Seaonal Purpose

In November I was perusing flexible job opportunities online and saw a posting for a well-known delivery company. I won’t name names, but think “earth tones.” On a lark, I applied. As I recalled, they once were one of the better employers around, paying higher rates than most other businesses. Besides, I thought it would be fun with the extra benefit of being physical.

Re: fun … it was. It was fun in the same way two-a-day football practices are fun. It was fun like military basic training is fun. It was fun because I was among a group of people doing challenging work that most people are unwilling to do. We raced time five days a week.

Re: physical … oh, my yes it was.

Two opportunities were made available to seasonal employees where I worked, preloading and jumping. Preloaders take items from one conveyance, reassign them, then load them into vehicles that will carry them to their final destinations. Jumpers, or helpers, ride in the delivery vehicles with drivers and assist them in delivering packages, generally in more densely populated areas where teaming can increase efficiency.

I was cautioned to avoid particulars and to take no pictures inside the facility. I have honored that stricture. I suppose their reasoning for this is much the same reason a fine restaurant does not walk you through the stockyards and the packing house when you order steak. All you want is a delicious meal well prepared, right? Never mind the details.

Know this: people in the delivery game have elevated the science of logistics and efficiency to an art form. Technology plays a critical role, but the key is good people and relationships. More on this in a moment.

I did preload. I didn’t think I would. I was concerned that it would be too much to handle along with jumping. Monday through Friday several people show up at the local distribution center at an appointed hour. They sort any items that have not been placed in package cars yet. They mentally come to grips with the fact that this is occurring during prime sleeping hours and they begin. A truck backs up to the bay door, somebody opens the rear door of the trailer and people along the line quietly prepare to do battle with the beast. Twin foes are at hand, volume and time. Everything temporarily contained by cargo netting will soon be rolling past.

The weapons used to tame these foes are mental agility and physical strength, with a dash of spatial thinking. As items are emptied from the semi trailer or box truck, they are assessed, added to a delivery route, and assigned to a specific package car—the term used to describe the large delivery vans noticeably zipping around your community like worker bees during peak season. The people preloading must be adept at picking out the items assigned to them and storing them at predetermined spots within the package car. Initially, this is manageable, but at some point during the loading process there will be a deluge of packages assigned to one car. They will be small, large, light, very heavy, boxed, enveloped, bagged, and must be dealt with now. Another truck has just arrived on the lot and will be unloaded immediately after this one.

Thanks to technology, we can be reasonably certain how many items will be on a package car on a given day, and even where those items will be on the car. The end is known. The human element of the loading process is recognizing, pulling, handling, and positioning each of those packages so the driver can easily locate them during delivery. Think of any item you have received from a seller through a delivery company. That is the variety loaders experience daily. They make it fit.

Jumping, or helping, is different. It is about precise dispersal of items from the package car to their designated recipients. Here again, technology is an invaluable tool. Delivery drivers use handheld computers that help them match a package with its addressee, re-route the package if necessary, and note whether it was placed on the front porch, by the garage, or even inside a vehicle when it was delivered. This is the data that will be important to you if you’re tracking delivery online.

Let’s return to the steak analogy. You want your waiter to be dressed presentably. You really don’t fuss much about the appearance of the person cutting that steak from the side of beef. Preloaders and sorters dress casually and comfortably. Their major concern is personal safety. They don’t wear items that can become entangled in moving machinery and they make sure anything heavy that might be dropped will do as little damage as possible. Steel-toed boots take care of that.

To simplify creating a consistent appearance, delivery drivers wear uniforms. This includes black or brown shoes that can be polished. I am no stranger to polishing shoes. I took a six-week course in shoe polishing when I was eighteen. It was a comprehensive course that included ironing, folding, polishing, waxing, buffing, marching, sweating, panting, grumbling, studying, listening, thinking, and wishing I was elsewhere, but shoe polishing was an important part of the curriculum. If you ever consider similar seasonal employment, please recognize that preloading is a poor way to prepare your footwear for public display. Depending upon what role you are assigned, preloading will scuff, soil, and gouge your boots. Delivery will demand that they be presentable to the end customer. I must confess that some days were better than others where my presentation was concerned.

Delivery drivers are the most public face of their companies. More than delivering, they are in the relationship business. I worked with a driver who makes it a point to wave to most of the vehicles we passed on the road. He knows his customers. He not only knows their names, he knows where they work and what vehicle they drive. He goes out of his way to be available to them, sharing his cell phone number and inviting them to call if they need anything at all. He will chat briefly and kid with them. He is a problem solver. He is a trust builder. It pays off. He delivers in semi-rural and rural areas as well as in town. By knowing where people work he often can leave a package at their workplace and save several minutes driving to their homes. Several minutes is not much in a long workday, but doing that for half a dozen people is significant in terms of time saved and in making people feel known and valued. It also yields reciprocity. His customers are flexible and offer to help him when needed, too.

Back to me. What did I get from this experience? I got more than I reckoned on.

I encountered exhaustion. Five to six hours of nearly non-stop movement in early morning hours followed by running from truck to home or business and back challenged me physically. I found things in the shower that I didn’t recall collecting, including bruises, abrasions, and sore muscles. Lots of sore muscles.

I gained renewed confidence. I was one of the oldest people on the loading line and I was also jumping. I was complimented for my work ethic, my energy, and my attention to detail. When I shared my age with a colleague, he told me I don’t move like a person that age. What does that mean? I am not sure either, but classmates--at least in this young man’s mind--some of you do move like a person that age. You may not have to. Just spend a couple of miserable weeks aching and groaning and your body will give in and go along with the program.

I learned I was marginally inspiring. A friend who has also found that his particular skills are not in high demand here told me he admired my humility. He and I were successful in our fields before we relocated. It can be difficult to settle for less than we know we are worth. Truthfully, seasonal work does not pay well. It’s not terrible. It’s more than most entry-level positions. But it won’t buy many of those steak dinners we considered earlier. However, many people pay to go do cardio exercises, resistance training, and weight lifting. I found a way to be paid to do those things.

Six hours in the early morning followed by four to five hours jumping from trucks and dashing to doorsteps is physically wrecking. But the positives outweigh the negatives here, as they do in so many situations. In the bigger picture, we were making commerce possible. For the holidays, we were making young eyes wide with glee and old eyes twinkle because they could bring that joy to their loved ones. We delivered the tools that keep industries operating, the parts that fix a car to keep a single parent employed. I won’t go so far as to say we delivered hope. After all, what we delivered is stuff. But it’s often stuff that makes a difference. I know this work was only temporary, but I am convinced it was work with a seasonal purpose.

© 2015 David L. Colbert

Cougar Hunt

This afternoon I joined the Barber Adventure Team to hunt for sign of wild beasts. It was my fault. About a week ago I was leaving for work. It was very early in the morning and I heard a woman screaming from the woods nearby. It was a chilling cry. A howl of anguish. If I had a shred of decency I would have dashed into the woods in her defense. Thankfully, well … let’s just say I was on time for work.

I consulted my wildlife experts at Cherry Ghost Coffee House. Dan Maley has raised his sons to recognize all types of wildlife. They are phenomenal with birds and birding, but just as eager to share their gory store of knowledge regarding local big cats—and I’m not talking about Garfield here. Dan pulled up recordings of bobcats and cougars from the Internet. If those recordings are accurate, this was not a bobcat.

The Barber Adventure Team is a father and his two sons. Tony, the patriarch of this clan, is a professional gambler. Each year he wagers much of his accumulated wealth on the weather and on the capacity of investment he buries in the ground to double, triple or better. Chancy stuff. And not for the faint-hearted. Tony has been doing it for a number of years now. He’s just that good.

His sons, Ward and Wyatt, engaged a driver and met me at the farmhouse where I live. They are thrifty lads. The driver was also our bush guide for the day. He was also their father. They kept pace with us as we climbed the gate, crossed various strands of electrical fence, and entered the wooded area that I thought the screams had come from.

The Barber boys are pretty cagey too. Tony and I were there as Brave and Intrepid Thrill-seekers. If you’re heading into the woods with Ward and Wyatt, I suggest you consider the acronym created by your role in The Adventure. I’m writing this, so we can presume it all came out well. Still, …

I live in a farmhouse surrounded by a working farm. To get to our destination, which was really clear only to our guide, we did the gate hop, the hot wire straddle, and the cow pie skip. All that and we’d barely begun. Under the interested scrutiny of several ruminants, we continued down the hill. We crossed a bit of swampy land and I learned that Tony and I were of even greater utility. We were biped pontoons for the junior Barbers. We safely traversed the saturated sward, walked around the upper pasture, then crossed a wooded area into a cornfield.

Out in the open, we struck paydirt. We had trackage! It wasn’t cougar tracks. In fact, I don’t think the split hoof track was even a cat, but I’m kind of new to all this. We saw what we thought to be raccoon tracks, possibly coyote tracks, definitely deer tracks, and maybe bobcat tracks. We were onto something.

I may not have mentioned it, but for all their daring the junior Barbers have not yet reached their majority. They are up for quite a few adventures and have had them. They are also occasionally distractible. That’s why Wyatt began amassing a collection of corn cobs as we were roughly a quarter of the way through our quest. This not something you’d expect of your run-of-the-mill adventurer, but you should know that these two are not of that ilk. For instance, despite all their accomplishments they have not yet entered first grade. You can see that many great things lie ahead of them. After the quest.

Meanwhile, back in the cornfield, Tony and I (but mostly Tony) tracked our something—because we had yet to identify it—working its way along the edge of the woods. We found clear tracks and stopped to study them. If only we’d had more to go on. My Maley contributors told me that bobcats sometimes pull the bones of their kills up into a tree. I didn’t see that anywhere. Tony told me that big cats can hunt in a 50-mile radius, so what I had heard may have only been passing through. Then again, it may have been watching us. I wonder if cats snicker?

When we felt we had reached the halfway point of our companions we turned from the cornfield and reentered the woods. At the bottom of the hill we entered a creek bed where we found many more tracks and much easier going.

Okay, this next one is not a track, but it's pretty, right?

Yawn. More tracks. Tracks, tracks, tracks and not a voracious cat to be found.

When you and I see a creek we see water running downhill. When animals see a creek they see an interstate highway. Along this highway you can wash your feet and your food. You may even find your food. But be aware that the guy tailgating you on this highway does not want to pass you until he has first consumed you. It’s really kind of scary if you’re small and furry, I suppose.

Overhead sign along the highway

Tony stayed in the creek while the lads and I took to the higher ground. Here I learned two things. First, some young boys are still grappling with the concept of what happens when you bend a branch forward as you pass, then let it go. I’m going to work on that with them in future adventures. Second, although it is said of some things, “you can’t beat it with a stick,” Ward isn’t buying it. Sticks are abundant. The wood is full of them. And nothing is immune to their swishing passage through the air or their full, glorious contact. He’s a warrior, that one is. Soon we found our way back to the creek.

I imagine if you’re rather shorter than the Brave and Intrepid Thrill-seekers you’ve brought with you on The Adventure, and the stream is a little deeper than it seemed, that can be disconcerting. You’ll need to ask Wyatt. His tall boots didn’t reach as high as the ones Tony and I were wearing. He only complained a little. Later, he tried to bring down an entire tree with a vine. If we hadn't called him to catch up to us he'd probably have done it, too.

We reached a point where Tony took the boys onto high ground and encouraged me to explore for tracks. I found a few and a couple were large enough to make me wonder what their maker looked like. I have included a gift card for scale and so you can congratulate me on my bravery the next time we meet. Don't think I'll forget.

 

After a bit of meandering, we reached our exit point. We passed through some brambles nearly unscathed. We’ll work some on that too. As we reentered the pasture we came upon some wetlands and Wyatt crossed completely unassisted. These guys learn quickly.

As we approached the barn where we’d begun, Yellow, our timeshare canine, met us at the gate waving his fluffy tail in salute. We safely negotiated the electric fence and the gate, declared this adventure officially and successfully completed, and I bid my companions goodbye. I can hardly wait for our next Adventure!