Cutting Corners

I used to hate CHRISTmas.

(And that’s a serious malady for a CHRISTian).

At the time, I was a local delivery driver for United Parcel Service. And immediately after Thanksgiving each year, and for the subsequent four weeks, I found myself delivering packages throughout the day, and well into the night. Well, add three letters to the last word of the previous sentence, and you’ll have it about right…

MID-night !!!

And it occurs to me that Christmas at UPS was symptomatic of the entire rest of the year; in terms of what I refer to as “Cutting Corners.”

For you see, more than once I ran outta time to deliver my packages, and was forced to come up with a creative, (though strictly taboo) solution to my dilemma. Since I lived on my delivery route, I logged in the remaining twenty or so packages. Left them in my garage. Drove back to the center. Clocked out. Returned home. Dropped the packages in my car trunk,

… and Proceeded to ferry them in my private car to the homes characterized by the addresses on the label. Plop. I dropped them by the door, (as the manner still is today).

(Of course, I would never have publically posted this kinda thing at the time. But at least the packages got delivered).

And then, as I have previously implied, there were the other instances…

I recall driving too close to a particular tree, and scratching the heck out of the top railing of my truck. Yep. It wasn’t pretty, and I couldn’t drive back to the UPS center that way. As a result, as the day waxed old I stopped by a car dealer, dropped into their parts department and asked to look at whatever they had in

… brown paint.

“Hmmm. Let’s see. That one looks close.”

I purchased the stuff, pointed my vehicle towards the UPS building, stopped at a secluded place in the road, crawled up on the rear tire, uncapped the spray can, and proceeded to coat the surface of the metallic injury. And since our company mechanic often did something of the same thing to cover scrapes and nicks, … I got away with it.

(Based on the foregoing story, and what I did to hide that scratch, I suppose it goes without saying that United Parcel took a dim view of one too many driver-generated vehicular maladies).

Speaking of “driver-generated,” there came a day when I generated another situation.

I was driving down a dirt road in pursuit of the correct delivery address when I found myself about an inch closer to a small orange tree than I rightfully belonged. Suddenly, there was the sound of breaking glass. I’m not the kind to curse, but I expect I let out an expletive that day. I had broken my side view mirror. To quote a line from the movie, “Jane Eyre.”

… “What to do? What to do?”

And then it occurred to me. There was a glass shop a couple of miles away, and thus I summarily “retraced my steps” from Sheffield Road, connected with Spirit Lake Road, and took an immediate right on Commerce Court.

“Hi Jimmie. I had a little mishap here, and I simply can’t take it back to the shop this way. Can you cut me a piece of mirror glass, and install it real quick?”

He did, and I can tell you that little attempt at deceit saved me a buncha paperwork (which bore the heading of “Incident”) that evening.

I worked for that high profit outfit 20 years, and finally retired a full 18 years ago. United Parcel has installed all sorts of fancy add-on’s since the 20^th century expired, including backup cameras, and GPS systems. The “back tracking” I did to retrieve brown spray paint and a side-view mirror would never go over now. It would be immediately detected by “the powers that be,” and would never be tolerated.

Thankfully, I did what I did for that company in the good old days, and enjoyed the wherewithal to “cut corners” just enough to hold onto a high paying job which I never liked, but which stood me and mine in good stead for a very long time.

 

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 19. Copyright pending

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