9 ms·

The drivers use empty water bottles to piss in because they don't have time to go elsewhere.

• wil421 8y ago
  Or the bushes in front of my house. As was the case a couple Christmas’ ago.
  • mod 8y ago
    Did you care? I can't really imagine myself caring.
    • soperj 8y ago
      Even if he doesn't care (I personally wouldn't), doesn't change the fact that the guy couldn't even take a proper bathroom break because of arbitrary time constraints.
    • eximius 8y ago
      Do you have kids? Does his neighbor have kids? Maybe he has sensitive plants and the acidity will kill them. It doesn't matter. Some rando is pissing on his property. It isn't a huge deal, but it is unpleasant.
      • jdietrich 8y ago
        If someone is under so much pressure at work that they have to piss in my yard, then they're having a far worse day than me. As far as I'm concerned, they can piss anywhere they damned well like.
        • gamblor956 8y ago
          The point of saying that the UPS driver was pissing in his bushes was that the UPS driver doesn't have time to take a restroom break and has to grab the best opportunity he can find. It's not about the property owner's feelings. However, even that can be viewed as an externality that UPS is pushing onto third parties.
        • s73v3r_ 8y ago
          Right, but that's probably why I wouldn't be so upset at the person, but at the company that's forcing them to.
      • matte_black 8y ago
        A dog could piss in your bushes and not care, all the same.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
    • wil421 8y ago
      I care more about the fact he was put in a position he had to do it than my bush.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• ourmandave 8y ago
  Suppose they could always get scab workers from Amazon warehouses who would be grateful for those problems.
  • kazen44 8y ago
    you make it sound like this is a good thing?
  • admax88q 8y ago
    Group A doesn't have it as bad as Group B, therefore Group A is never allowed to complain about anything.
• nathanaldensr 8y ago
  I'm curious why this comment was down-voted. Is the assertion false? Have there been reports of UPS drivers doing this?
  • ddppee 8y ago
    It's downvoted because the users of hackernews have an irrational hatred for unions, so anything that justifies having/forming a union is downvoted
    • craftyguy 8y ago
      No, I think it's downvoted because it's a made up story. It's easy to make up stories on the internet that invoke the feels, much harder to verify that they are true. Stop trying to make this about "unions vs no unions." Edit: No proof has been supplied this happened to an actual UPS employee, nor has there been any official statement by the union that this is actually something that has happened. Therefore, this is fake news until proven otherwise.
      • gamblor956 8y ago
        There's literally a comment on this thread where someone states that this actually happened. And a similar story, though involving bushes. Ergo, not made up.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
      • lallysingh 8y ago
        If you don't believe the commentators here, why are you part of this community?
        • craftyguy 8y ago
          Because not all comments here are people making up stories / sharing anecdotes, and it's relatively easy for me to ignore them. I was merely answering GP's question about why it was being downvoted.
• barking 8y ago
  I've heard the same story during strikes over here by public service workers. It's a story designed to engender sympathy from a public most of whom in reality have inferior pay and conditions to the strikers. The public service are the last unionised workers in Britain and are about the only people who ever go on strike any more.
  • cortesoft 8y ago
    I hate this sort of "there are other people worse off" dismissal when workers stand up for themselves. Change has to start somewhere, and other people being worse off is never a reason to not demand better conditions.
    • barking 8y ago
      The thing about the public service is that everyone is an employee. Even the top boss is. It's the last place where change will come from. With their unsackability and final salary linked pension schemes they are completely out of touch with a country where zero hours contracts have become normal while at the same time its the taxes of those people who prop up their generally unproductive jobs.
      • soperj 8y ago
        How is that a rebuttal?
  • booleandilemma 8y ago
    So you’re saying we should feel good when UPS workers shit themselves and pee in bottles?
    • barking 8y ago
      They don't really do that, you know. It happens about as often as it does in other jobs, ie rarely.
      • 8y ago
• stevenmays 8y ago
  I have a family member who drives for UPS. He shit himself while driving because he wasn't allowed to stop outside of assigned breaks. They also tried to fire him because he had to take off for cancer surgery (minor melanoma). He tells some horror stories.
  • Apofis 8y ago
    How the fuck is a unionized company allowed to do shit like this?
    • wccrawford 8y ago
      Things have to get bad enough to convince the workers to give up pay for a while to do the strike.
      • Thlom 8y ago
        Don't most unions have a war chest they can pay members on strike from?
    • drzaiusapelord 8y ago
      This is a job that pays about $35/hr which is what the union helped them negotiate. They'd rather piss in bottles than lose $35 a day on an hour long break. Their union won't force an hour long unpaid break, so the drivers just do their own thing on the clock. The union also fights against CDL requirements for better/safer drivers and allows excessive overtime because it pays out so much. Its not a good union by certain measures, like a lot of big unions focused on low/no skill labor it can help raise salaries (and raise product cost) but also not be helpful in anything they think 'hurts' workers like mandatory unpaid breaks, CDL requirements, background/credit checks, etc. Modern unions have little in common with the unions of old that existed before we had any real safety regulations and far less labor regulation. Now they exist almost solely to return as much financial value as possible (wages) for the investment (dues).
      • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• beckler 8y ago
  I did a holiday stent with them while I was in university. I was a package runner, so I would take the packages from the truck to the house, while the driver could organize everything and get things ready for the next few houses. The worst part was the super short breaks. We would stop for maybe 5-8 minutes, piss, and grab food to go. There were a few things from my experience there that stick out in my mind: - There was this weird implied situation with running. It was iterated to me multiple times that UPS does not encourage me to run, but I needed to do everything I could to efficiently get the package to the house and back. So they were basically telling us to run, even though they couldn't specifically say it. - On my route one day, there was a van following us and stealing packages that we were dropping off. We had no idea until they scared the shit out of some poor lady, who ended up calling customer support. Apparently, she saw me, and even motioned for me to leave the package... but I never saw her- I just dropped it off. When she went to the door to get it, the thieves were taking it off her porch. I'm glad she said she motioned me to leave it, because if not, UPS wanted to hold me personally responsible for the loss. - We had to pick up packages from a handful of UPS stores in the area. We even had a bigger truck that day to hold the capacity. There was zero organization to it, it was just throw everything that could fit on the truck. We had it filled to the TOP, but we still had to do some deliveries. I had no idea where to find the packages, because they got all mixed up... So we ended up crushing some packages because we had to climb the mountain of boxes to find them. I always felt bad about that day because I stepped on a styrofoam box of omaha steaks and completely destroyed it, but we delivered it anyways.
  • questionsuch 8y ago
    Was your route in the last case optimized? Or did you have to figure out the delivery sequence on your own?
    • beckler 8y ago
      Things we're normally pretty well organized, except that day that we had to pick up everything. We moved all the deliveries to the front, but we had WAY more pickups than the driver expected and that's how they got mixed up. Plus other people were helping load it up and moved things around to fit better. It wasn't common for things to get that out-of-place.
• gist 8y ago
  > use empty water bottles to piss in because they don't have time to go elsewhere Would this be less bad if they supplied one of those bottles that is specifically for that purpose? And what is so bad about that anyway? What if there was a porta potty similar to what is on boats (or rv's) in the truck? Would you feel the same way? After all at least where I am located (and elsewhere) they are competing with the low end labor which delivers for Amazon for less cost. And those employees are driven pretty hard (and get paid less with less benefits). UPS driver is not a leisurely take your time type of job. It never has been. They have always hustled in any way they could (and I remember them from the 70's).
  • s73v3r_ 8y ago
    In my mind, no. It's extremely undignified. UPS needs to hire more drivers if they are pushing people to that kind of limit, where stopping to use an actual toilet is considered a luxury.
• colordrops 8y ago
  That sounds horrible on the surface, but is it really that degrading? Astronauts do it too. It's not like they are cleaning out sewers in Mumbai.
  • s73v3r_ 8y ago
    "That sounds horrible on the surface, but is it really that degrading?" YES. "Astronauts do it too." Astronauts are in an entirely different environment, where they have nothing but a thin suit separating them from the lifeless vacuum of space. Not at all comparable to delivering packages. "It's not like they are cleaning out sewers in Mumbai." "Someone else has it worse" is never a justification or an argument.
    • scruple 8y ago
      > "That sounds horrible on the surface, but is it really that degrading?" > > YES. You piss in bottles on the job because the job demands it (never explicitly, of course). When you're poor, working poor, a manual laborer, etc... The power dynamics at these levels are so grossly disproportionate that you don't have a seat in the room, let alone at the table. You have to piss outside of your break times? Deal with it. Oh, you didn't get a break? Sorry, here's your last pay check, don't come back here tomorrow. That may be the extreme end of it, mostly experienced in the construction business (where I really saw the worst of it), but it wasn't far from the truth when I worked in warehouses loading trucks or in a glass plant, either. And, maybe it's a vastly different experience in a not-at-will state, maybe it's changed dramatically since the early 2000s, I wouldn't know but I really doubt it. This pissing in bottles thing is just part and parcel for manual laborers and, speaking from personal experience, I never once found it degrading. In the 8 or so years that I spent working manual labor full-time I'm not aware of any of my co-workers who did, either.
      • s73v3r_ 8y ago
        Absolutely everything in your post sounds horrible. There is absolutely no justification for it, none. There is zero reason whatsoever that employers cannot allow people breaks.
• tomcam 8y ago
  Starbucks!