Job Description: UPS Store Associate

During my time in high school, a long-time family friend of mine owned a UPS Store franchise. Several years before I started working, the owner was short-staffed and recruited my older sister, Amanda. When I turned 16 and decided to start my job hunt, I knew it was my turn to join the team at the store. I began working 2-hour shifts after school each day and long Saturday shifts.

When I tell people I used to work for a UPS Store, they ask: “so you used to drive those big trucks?” Considering my 16-year-old self was still trying to master driving a sedan, I’m not sure who in the right mind would let me drive a massive truck. So, the answer is no. I worked as an associate– packing boxes, creating shipping labels, and helping customers with their printing and mailbox needs. 

Though I took on a variety of roles throughout my year of working there, these are the three most significant:

• Interrogator

• Tetris player

• Listener

Interrogator

If you’ve ever attempted to ship a package from a UPS Store or FedEx location, you have likely been a victim of the following interrogation: 

What is your full name? What is your phone number? What is your address? What are you shipping? What is the value of it? Would you like to insure it? Would you like to put it in a new box? Do you want me to bubble wrap it? Who are you sending this to? What is their address? By when do you want it to get there? Are you okay with paying X amount?

Though I used to be the one doing the interrogating, I too have been on the other side. So, if this describes an experience you’ve had, I empathize with your pain. The length of my Saturday shifts was exhausting, and it would take all my strength to try to remember this sequence of questions. However, I knew finding the answers to these questions was critical to providing high quality services to our customers.

Tetris player

While there were many games I went through phases of when I was a child, Tetris was not one of them. Thanks to this job, though, I learned how to play a more complicated, more realistic, and higher stakes rendition of the computer game. 

Imagine a customer walks into your store holding a bag of items. This bag contains a few books, a glass candle, a coffee mug, hand sanitizer, some snacks, and carefully plated cookies. The customer requests your help to ship these items to their daughter who is attending college across the country. She needs you to first package the items in a box before preparing the shipping label. In packing the box, you:

• Select a box that will fit all the items

• Bubble wrap fragile items

• Place the sturdier items on the bottom

• Place the remaining items on top

But does this all fit in the box you choose? In a way that won’t crush any of the items (especially the cookies)? Solving this puzzle is where I developed my Tetris skills. It often took trial and error to successfully pack an assortment of abnormally shaped objects into one rectangular box.

Listener

I’m sure every retail or customer service worker understands how aggressive customers can become when they are unhappy. Unfortunately, I understand this all too well. In these situations, I had no choice but to listen to the customer’s concerns and try my best to resolve whatever issue was at hand. 

There is one indignant customer I remember more than the others. Susan (the name I will call her in this story) walked into the store and wanted to ship a painting to France. Because the painting was large, fragile, valuable, and going to traverse a whole ocean, my coworkers and I gave her a quote for packing and shipping it. We informed her it would be around $300-400. 

Susan immediately disagreed with us, claiming there was no way it could possibly cost that much. After some back and forth, she gave us the green light to begin our packing process. We spent 20 minutes wrapping and securing the high value item in a box. I input the final measurements and weight of the box into our computer system, and sure enough, it was going to cost $400 to ship it. 

Susan proceeded to yell at me, claiming the price was ridiculous and I must have done something wrong for the computer system to show me that price. I calmly explained to her why it cost so much, but ultimately got stuck listening to her rage while keeping a smile on my face.

Passive Sentences: 0%

Flesch Reading Ease: 72.5

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 6.9