My Winter as The Jump Seat Bitch

My experience as a UPS Driver Helper in 2009, when Amazon was still just a river.

A Rottweiler had pierced his insulated coveralls an hour earlier. The Elkhart dog had wriggled past Dad and his toe-headed preschooler to assault the sidewalk intruder.F-bombs exploded in his head and almost out his mouth. But he doesn't cuss in front of toddlers, especially on Christmas Eve. And there was no blood.

Sometimes Santa actually wears a brown jacket. 

Adrenalin faded for the Jump Seat Bitch as the afternoon darkened and they finished the route.  He shook hands with his driver and surrendered his reeking UPS pullover. He fired up his '96 Ranger, shifted into first, and eased across the icy parking lot. Christmas had been delivered, and Big Brown no longer needed his services.

The Jump Seat Bitch would be sleeping in tomorrow. 

***

By December, 2009, my wife and I had owned our multi-system mobile DJ service for twenty years. Complete Music had eight sound systems and a loyal DJ staff.  We’d been averaging about three hundred bookings a year for a while.  

Through the mid-aughts, we booked a surprising number of December dances. Holiday parties, New Years Eve, winter formals, and a few weddings. The Great Recession blew that up in a hurry.  

Looking for some slow-time cash, I successfully peed into a cup for UPS and joined 50,000 others that winter to become a 2009 holiday driver helper. 

My UPS day began with a call from a stressed-out dispatcher named Megan. She’d tell me when to meet up with my driver. Then I inhaled a Bunyanesque  breakfast…eight sausage links, four eggs, and two bagels washed down with black coffee and skim milk. The protein allowed me to grind through the day on granola bars and Gatorade, since we rarely had time for lunch.  Driver Marv chomped on a jelly bagel and almonds as he drove, guzzling a Mountain Dew.  He claimed he had the self-control to drive all day and only pee twice!

My job was to get scanned packages from Marv and deliver them (“briskly walking”) to homes and businesses. I collected signatures on a Bible-sized tablet called a DIAD when  needed.  After deliveries, we had business pick-ups.  One of our stops was a refrigerated warehouse in Bondurant where we once grabbed a yeast shipment. The boxes weighed sixty-two pounds each, and we had thirty five of them. Over a ton of yeast would make a lot of beer!

My driver Marv was a thirty-two year UPS veteran, starting as a package sorter right out of high school. We had great chats about sports and kids and shared our stupid guy experiences. I love working with folks who are dedicated to the task but remain irreverent toward the dumb stuff. When we’d get in a jam, Marv would call his supervisor for advice. Marv knew better than to offer his (logical) solution. He’d wait to hear what his boss said so Marv could avoid responsibility/possible ass-chewing. Marv knew how to work the system and still be a loyal UPS soldier.

We created smart-ass nicknames. Heart Attack was a massive humanoid who refused to unlatch his storm door, no matter how many boxes you had. Shoe Whore got Finish Line shipments every other day. Turdmobile was our van. And I named myself The Jump Seat Bitch.  

Our meet-up time  varied between 8 and 10 am. We met at Ziegler Caterpillar, a heavy machinery dealer between Altoona and Bondurant.  I got my day started by unloading several dozen boxes of various sizes, creating some breathing room in the back of the truck.  Some mornings you could literally not see from front to back in the package area.  The three wall shelves were completely stacked, and boxes towered in the four foot wide area between them. If packages weren’t sorted very well, Marv alleged that Stevie Wonder had loaded the boxes with a snow blower.

If you see a fat UPS driver, it’s a supervisor covering for someone.  These guys work their asses off.   Marv worked up to 14 hours a day during that holiday season.  He arrived earlier than many drivers to help organize his packages, which minimizes having to sort on the run. He’s lean and mean. A fifty-year old bowler, baseball coach, and self-described kickass table tennis player. 

I worked up a good sweat, even on below-zero days. By day’s end my inner layers were soaked in venomous perspiration. Even my coveralls stunk after a while. They smelled like a cross between an agricultural honey wagon and a high-school locker room during two-a-day football practices.

The daily route varied, depending on deliveries.  Generally we covered all of Bondurant, Mingo, and Elkhart…the micro-towns of Ira, Valeria, and Santiago…and endless gravel areas from east of Colfax to near the Story county line.  The longest day, travel-wise, was 192 miles.  The most daily stops we had were 270, a day I logged ten hours.

I handled everything from two-ounce envelopes (Jelly of the Month Club certificates?) to god-awful ungainly tractor parts weighing more than a hundred pounds.  And you couldn’t guess a box’s weight by its size.  Bolt-filled boxes smaller than a Rubik’s cube could cause hernias. Then you’d have a refrigerator-sized box seemingly protecting a popcorn kernel infinitely smothered with bubble wrap and stamped 3 LBS.  It was bizarre.

Sometimes I'd just slide open my door, hop off the jump seat and stick a small package in a mailbox. That's actually a felony, but it's overlooked and forgiven in the boondocks. Other times I had to “briskly pace” (in UPS-speak) up a hilly, ice-crunchy, 200 yard driveway.  Those packages always weighed thirty pounds. 

In wet or snowy weather, I’d stuff a package into a UPS-issued clear plastic bag before hanging it on a mailbox flag.  You ain’t lived until you’ve stood on a forty-below wind chill gravel road trying to figure out which end of a .000002 micron thick bag was the open end.  

*****

Marv had done this route for seven years, and knew where the cute ladies lived.  He'd pull into their driveways and do the “Hottie Honk.”  I’d walk slowly toward the house, ideally giving the Hottie enough time to break away from Jerry Springer and greet me at the door, ideally wearing Victoria’s Secret lingerie.

The plan was rarely successful.  The Hottie Honk more often than not roused her dorky husband.  

*****

Off the highways, we encountered scenery I thought too striking for central Iowa. Winding through western Jasper county, frosty Grant Wood hillsides ridged the wide Skunk River floodplain, glowing with meticulously sculpted snow drifts.   Stark oak savannahs stood guard over winding ice-rimmed creeks.  I loved the irony of delivering to a hidden-away gated castle next door to a rusty farmyard waiting for the American Pickers to stop by.

Bumping along Jasper county backroads, we saw red tail hawks, whitetail deer, and bald eagles.  One time a black angus bull blocked the road, oblivious to our honking. Our revenge was knowing he’d become hamburger someday.

Then there were the dogs.  On my first day, I left  a package inside a residential garage. I almost shat myself when I was greeted by two snarling pit bulls.  Marv claimed he didn’t even know they had dogs!

There seemed to only be three types of country dogs: labs, lab-shepard mixed, and mongrel leg-humpers.  Marv had a ready supply of dog treats for his favorites, or to provide a distraction for the borderline-rabid ones. I took great joy by watching an idiotic feral ankle-biter freak out when I pointed the bar-code scanner at him. Spike got to experience his first laser show, probably tripping balls for a while.

One time a dog barked at us from a rooftop. The house had been built into a  south-facing hillside, and snow had drifted high enough that he could get on top of it.  It made a great vantage point for yelping at the Turdmobile. 

We met ancient farmers at the tractor parts graveyard, eating powdered donuts and moving just fast enough to prevent spider webs. A lady with her car hood covered in logs, encouraging us to hang in there on a snowy afternoon.  A toothless Marlboro man, wheelchair-bound and grateful for a few seconds of conversation.  A widow in a peeling tiny house who took delivery of some caramel apples and shared one with me.  Someone named Fatland who lived on Farm Avenue. And we delivered to a disgusting older man watching big-screen porn and babysitting a toddler.  At least he seemed embarrassed.

*****

In my second week, Iowa got pounded by a major overnight blizzard.  Beginning on Tuesday December 8th, over fifteen inches of snow hit Des Moines. Gusty Arctic winds reached 50 mph. It was the first time in Marv’s 32-year career that drivers were told NOT to report.  Once the winds settled, I spent six hours snow blowing our driveway– a job that normally takes an hour.

Driving sucked on Thursday. Country roads were caked in three-foot drifts. A man told us his pickup was underneath a foot of snow.  A Waste Management truck lay on its side in a ditch north of Bondurant. 

The Jump Seat Bitch remained stoic as Marv blitzed through snowdrifts, bounced down washboard backroads, and fishtailed around icy corners.  Marv had steady hands and solid judgment.  The Jump Seat Bitch trusted.

We only got stuck once, when we spun tires backing out of an unplowed farmer's driveway. Luckily he was home and fetched his pull chain.  Like a mole, I burrowed into the snow beneath the front bumper to attach it. The farmer pulled us free with his big Silverado.  

We fared better than a FedEx guy we saw a few days later.  The driver wore a self-conscious, "I’m-a-dumbass" shit-eating half-grin. We tried to push him out of the ditch with no luck. His back end was buried deep and his Firestones spun helplessly. 

*****

One blustery afternoon, we pulled into a farmyard and I couldn’t get my sliding passenger door open.  Often a firm, well-placed kick would jar it enough for the latch to release.  Not this time.  

Marv cursed as he tried unsuccessfully to open the door from the outside.

Back on the road, I pulled a car key out and messed with the latch to see if it was jammed.  It worked fine.  I kept kicking and pulling and putting my shoulder into the door, trying to bust it loose.  We were speeding down bouncy county highways. And I couldn’t help but thrill at the possibility of the door suddenly flying open with me getting sucked out.  The Jumpseat Bitch would be flung into a waist deep ditch of jagged plowed snow.  

Marv finally got the door working when we got back to Ziegler’s. The door was off its track.

***

I worked five different times as a UPS holiday helper. Other than 2009, the routes and drivers were urban and largely forgettable. I haven't noticed any Turdmobile helpers this December, but lots of solo Amazon/FedEx/independent delivery drivers.

Next time you see a delivery person, remember the Jump Seat Bitch.