7 ms·

It seems like people who are responsible don't care anymore. Maybe it's the wages, the pressure or whatever. It looks like it's about time to replace even more

by aluhut 10y ago

It seems like people who are responsible don't care anymore. Maybe it's the wages, the pressure or whatever. It looks like it's about time to replace even more humans from the equation.

HCIdivision17 10y ago
I strongly contend that there very likely has not been a decline in the give-a-damn factor. My experience is that it really hasn't ever been too high. Just look at cartoons 50 years ago, and packages getting wrecked en route is a staple joke; the jokes were rarely obscure, but often topical. There is always a few great operators, but mostly you just fix you processes so people default to failure less. Hence hacks like the TV stamp. But the answer is (as always) more automation. Mind, this can lead to really neat edge cases where you accidentally build a package smashing factory. But in general repeatability (machine) beats out diligence (people) every time. You just have to, you know, pay for it. The cost benefit analysis probably strongly favors the marked box in this case.
- Noos 10y ago
  Good luck trying to automate a system where the vehicle has to unload a package of anywhere from envelope size to a 90" TV. It has to bring this across a driveway of varying shape or size, or even no drive way at all, bringing it inside an apartment complex or condo. It has to realize the correct address or room, collect a signature, or realize that no human being is present to sign for it. Then it returns the item to the truck. The sheer amount of variables that this would require, without error, would be ridiculous. UPS and other places tried to make the customer do it by storage lockers, and those failed. There's nowhere near any elegant form of solution to improve on that.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    I think it likely that if we see a significant amount of automation in delivery, the last mile will eventually see it too. Right now, my neighborhood has grouped mailboxes[1], and anything more than a semi-flat package will not fix. Small boxes that don't fit are delivered to the shared larger compartment, which is locked, and the key is then left in your mailbox. When you use the key, it does not come out of the shared compartment, so in retrieving your delivery the key is automatically returned. I don't see why this system can't be scaled up somewhat. Automated delivery to a shared compartment which can be designed to accommodate such a scenario would be significantly easier. Want direct to home delivery by a person? I'm sure the delivery companies can accommodate you with a special type of delivery[2]. Theft might be a problem, but since these are generally in neighborhoods next to houses, and setting up a camera would be simple (and undoubtedly pay for itself in some circumstances when people contend they did not get a package), I think it wouldn't be too much of a problem. 1: https://www.mailboxworks.com/images/af-12doorcbu-lrg.jpg https://www.mailboxworks.com/images/af-12doorcbu-lrg.jpg 2: In truth, it would probably start with the automated to shared compartment delivery being a new option that's slightly cheaper. Eventually it would probably become the norm since it's cheaper.
    - nucleardog 10y ago
      Are there really enough individuals (not businesses) that want to-the-door delivery that it's even worthwhile? My shipping experience is a constant fight to get them to hold the package for pickup because I'm not going to be home during their delivery hours (~9-5 Mon-Fri) and I don't want to wait four or five business days for them to make several delivery attempts before I go pick it up.
      - jschwartzi 10y ago
        I'm waiting for Amazon to finish their locker network so they start to sell un-utilized capacity for this purpose. This strategy is why we have AWS.
    - Symbiote 10y ago
      Apart from the automated delivery, services like this exist. I used one in Denmark last week. I received an SMS saying delivery would be the next day, but I could reply to request delivery to the drop off point in a nearby supermarket instead of at my home. I did this. I received another SMS with a collection code. A keypad on the set of lockers opened the lock on one of them, and I collected the package at a perfectly convenient time. http://www.swipbox.dk/ http://www.swipbox.dk/
  - HCIdivision17 10y ago
    Oh you're right, of course. But part of the ridiculousness of industrial automation is that at some point all those variables will be catalogued and dealt with. A bit poorly I'd bet, but we'll certainly see it happen. It'll just take another few decades...
  - MertsA 10y ago
    For the last 100 feet, yeah sure, you'll need someone to handle the package. But my box of PCI express network cards didn't get a boot print on it in the last 100 feet. My box of a replacement drum unit didn't get thrown about in the last 100 feet. Someone picking up a box and walking 50 feet with it usually isn't where shipping damage occurs.
    - Tempest1981 10y ago
      I remember seeing 2 major-name delivery trucks parked back-to-back at a fast food restaurant. The drivers were transferring packages from one truck to the other. By transferring, I mean tossing them 10-20 feet in the air, and letting them land. Reminded me of Jim Carrey in Pet Detective. (This was several years ago.)
  - WiseWeasel 10y ago
    New idea for a game: Package Tycoon; give achievements and badges for successfully guiding the robot to deliver all your packages, and sit back while the kids do it for free! Or wait, scratch that; how about Uber for packages. Bored at work? You could be delivering packages remotely to supplement your income! I think it's only a matter of time before large scale data gathering service providers form a good-enough model of the environment in which they operate, to the point that the core service can be completely automated.
    - Someone 10y ago
      Uber for packages already exists (https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works) They use "Earn on your own schedule" instead of "Bored at work?" as a slogan, though (https://www.uber.com/signup/drive/deliver/ https://www.uber.com/signup/drive/deliver/)
  - Natanael_L 10y ago
    I have a feeling you'll need automation on the receiving end too. Smarter mailboxes where you literally address the mail to an electronic physical mailbox, which digitally signs the receipt.
M_Grey 10y ago
People care as much as they're paid and treated well to care.
- jethro_tell 10y ago
  And even then, they tend to be a little more fallible than they are trying to be.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    It's true, especially when tired.
- XorNot 10y ago
  They also care as much as they think their ideas and creativity are actually being respected/rewarded. Doesn't matter how much you pay someone if you make it clear at every point that you don't care what they think about trying to improve the job they do, then they'll adjust their enthusiasm accordingly. Or if trying to be better is used as a form of punishment i.e. "that's a good idea Barry, you can be in charge of implementing it without any change in pay or responsibilities!"
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Oh god, that last line was chilling and all too familiar. I actually felt my heart-rate increase. There's nothing worse than being institutionally punished for having a good idea.
ayymao 10y ago
When the result is good it's always the managers or the owners that receive the credit, and now it's the workers that get the blame.
Noos 10y ago
The wage for a UPS driver is somewhere around $11 an hour, with seasonal temporary help making less. Most of them are part time drivers, so they have to work a second job to make ends meet. Surprisingly, if you pay people crap and force them to look for new employment while working for you due to low wages, no hours, and poor advancement opportunities, you tend to get bad service. And if you rely on seasonal temps you WILL get bad service, as they have little loyalty to you beyond the month or two you pay them. But no, first answer is always "remove people" I guess. Like you even can, no robot is going to be able to do a UPS job any time soon.
- bunderbunder 10y ago
  Huh. I actually find that figure really hard to believe. 17-ish years ago I got a temp seasonal job at one of UPS's air hubs, and they paid me $8 per hour. $8 in then-money is equivalent to more than $11 in now-money. So you're saying I was better paid as a seasonal temp than people who are much higher in UPS's pecking order than that are nowadays. Now it being part time, yeah, I believe that. Pretty much everyone in that facility was working about 30h/wk.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    Very possible. Median real wage growth (inflation adjusted) have been sluggish post recession, and considering the explosive rise in wages in certain knowledge sectors, that must be offset by negative real wage growth sectors elsewhere.
    - bunderbunder 10y ago
      Yeah, but even beyond that, based on my understanding of the situation, $11/hr now would also mean that the nominal wage of drivers has also gone down over that same time period.
- alistairSH 10y ago
  Source for those wages? Anecdote: I have several high school friends who drive/deliver for UPS, it's a union shop, they appear to be reasonably well paid (both own homes in typical middle-class neighborhoods, take vacations, etc).
analogmemory 10y ago
Yeah but could a robot deliver as good as this? https://scontent-lax3-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/14294978_976667755812789_1822559054_n.jpg https://scontent-lax3-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/142...
treehau5 10y ago
Can we replace you with a robot so I never have to read such an ignorant, inhumane comment again? Why don't we try treating low wage workers like their valuable, and give them more credit when they do a good job instead of their CEO's getting the big bonuses? You'd be amazed what people are capable of when treated right. If you still get losers smashing up boxes, fire them. By that point there will be a line of applicants waiting to do a better job, and the irresponsible worker can go and figure out why he or she got fired and do better next crack at it. So sick of the endless chatter of this "automation utopia" here. It doesn't exist, it's not going to exist likely for hundreds of years, so lets turn the blind eye while the automaters rake in the profits and wages continue to stagnate for the next 40 years like they have the previous 40.
- post-it 10y ago
  Why do you want people to have to work? A job automated is a person that doesn't need to work.
  - nercht12 10y ago
    We live in a capitalistic system (surprise!) - You don't work, you don't eat. So if all tasks are automated, then only big companies make money and everyone else starves. But the big biz will save themselves by going overseas until they've harvested that money. In the end, it all doesn't matter anyways - "the rich will get richer and the poor, poorer."
    - AskHeaven 10y ago
      Isn't that the duty of the tax system and the government? Just because the system is pretty broken down in its current state, in the US, doesn't mean it cannot work. Some european countries are doing pretty well. I think that protectionist policies are a step backwards, we should come up with new solutions to our new problems instead of looking at the past and trying to selectively apply the nice things in the past.
  - treehau5 10y ago
    It has nothing to do with me wanting people to work, but with people wanting to work. Believe it or not, some people want to work. Many are raised on the principle of you need to work to eat, and will continue to raise their kids in this fashion for the unforeseeable future. Call it what you want, it is just the way some people live their life and find worth. We have to stop and ask ourselves why on earth would we want to even automate all work? It always goes down some utilitarian route, and I am saddened to see that this is the only ethical framework that has room in modern, capitalistic society. > A job automated is a person that doesn't need to work. False. A job automated is a person that a company doesn't need a worker for. There is a difference, in that now that person doesn't get paid. Company makes more money. This will be the situation until we reach the fabled "automation utopia" where all the essentials are taken care of such as food, shelter, water, travel, medicine, law, governance, and humans are left to frolic around to and fro. Until then, there will be hundreds of years of human suffering. Let's stop this endless pursuit to automate which is driven largely by profit, and focus our attention on solving human suffering. We have better things to be doing with our time than to figure out how to replace everyone's job.
kalleboo 10y ago
It's also a whole attitude. I live in Japan now, and the wages here are just as shit and the pressure is if anything worse, but the service from the delivery companies is absolutely amazing.
jws 10y ago
A couple of years ago I shot footage of two UPS trucks exchange packages in my parking lot. They were tossing them out into a great heap on the ground, then going through them and tossing them back into the trucks. It was something like the day before Christmas, so I hope no one was expecting to have a fragile gift arrive intact. I suppose UPS is fine dong this, I think they say you should pack to survive a six foot drop, but it does give you second thoughts about shipping anything fragile, and I always assumed the six foot drops would be accidents.
- gregpilling 10y ago
  When we make a new box, we throw it about 20 feet across the warehouse to simulate the UPS/Fedex treatment. As a manufacturer, I can assure you that they try really hard to not pay your damage claims unless it can survive that. It would be great if someone could disrupt the duopoly of bad service.
  - easychris 10y ago
    Interestingly in Germany UPS has a good reputation (niche premium carrier). And it really seems that they handle packages better than our local carriers DHL, Hermes, DPD et al. Probably it's just impossible to find enough good employees (for the salary they are willing to pay), and once you reach a certain scale, you will always face such issues.
    - masklinn 10y ago
      > they handle packages better than our local carriers DHL God DHL is such an utter shit-show, it's amazing. > for the salary they are willing to pay Yeah that tends to be a big issue, there isn't any positive incentive to care, and the "production" incentives (number of packages through) generally go the other way, wasting time treating packages carefully is a good way to not meet quota and get shit-canned. And let's not kid ourselves, consumers aren't generally willing to pay for expensive careful shipping either.
  - btcprint 10y ago
WesleyJohnson 10y ago
I worked at a distribution center for a large electronics retailer for 4+ years. It was my experience that a lot of those guys slinging boxes either didn't care, or just didn't have time to care. To the person who's been saving up for that $1200 4K TV, it's a big deal and having it come in damaged is incredibly frustrating and disappointing. To the guy loading his 3rd 58' trailer of his 10 hour shift in the middle of August - maybe not so much. You'd like to think your package is handled with the same care and pride that you would give it, but that's not the reality. Quotas, deadlines, bottom lines and the human condition just won't allow it.
- dvirsky 10y ago
  > Quotas, deadlines, bottom lines I guess companies can in some cases track damages backwards and add these to the quotas and bottom lines. When I was 18 I worked for a few months on the assembly line at a Motorola manufacturing plant, assembling radio communication devices. It was a shit job with minimum wage and we had to meet strict quotas, but assembly errors were also counted, (the goal was "six sigma", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma). Once defects were a priority as well, and they were tracked to a specific person (by means of a sticker on each assembly stage), people started to care. BTW the only cool thing about it was that the company REALLY cared about improving efficiency and reducing errors, and anyone who would come up with an improvement to any process, would get a reward, that could be a lot of money in extreme cases. I suggested a very basic "hack" that saved the company $100 a month or so, and got a small gift and a certificate of excellence or some bullshit.
  - john_reel 10y ago
    What was your hack?
    - dvirsky 10y ago
      It was really stupid. There were these LED 2-digit panels (something like this: http://bit.ly/2d9fa3a http://bit.ly/2d9fa3a) that my job was to screw into the case. Anyway, the connector cables were manually soldered to them at a nearby station, and the ladies who did the soldering used to just pile the LED panels in a box, and as a result some of them would get scratches on the visible part and had to be thrown away. At the same time, the speakers I would also screw-in, came in these grid-like trays, where each speaker was placed in a small rectangular cell. My brilliant idea was to recycle these cardboard trays and have the solderers place the finished circuits in them, so they'd never damage each other. It saved 10-20 defected panels a month IIRC. Not enough to get me bonus, but enough to get me a cheap FM radio and a certificate. A guy who worked there at the time optimized some circuit board printing procedure and saved the company IIRC like $100K a year (or was it a month?), and got a very big bonus.

by aluhut 10y ago

It seems like people who are responsible don't care anymore. Maybe it's the wages, the pressure or whatever. It looks like it's about time to replace even more humans from the equation.

HCIdivision17 10y ago

I strongly contend that there very likely has not been a decline in the give-a-damn factor. My experience is that it really hasn't ever been too high. Just look at cartoons 50 years ago, and packages getting wrecked en route is a staple joke; the jokes were rarely obscure, but often topical. There is always a few great operators, but mostly you just fix you processes so people default to failure less. Hence hacks like the TV stamp. But the answer is (as always) more automation. Mind, this can lead to really neat edge cases where you accidentally build a package smashing factory. But in general repeatability (machine) beats out diligence (people) every time. You just have to, you know, pay for it. The cost benefit analysis probably strongly favors the marked box in this case.

Noos 10y ago
Good luck trying to automate a system where the vehicle has to unload a package of anywhere from envelope size to a 90" TV. It has to bring this across a driveway of varying shape or size, or even no drive way at all, bringing it inside an apartment complex or condo. It has to realize the correct address or room, collect a signature, or realize that no human being is present to sign for it. Then it returns the item to the truck. The sheer amount of variables that this would require, without error, would be ridiculous. UPS and other places tried to make the customer do it by storage lockers, and those failed. There's nowhere near any elegant form of solution to improve on that.
- kbenson 10y ago
  I think it likely that if we see a significant amount of automation in delivery, the last mile will eventually see it too. Right now, my neighborhood has grouped mailboxes[1], and anything more than a semi-flat package will not fix. Small boxes that don't fit are delivered to the shared larger compartment, which is locked, and the key is then left in your mailbox. When you use the key, it does not come out of the shared compartment, so in retrieving your delivery the key is automatically returned. I don't see why this system can't be scaled up somewhat. Automated delivery to a shared compartment which can be designed to accommodate such a scenario would be significantly easier. Want direct to home delivery by a person? I'm sure the delivery companies can accommodate you with a special type of delivery[2]. Theft might be a problem, but since these are generally in neighborhoods next to houses, and setting up a camera would be simple (and undoubtedly pay for itself in some circumstances when people contend they did not get a package), I think it wouldn't be too much of a problem. 1: https://www.mailboxworks.com/images/af-12doorcbu-lrg.jpg https://www.mailboxworks.com/images/af-12doorcbu-lrg.jpg 2: In truth, it would probably start with the automated to shared compartment delivery being a new option that's slightly cheaper. Eventually it would probably become the norm since it's cheaper.
  - nucleardog 10y ago
    Are there really enough individuals (not businesses) that want to-the-door delivery that it's even worthwhile? My shipping experience is a constant fight to get them to hold the package for pickup because I'm not going to be home during their delivery hours (~9-5 Mon-Fri) and I don't want to wait four or five business days for them to make several delivery attempts before I go pick it up.
    - jschwartzi 10y ago
      I'm waiting for Amazon to finish their locker network so they start to sell un-utilized capacity for this purpose. This strategy is why we have AWS.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    Apart from the automated delivery, services like this exist. I used one in Denmark last week. I received an SMS saying delivery would be the next day, but I could reply to request delivery to the drop off point in a nearby supermarket instead of at my home. I did this. I received another SMS with a collection code. A keypad on the set of lockers opened the lock on one of them, and I collected the package at a perfectly convenient time. http://www.swipbox.dk/ http://www.swipbox.dk/
- HCIdivision17 10y ago
  Oh you're right, of course. But part of the ridiculousness of industrial automation is that at some point all those variables will be catalogued and dealt with. A bit poorly I'd bet, but we'll certainly see it happen. It'll just take another few decades...
- MertsA 10y ago
  For the last 100 feet, yeah sure, you'll need someone to handle the package. But my box of PCI express network cards didn't get a boot print on it in the last 100 feet. My box of a replacement drum unit didn't get thrown about in the last 100 feet. Someone picking up a box and walking 50 feet with it usually isn't where shipping damage occurs.
  - Tempest1981 10y ago
    I remember seeing 2 major-name delivery trucks parked back-to-back at a fast food restaurant. The drivers were transferring packages from one truck to the other. By transferring, I mean tossing them 10-20 feet in the air, and letting them land. Reminded me of Jim Carrey in Pet Detective. (This was several years ago.)
- WiseWeasel 10y ago
  New idea for a game: Package Tycoon; give achievements and badges for successfully guiding the robot to deliver all your packages, and sit back while the kids do it for free! Or wait, scratch that; how about Uber for packages. Bored at work? You could be delivering packages remotely to supplement your income! I think it's only a matter of time before large scale data gathering service providers form a good-enough model of the environment in which they operate, to the point that the core service can be completely automated.
  - Someone 10y ago
    Uber for packages already exists (https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works) They use "Earn on your own schedule" instead of "Bored at work?" as a slogan, though (https://www.uber.com/signup/drive/deliver/ https://www.uber.com/signup/drive/deliver/)
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  I have a feeling you'll need automation on the receiving end too. Smarter mailboxes where you literally address the mail to an electronic physical mailbox, which digitally signs the receipt.

M_Grey 10y ago

People care as much as they're paid and treated well to care.

jethro_tell 10y ago
And even then, they tend to be a little more fallible than they are trying to be.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  It's true, especially when tired.
XorNot 10y ago
They also care as much as they think their ideas and creativity are actually being respected/rewarded. Doesn't matter how much you pay someone if you make it clear at every point that you don't care what they think about trying to improve the job they do, then they'll adjust their enthusiasm accordingly. Or if trying to be better is used as a form of punishment i.e. "that's a good idea Barry, you can be in charge of implementing it without any change in pay or responsibilities!"
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Oh god, that last line was chilling and all too familiar. I actually felt my heart-rate increase. There's nothing worse than being institutionally punished for having a good idea.

ayymao 10y ago

When the result is good it's always the managers or the owners that receive the credit, and now it's the workers that get the blame.

Noos 10y ago

The wage for a UPS driver is somewhere around $11 an hour, with seasonal temporary help making less. Most of them are part time drivers, so they have to work a second job to make ends meet. Surprisingly, if you pay people crap and force them to look for new employment while working for you due to low wages, no hours, and poor advancement opportunities, you tend to get bad service. And if you rely on seasonal temps you WILL get bad service, as they have little loyalty to you beyond the month or two you pay them. But no, first answer is always "remove people" I guess. Like you even can, no robot is going to be able to do a UPS job any time soon.

bunderbunder 10y ago
Huh. I actually find that figure really hard to believe. 17-ish years ago I got a temp seasonal job at one of UPS's air hubs, and they paid me $8 per hour. $8 in then-money is equivalent to more than $11 in now-money. So you're saying I was better paid as a seasonal temp than people who are much higher in UPS's pecking order than that are nowadays. Now it being part time, yeah, I believe that. Pretty much everyone in that facility was working about 30h/wk.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  Very possible. Median real wage growth (inflation adjusted) have been sluggish post recession, and considering the explosive rise in wages in certain knowledge sectors, that must be offset by negative real wage growth sectors elsewhere.
  - bunderbunder 10y ago
    Yeah, but even beyond that, based on my understanding of the situation, $11/hr now would also mean that the nominal wage of drivers has also gone down over that same time period.
alistairSH 10y ago
Source for those wages? Anecdote: I have several high school friends who drive/deliver for UPS, it's a union shop, they appear to be reasonably well paid (both own homes in typical middle-class neighborhoods, take vacations, etc).

analogmemory 10y ago

Yeah but could a robot deliver as good as this? https://scontent-lax3-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/14294978_976667755812789_1822559054_n.jpg https://scontent-lax3-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/142...

treehau5 10y ago

Can we replace you with a robot so I never have to read such an ignorant, inhumane comment again? Why don't we try treating low wage workers like their valuable, and give them more credit when they do a good job instead of their CEO's getting the big bonuses? You'd be amazed what people are capable of when treated right. If you still get losers smashing up boxes, fire them. By that point there will be a line of applicants waiting to do a better job, and the irresponsible worker can go and figure out why he or she got fired and do better next crack at it. So sick of the endless chatter of this "automation utopia" here. It doesn't exist, it's not going to exist likely for hundreds of years, so lets turn the blind eye while the automaters rake in the profits and wages continue to stagnate for the next 40 years like they have the previous 40.

post-it 10y ago
Why do you want people to have to work? A job automated is a person that doesn't need to work.
- nercht12 10y ago
  We live in a capitalistic system (surprise!) - You don't work, you don't eat. So if all tasks are automated, then only big companies make money and everyone else starves. But the big biz will save themselves by going overseas until they've harvested that money. In the end, it all doesn't matter anyways - "the rich will get richer and the poor, poorer."
  - AskHeaven 10y ago
    Isn't that the duty of the tax system and the government? Just because the system is pretty broken down in its current state, in the US, doesn't mean it cannot work. Some european countries are doing pretty well. I think that protectionist policies are a step backwards, we should come up with new solutions to our new problems instead of looking at the past and trying to selectively apply the nice things in the past.
- treehau5 10y ago
  It has nothing to do with me wanting people to work, but with people wanting to work. Believe it or not, some people want to work. Many are raised on the principle of you need to work to eat, and will continue to raise their kids in this fashion for the unforeseeable future. Call it what you want, it is just the way some people live their life and find worth. We have to stop and ask ourselves why on earth would we want to even automate all work? It always goes down some utilitarian route, and I am saddened to see that this is the only ethical framework that has room in modern, capitalistic society. > A job automated is a person that doesn't need to work. False. A job automated is a person that a company doesn't need a worker for. There is a difference, in that now that person doesn't get paid. Company makes more money. This will be the situation until we reach the fabled "automation utopia" where all the essentials are taken care of such as food, shelter, water, travel, medicine, law, governance, and humans are left to frolic around to and fro. Until then, there will be hundreds of years of human suffering. Let's stop this endless pursuit to automate which is driven largely by profit, and focus our attention on solving human suffering. We have better things to be doing with our time than to figure out how to replace everyone's job.

kalleboo 10y ago

It's also a whole attitude. I live in Japan now, and the wages here are just as shit and the pressure is if anything worse, but the service from the delivery companies is absolutely amazing.

jws 10y ago

A couple of years ago I shot footage of two UPS trucks exchange packages in my parking lot. They were tossing them out into a great heap on the ground, then going through them and tossing them back into the trucks. It was something like the day before Christmas, so I hope no one was expecting to have a fragile gift arrive intact. I suppose UPS is fine dong this, I think they say you should pack to survive a six foot drop, but it does give you second thoughts about shipping anything fragile, and I always assumed the six foot drops would be accidents.

gregpilling 10y ago
When we make a new box, we throw it about 20 feet across the warehouse to simulate the UPS/Fedex treatment. As a manufacturer, I can assure you that they try really hard to not pay your damage claims unless it can survive that. It would be great if someone could disrupt the duopoly of bad service.
- easychris 10y ago
  Interestingly in Germany UPS has a good reputation (niche premium carrier). And it really seems that they handle packages better than our local carriers DHL, Hermes, DPD et al. Probably it's just impossible to find enough good employees (for the salary they are willing to pay), and once you reach a certain scale, you will always face such issues.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    > they handle packages better than our local carriers DHL God DHL is such an utter shit-show, it's amazing. > for the salary they are willing to pay Yeah that tends to be a big issue, there isn't any positive incentive to care, and the "production" incentives (number of packages through) generally go the other way, wasting time treating packages carefully is a good way to not meet quota and get shit-canned. And let's not kid ourselves, consumers aren't generally willing to pay for expensive careful shipping either.
- btcprint 10y ago

WesleyJohnson 10y ago

I worked at a distribution center for a large electronics retailer for 4+ years. It was my experience that a lot of those guys slinging boxes either didn't care, or just didn't have time to care. To the person who's been saving up for that $1200 4K TV, it's a big deal and having it come in damaged is incredibly frustrating and disappointing. To the guy loading his 3rd 58' trailer of his 10 hour shift in the middle of August - maybe not so much. You'd like to think your package is handled with the same care and pride that you would give it, but that's not the reality. Quotas, deadlines, bottom lines and the human condition just won't allow it.

dvirsky 10y ago
> Quotas, deadlines, bottom lines I guess companies can in some cases track damages backwards and add these to the quotas and bottom lines. When I was 18 I worked for a few months on the assembly line at a Motorola manufacturing plant, assembling radio communication devices. It was a shit job with minimum wage and we had to meet strict quotas, but assembly errors were also counted, (the goal was "six sigma", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma). Once defects were a priority as well, and they were tracked to a specific person (by means of a sticker on each assembly stage), people started to care. BTW the only cool thing about it was that the company REALLY cared about improving efficiency and reducing errors, and anyone who would come up with an improvement to any process, would get a reward, that could be a lot of money in extreme cases. I suggested a very basic "hack" that saved the company $100 a month or so, and got a small gift and a certificate of excellence or some bullshit.
- john_reel 10y ago
  What was your hack?
  - dvirsky 10y ago
    It was really stupid. There were these LED 2-digit panels (something like this: http://bit.ly/2d9fa3a http://bit.ly/2d9fa3a) that my job was to screw into the case. Anyway, the connector cables were manually soldered to them at a nearby station, and the ladies who did the soldering used to just pile the LED panels in a box, and as a result some of them would get scratches on the visible part and had to be thrown away. At the same time, the speakers I would also screw-in, came in these grid-like trays, where each speaker was placed in a small rectangular cell. My brilliant idea was to recycle these cardboard trays and have the solderers place the finished circuits in them, so they'd never damage each other. It saved 10-20 defected panels a month IIRC. Not enough to get me bonus, but enough to get me a cheap FM radio and a certificate. A guy who worked there at the time optimized some circuit board printing procedure and saved the company IIRC like $100K a year (or was it a month?), and got a very big bonus.