{ I worked at an airport for a subcontractor of UPS one winter, around the holidays. On the one hand, it was an awesome job for someone who loved airplanes as m

{ I worked at an airport for a subcontractor of UPS one winter, around the holidays. On the one hand, it was an awesome job for someone who loved airplanes as much as I did (do). On the other, this was in Montana, and spending 3-4 hours every morning before school unloading an airplane's worth of packages, and then loading them into other smaller aircraft, in the ~0F weather plus 30mph windchill was pure misery. We were just tools, used to unload awkwardly sized containers full of packages onto a conveyor, and sort those packages to the right aircraft. Somehow this (in 2004) was still cheaper to use humans for, rather than some sort of automated barcode scanning system....but it was ~7.25 an hour in Montana, and for a HS student, that was good money. Its not the same kind of repetitive mind numbing work that this article describes, but it was just as full of unexplained pitfalls, with the added benefit of being on a freezing cold active runway. I ended up losing that job, after a few months, which in retrospect, was probably a good thing for my education.