It’s almost 6 o’clock, do you know where your package is? If you’re neighbors with TikTok user Rachel Porter, all you need to do is follow the smoking hole in your front door to the still smoldering skid mark in the front hallway to find your latest purchase.
Porter posted this video after spotting it on NextDoor where her neighbors were complaining about a FedEx driver rocketing packages at their front steps. I know, we all have packages and we all want those packages deposited by choirs of seraphim with a good night kiss for extra luck but sometimes a shitty day is a shitty day. This blistering fastball of a delivery occurred two hours before a normal delivery shift at FedEx ends, so I’m sure time was a factor.
Personally, I wouldn’t even be all that mad if this was my house. If anything, I’m impressed. The truck barely slowed down and the package made it right in the 10 ring. If this were Chuck-E-Cheese rather than someone’s front door this driver would have won all the prize tickets.
It should be noted that, like most jobs, delivery driver is a dangerous, tedious and grueling gig that can suck the spirit out of even the most resilient human being. Amazon is well known for the hellish conditions it forces on its workers, but especially drivers who report using the bathroom in bags and boxes and turning off safety tracking apps in order to meet quotas.
While other delivery companies haven’t experienced that level of publicity for its bad treatment of workers, FedEx was still not immune to the Great Resignation of 2021 (and 2022?). From Commercial Appeal, a daily newspaper in FedEx’s hometown of Memphis, Tennessee:
FedEx relies on thousands of workers to help sort packages, and it saw a dramatic increase in turnover and quit rates among these workers in 2021.
The airline’s high-profile labor issues reflected broader trends in the economy.
Among the key steps that FedEx took to address the problems was boosting pay.
Between September and December, during the holiday rush, FedEx hired 60,000 package handlers alone, but still experiences workforce shortages due to the Omicron variant. FedEx also experienced a shortage of pilots due to COVID-19 infections, resulting in the airline branch of the shipping giant putting airmail packages on trucks. Add a huge increase in online shopping due to the pandemic and crazy weather patterns that grounded planes, and you’ve got a stressful recipe for disaster. So be kind to your delivery drivers, lest they jam your latest BarkBox down your throat at 90 mph.