It was great for me. I probably had a delivery for at least one of them today. It would be great if they ended up in a hospital, because then I wouldn’t have to actually deliver their goods today.
I think the best part of my commute happened when a guy who was only going 7 miles over the speed limit on the interstate was in the passing lane. I wanted to get in front of him because he was being such an asshole that I decided to ride his ass for a few miles and then when I got the chance I pulled out into the right lane and passed him, flipping him off on the way. There was no need for him to be in the left lane. The people on the right may have been going slower, but I was going faster than all of them. I was too important to be slowed down, especially since I leave for work every day as if everything was going to go perfectly and like there would be no cars on the road. That’s the only way to do this. I ended up showing up to work, like usual, right on time.
The first thing I did was go and ho into my truck and make sure that the non-union workers hadn’t taken anything out. I don’t trust those people. Basically, if you aren’t in the union, you aren’t any body. And not any union will do, but only the UPS union. After I made sure that everything was okay in my truck, I opened up the back of the truck and put my new packages in the back and looked at my updated delivery page. I had too many places to go day. It will make it hard to continue my low delivery rate with so many packages to deliver.
I hate my route. There are too many stay at home moms and dead beats on it so most of the time people are sitting at home waiting for their packages. Luckily, I’m pretty good at the walk up and leave method. I walk up to every house, I just don’t knock. It’s company policy to do whatever we can to annoy the customer, and let me tell you there are quite a few customers that get really annoyed when you don’t deliver their packages.
I hopped into my truck, once I was sure that everything was all right and then headed out onto the open road. Like usual, I leave the back of the truck open just enough so that when packaged get lost I can think to myself, yeah, I let that one fall out. It’s a very powerful feeling. I only put one or two in a position where that could happen though. People tend to get really annoyed and suspicious when all of their packages get “lost” so we have to be careful and only do things like this every once in awhile.
My first stop was a local business. These deliveries don’t count against our delivery count because they are always there during business hours unlike most normal residents in the town. Our union always tries to deliver packages to them in good time, that way they will continue to send packages through us to really piss of everyone else.
My day started out fine, I delivered to all my businesses and then I took my lunch break. Since my loser of a wife didn’t pack my lunch again, I used her credit card to buy myself and Jake lunch at the local expensive lunch place. We both ordered lobster thermidor and enjoyed out free lunch.
After lunch I was all ready to start to deliver my packages to the residents, as I was finished with all the businesses. My first stop was a disappointment as the owners of the house were sitting on the porch. They looked like they were amazed to see me. I got out of the truck, smiling at them. The short annoying looking one spoke up.
“I was waiting for you yesterday. I was sitting in the living room and you never knocked on the door.”
I laughed, “You are mistaken sir, in fact, since it was the 2nd attempt I made sure to knock extra loud. You must have been doing something that distracted you from the noise. Customer Service is our number one priority at UPS and you, sir, are a great customer.”
He still looked unhappy, but at least I had gotten out of this one relatively easy. He signed for the package and took it inside, as he walked inside with his wife I heard him say to her, “Luckily we got the insulin in time before you ran out, my dear. Let’s try not to use UPS again.”
Stupid bastard, UPS is the best package delivery service. Besides, it was his own wife’s fault she had diabetes. Normal people know when too much sugar is too much, those stupid diabetics just keep eating it until their bodies can’t take any more. I was getting sick of these sick people using our service as a medical delivery service anyway. I smiled though and moved on to the next house.
At the next house the door opened just before I was about to attach the infonotice to the door.
“Hello!” called out a small 8 year old who opened the door.
“Hi, what are you doing out of school?”
“I’m sick.” After she told me this she went into a coughing fit and got 8 year old germs on me. Putrescent children are disgusting.
“Well, is your mother here?” I asked the little sicko.
“Sure is!” She answered and then disappeared down the hall to get her mother. That was another package delivered. I was disappointed in myself for already allowing two precious packages to leave my hands.
The rest of the day went this way. Package after package got delivered and I knew that I would be in trouble for this. I was destroying my record and my chances of promotion. Satan didn’t like employees who failed to do what they were supposed to do. I was supposed to keep most of the packages so that the customers would have to go through the maze of death, and here I was delivering them instead.
Ah, the maze of death. The maze of death is what customers have to go through in order to get to their packages when they do Will Call. 3 out of 5 will call customers end up selling their soul to Satan in order to get their packages, and another 1 in 10 will actually end up dying on either the route in or the route out. This is the exact reason that Satan went into the business, and the reason that he doesn’t have to do much more than run UPS to get all the good souls that he wants.
By the end of my route, I was scared. It seems that I had only not delivered 3 packages. I had delivered so many parcels that I was scared for my life. What he was going to do to me was a mystery. No one had had this bad of a day in a long time, and no one knows what happened to the last guy. Poor Randy, he was a good guy, although really too good to be working in the UPS system. He disappeared after having delivered all of his packages in one day.
When I got back to the headquarters I parked my truck and went in to talk to the guys. No one was there. They were always here; I didn’t know what was going on. I went to my cubby and checked; maybe they had gone out for beer. In the cubby was an official looking document. I opened it up and saw that it was papers for divorce. The old bag wanted a divorce, which was fine. After all, I could just ask Satan to get me some “evidence” that she was a cheat. That would do me fine.
I went to the office and saw that the door was open a crack. I knocked and Satan called for me to come in.
“Have a seat, Doug.”
“Okay. How are you, boss.”
“I’m upset, Doug. I got your numbers today. They were dismal to say the least.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know what happened today. This was my first time having such a bad day.”
“Well, Doug, we don’t allow failure here. I’m firing you.”
“But, sir, please, I need this job.”
“You should have thought of that earlier, Doug.”
“But you can’t fire me, I’m union.”
“Yeah, I had thought about that earlier, which is why I am going to be releasing 14 hell hounds to tear you to threads. I will be releasing them in 15 minutes. You might want to run.”
I knew he was serious so I began to run for my life. I ran to my friend Tony’s house and knocked on the door. He opened the door looking rather anxious.
“What’s up, Doug?”
“Not much, man. Can I come in for a little while?”
“You know, I’m really not up for visitors right now. Sorry, maybe later.”
I couldn’t believe that Tony was turning me away. I continued to run until I saw a woman who looked absolutely crazy in her cape and blue corset and domino mask. She stopped me and asked what was wrong. I pushed past her and started to look back to see if the hell hounds had found me yet. Then I ran into something hard. When I awoke I was being carried by the woman I had seen earlier and a boy in a ducky cape and 1920’s aviators cap. Freaks. They brought me into a building and began to put an ice pack on my head. I gushed out what was following me and the boy told me that “Wonder Dan had taken care of it all.” They also told me that group therapy was starting in 20 minutes and that I should attend.
“Why should I attend group therapy?” I asked.
“It’s simple,” answered the woman. “You’re wearing a UPS uniform. You’ve got to need therapy.”
Group Therapy | Case 1 | Case 2 | Case 3 | Case 4 | Case 5
Case 6 | Case 7 | Case 8 | Case 9 | Case 10 | Therapy Session
