Postcards from the Road to Ruin

UPS celebrates its 100-year anniversary

By HARRY R. WEBER, AP Business Writer, Sat Aug 4, 6:14 AM ET

It started out in 1907 as the brainchild of two teenagers in a Seattle basement, whose fledgling messenger service made deliveries on foot or on bicycle. As UPS Inc. celebrates its 100-year anniversary later this month, it now is the world’s largest shipping carrier — a $47 billion business with a fleet of trucks, an airline and operations in 200 countries.

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Cookie the First:

No trees touch the sky.

lucky numbers: 19, 25, 47, 38, 5, 11

Cookie the Second:

Courage comes through suffering.

lucky numbers: 28, 36, 5, 10, 37, 40

Cookie the Third:

You are a man of righteousness and integrity.

lucky numbers: 35, 14, 28, 47, 29, 2

Boswell wonders why the chicken with garlic sauce tastes funny.

“Because that’s beef,” says Gogo.

You will take a pleasant journey to a place far away.

lucky numbers: 33, 18, 42, 6, 29, 7

listen: Morphine - “Let’s Take a Trip Together”

Gogo chose the Red Lantern as our lunch destination. The chicken with garlic sauce was tasty indeed.

Treasure what you have.

lucky numbers: 24, 5, 17, 36, 27, 8

There are certain things you learn to hate when you work at UPS. Christmas is one. Harry Potter is another.

–Justin, the Zen Master of Package Car Loaders

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is making its way through the UPS shipping chain. One case of the new tome weighs in at 28-pounds. 70 cases clocks in just shy of a ton. I have no idea how many cases are moving through the Hub this week. Hundreds? Thousands? All I know for sure is that its tons either way. Damn you J.K. Rowling and your little wizard, too.

What’s that? You say you need to know how the story ends and who dies? I guess it sucks to be you.

Gogo discovers that Ruby has stripped all the blankets from the futon in the tv room.

Gogo: Look at what your dog did!

Me: My dog?

Gogo: She’s your dog when she’s bad.

listen: Joan Jett & the Blackhearts - “Bad Reputation”

Another fortune from Boswell’s trip to Bauhinia.

Your success will astonish everyone.

lucky numbers: 8, 38, 11, 24, 35, 47

Welcome to the first installment of Fortune Cookie Theater, real fortunes from actual fortune cookies shared with our readers to illuminate the path to enlightenment along the Road to Ruin.

Tonight’s fortune was provided by Boswell’s takeout order from Bauhinia.

A day is a span of time no one is wealthy enough to waste.

lucky numbers: 16, 22, 26, 3, 18, 32

Adam, the Preload Safety Coordinator, greets me at the entrance to the Hub with coffee and donuts. There are worse ways to arrive at work at 4:00am. I wonder for a moment what kind of omen this might be. It’s easy to be skeptical about employer provided Dunkin Donuts first thing on a Monday. “Have a donut– and good luck cramming those 5,000 packages into your trucks. Moohoohahahaha…!” Or maybe coffee and donuts have some elusive relation to on-the-job safety? Hey, it’s a union shop; you never know.

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A complimentary water bottle.

Awesome.

This is actually the second complimentary water bottle I’ve received from my new employer in the last three weeks. It’s far superior to the first: higher quality plastic and handy hash marks for easy measurements. I drink 2 to 3 liters of water per shift. There isn’t much airflow on the Line and none at all inside the package cars. If it’s 70-degrees outside with 50% humidity, then it’s probably close to 90-degrees and 70% humidity inside a package car. On average, I’m in and out of a package car with a 50-pound load every 20-seconds for 4 hours. The water boils out of me as fast as I can drink it.