UPS Drivers to Earn $170,000 a Year Plus a Brown Shorts Allowance

No, we’re lying about the last part

By Ed Goldman

Delivery people at United Parcel Service are poised to make $170,000 per year, according to reports last week about the new union agreement. 

This could at last be the job for me. Other possibilities just haven’t worked out. They’ve included:

– Stunt double for elderly political campaigners for when they need to eat corn-on-the-cob at Iowa state fairs without revealing they wear dentures;

– Life Coach for Bernie Madoff.  This looked like a sure thing—I mean, he was in prison, probably for “life,” so what better time for a “life” coach?—but he died before our first meeting. I’ve billed his survivors but suspect I’ll have to write off collecting for a few years; 

– Designated jogger for President Joe Biden as he exits Marine One, the presidential helicopter, or Air Force One, Harrison’s Ford’s airplane. I’m not saying Joe doesn’t do a convincing job of bounding at least 17 feet at a time for the cameras. But what if he naps on the chopper or plane on the way to a photo op? The White House can’t afford to have him tumble out of bed and down a gangplank in a cranky mood. Alas, I didn’t make it past the vetting process. As one of the staffers told me, “You look more like Chris Christie than Joe Biden.” At least they let me down with a compliment. I think he’s adorbs, in a Baby Huey sort of way. 

But this UPS job: Come on! For less than half the pay they’re offering, I would be glad—nay, proud!—to wear brown shorts, drive a truck while standing up and take packages to the wrong address. Unfortunately, my own union, FLWAP (Free Lancers Without A Prayer), prohibits my doing anything that could make me solvent over a period of time.

It’s too bad. As a writer, I’ve managed to drive to incorrect addresses to conduct interviews any number of times; in fact, I’m something of a legend at GPS headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. Bet you didn’t know that GPS is based in a place that gets, like, 74 months straight of, like, 146-degree temperatures. UPS, meanwhile, has offices in Atlanta, Georgia, which has a similar climate for much of the year. Is it any wonder that drivers get to wear shorts? But I digress.

Something UPS drivers in my neighborhood do, which I’m convinced I could learn, is stop their trucks so that they not only block cars parked on the street but also, since we store our cars overnight in garages behind our homes, block our access to those garages. Couple these practices with the drivers’ ability to leave their radios switched to hip-hop stations at high volume when they hip-hop out of their trucks and you can see why I think I could be a useful addition to their workforce. In fact, if you interviewed my neighbors, I feel certain they’d roundly testify to my rudeness.

This last part only bothers me when I realize that if do something horribly media-worthy, prompting reporters to ask my neighbors what I was like before I did the things that proved horribly media-worthy, they’re likely to respond with comments like: 

– “He was always kind of abrupt when you asked him how his day was going;” and 

– “Well, I guess he was kind of a loner. I know he had a cat for a long time, and wrote about it, I think its name was Osborn. But it died and the wife and I always wondered about that;” and

– “You never see his parents visiting or anything, and since both of them should be in their early 100s by now, you’d think he’d want to see them more.”

But these things needn’t distract us from our central mission today: getting me a job as a UPS driver at $170,000 per year. 

I mean, it’s not like I’m asking to be appointed a U.S. senator or congressperson, for God’s sake! Each of them pulls down about $174,000 before you factor in campaign contributions, per diem reimbursements and bribes. No, they may make a few grand more than I’d earn as a UPS driver but I just figure they should get paid whatever they deserve.