I'm trying to remember why I live here, but I think that part of my brain has melted.

If you've ever wondered what a Tater Tot goes through while it's baking in your oven, a day like this in Phoenix is a good way to gain a new appreciation.

There’s a bottle of water on a little stand, with plastic cups next to it. Attached to the bottle of water is a note. The note indicates the price ($4.00), and includes the following missive:

“This bottle of natural spring water is provided as a service for our guests. A charge will be billed to your room if consumed.”

So – let me get this straight. They’ve provided a bottle of water, but they expect me to consume the room?

I suppose these pillows would be pretty filling. But the lampshades look a bit chewy. Maybe I’ll just eat the plastic bottle around the water, and leave the water itself alone.

Apparently I'm not alone in feeling that at times, UPS stands for "Useless Pieces of Shit".

That said, I don't have anything against the employees of UPS. In fact, I was once one of them. Yup, an official Teamster and everything. During my college days UPS used to hire extra help around the holiday season, and the pay was much better than one could get at almost any other job - around $8 an hour back when minimum was I think $3.05. I got the job apparently because of my sarcastic but semi-amusing comment on the application that they should hire me "because I look great in brown".

In any event, it turned out to be the toughest job I ever had. Wake up at 3am, get to work by 4am, and immediately start unloading semi trailers stacked floor to ceiling, front to back with packages of varying sizes and weights. Now mind you, this was before UPS had a 70-pound limit on packages, so some of these bastards were big and heavy.

As if that weren't enough, they had a drill sergeant-type guy who would walk from trailer to trailer (there was a row of maybe 20 of them unloading simultaneously) and yell words of, um, "encouragement" to the guy in each trailer. If I remember correctly, the goal was to unload a trailer completely in about 20 minutes.

I remember that the first day I got back from that job, I was incapable of doing anything other than laying flat on my back and groaning in pain for the rest of the day.

I didn't last long at that job, but I felt somewhat vindicated later when I ran into a fellow former Teamster, who was an ex-marine and very stocky. He did survive the job through the season but admitted it was the most difficult thing he'd ever done, and nearly didn't make it.

I have respect for anyone who can work as hard as I've seen some UPS people work, and I'm sure there are a lot of UPS employees who don't screw things up on a regular basis. But still, you have to wonder just how they manage to do things like this...

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