UPS Management Style…..Self-Loathing??
June 24, 2011 George
The UPS management style must have been brought up from Below. I've never seen a company treat it's employees as badly as UPS does and get away with it. At most companies, a whistleblower would have exposed UPS management as cruel and unusual. But UPS has elevated its own brand of micro-management to unbelievable heights. What other company, especially one with a Union contract, gets away with this level of harassment?
UPS has always prodded and herded its workers like cattle on a drive to market. But it's worsened in the last 10 years. And it continues to get more intense every year. Drivers who didn't like how management treated them became supervisors and treated their group the same way. How does that happen?
I think that UPS management attracts a certain type of person. And that person is someone who hates themselves.
For example, the new supe who now lords it over his drivers, demands perfection and threatens to fire anyone who makes a mistake, is a self-loather who hates himself for not being perfect and he's taking it out on you.
The manager who follows his drivers around and tries to catch them doing something wrong is the same guy who beats himself up for not achieving more. He's going to make you achieve more because he feels like a failure.
And on up the ladder it goes.
We once had a division manager who could not show an ounce of compassion for anyone caught up in the disciplinary process. He acted like they deserved it. But behind the scenes, he was the one who deserved it. He had a penchant for going down on Colfax and picking up hookers. I'm sure he hated himself. Late in his career he came in looking bruised and battered. He said he rolled his bike but word got out that he had gotten rolled alright, but not on his bike.
Another time we had a preload manager who yelled and screamed at us like we were children. One day he came in with a black eye. Turned out he was molesting his childrens' friends and one of the fathers found out. That was his last day. The way he yelled at us to be perfect only shows how much he must have hated himself.
So the next time you get chewed out or threatened, remember that it's probably not you that has the problem. Hating your own inadequacies and projecting that onto those around you seems to be what defines UPS management. That's my opinion based on 30 years in the meat grinder.
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