A Day in the Life of Brown

I made the decision last night not to follow through with UPS. This morning, I didn't call to see if they needed me. Around 9:30, they called me to ask if I was available so I agreed to meet a driver at 11:30 near the Somerville Circle.

The driver was pretty young, tall and skinny like me. He was a nice enough guy although he had trouble making it through sentences without any cursing. His route, he told me, was primarily pick-ups so it wasn't as bad as other drivers who may do 250 stops in a day for drop-offs.

We made our way through a few pick-ups around the circle and then did some drop-offs in Bridgewater and Raritan. At one home, a woman left a note requesting that we drop off her package to her in a hair salon at a nearby strip mall. I was surprised when the driver said we'd give it a shot. That's pretty good service. I delivered that package and the woman (and everyone else in the salon) was so happy she "bought me lunch" by giving me $20. I wasn't sure if UPS employees are allowed to accept tips so I said "you don't have to do that," but I was glad that she insisted. The driver said we wouldn't be stopping for lunch (as we learned is common during orientation) so we split the $20. Later on, he did stop at Starbucks and we used his $10 for both of our coffees.

He dropped me back at my car at 3:15 so I only worked for about 3 hours 45 minutes. This was plenty for me. The lifting wasn't that bad, it was much warmer than I expected it would be even though the temperature was in the 40s. The difficult part is jumping in and out of the truck every minute. All that climbing and the rushing up stairs to drop off packages is the hard part of the job. I imagine it must be pretty tough when it's raining, snowing, etc.

I used a cover story when he asked personal questions. I went with the "I'm a college student" line and told him I wanted to be a teacher in the future. This isn't a lie; I do want to be a teacher in the future. There didn't seem to be any reason to try to explain the story to him though.

In the end, it was a good day. I earned a couple bucks and got out of the condo. I'm not going to call in to volunteer tomorrow or next week, but if they call me I'll consider going in.