You can't change the contract

I recently drove around town searching for the UPS guy.

I found him dropping a package at my garbage guy’s house. I waved my arm through my open window to flag him down. He disappeared into his truck. When I pulled to a stop next to him, he came out with my box. He’d recognized my car; I didn’t have to tell him what I wanted.

The box was gigantic: an Apple monitor, sent to me by my California-based employer so I can get more work done. But I skipped work to track it down, so joke’s on them!

I knew the package required a signature. But I also had to take my mom to the eye doctor (sixty miles round trip — pretty standard for medical care here). I was sure I’d be back before the delivery. Her appointment was at noon. The UPS guy usually comes to my house around four.

But while I sat in the waiting room, my back door camera alerted my phone. I watched the UPS guy carry the heavy box up my driveway, ring the bell a few times, and then turn around and trudge back to the street.

I knew my new monitor would spend the rest of the day jostling around on gravel roads before riding seventy miles to the UPS warehouse where all my packages are dispatched from. And then I would have to wait two days, not one, for a repeat delivery attempt. So I decided to go find it.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t home when you delivered,” I said to the UPS guy as he slid the monitor into my trunk. Then I asked, “Are you not allowed to pull into my driveway anymore?”

He handed me his electronic signature pad. “They don’t want us to back up anywhere. They’re writing guys up for it.”

I’d noticed a few weeks earlier that both the UPS guy and the FedEx guy were parking their trucks on the two-lane road outside my house — blocking one of the busiest roads in town, since there’s no shoulder here — instead of pulling into my driveway as they’ve done for the last four years. My driveway has ample room to pull in, back up, and turn around. They literally couldn’t hit anything unless they had a stroke with their foot on the gas. But I’m sure an algorithm has determined that backing up is dangerous, even though blocking a road seems worse.

It’s also why their routes force them to only make right-hand turns, even if a left-hand turn would create a shorter path. Guys get written up for deviating from their computer-generated routes, even when they know shortcuts by heart. Or for stopping too long to gossip. The FedEx guy literally sprints up my driveway, and I somehow doubt it’s by choice.

So now I watch guys haul packages to my house from the street. There’s no sidewalk across the ditch; when the ditch is full of water, they have to go the long way and walk up my driveway. I wonder how many sprained ankles this new policy will cause. UPS probably ran the numbers and decided that short-term disability claims are cheaper than paying for backing into a parked car or pedestrian.

“At least you’re getting your steps in,” I said as I signed for my package.

“It’s great. I used to get four miles a day, but now I’m up to seven.”

He’d heard the sarcasm in my voice and matched it. We agreed that this policy was undoubtedly a kind gesture, intended to help UPS drivers meet their fitness goals and improve their wellbeing.

He then told me that I probably could have found him by looking at the UPS app.

“That seems too stalker-y,” I said, despite having successfully stalked him myself.

He didn’t like it either. He said a man stopped him out in the country, blocking him head-on, and got out to ask if the delivery driver had his medicine. That was how the UPS driver found out that customers could track him on the app — which seems a little dangerous, when so many of their routes go down miles of empty road.

There aren’t many doorbell cams around here to catch a crime in progress. The main surveillance on these gravel roads is UPS’s own tracking devices. The system would probably write him up for stopping too long before anyone realized he had been murdered.

Usually my posts are tinged with melancholy, but I’m too angry to make this lyrical.

I run the equivalent of a shipping and receiving department out of my garage. I want to shop local — but the “shop local” movement is too little too late when the shops are already gone.

I can get basic groceries, hardware, and gas within six miles of my house. I’m pleased to report that Dollar General sells my favorite Zebra Mildliner highlighters. And my grocery store has a “seen on social media!” section that is occasionally worth scouting.

But for anything else — organic produce, higher-quality meat, books, electronics, cosmetics, clothing, etc. — my choices are to drive 60 miles round trip to Walmart, or 160 miles round trip to the nearest Costco, Whole Foods, and Target. Or I can order online.

When I’m cooking a lot, or on a reading binge, or in true prepper panic mode, UPS or FedEx come to my house every day. My packages arrive coated in gravel dust, like they were brought by camel from some far-off land rather than starting their journeys in massive distribution centers.

These small towns were built by mail-order. My small town in particular thrived from it, back when it was the junction of two major rail lines shipping mail-order goods across the US. The Sears catalog, among others, sold everything that someone on the prairie might need — even prefab kits to build whole houses, many of which still stand today.

When I was a teenager here, in the 1990s, the railroads had stopped bringing our packages. But after the Farm Crisis hollowed out our commerce, and before the advent of online shopping, catalogs were still big. I remember thumbing through the JC Penney catalog, then begging my mom to call and order a new outfit for school. We were too poor to order from the American Girl catalog, but I read the catalog so many times that I knew all of Kirsten and Samantha’s accessories and accoutrements by heart.

UPS, FedEx, and the post office are critical here. So critical that when my dad was still alive, the keypad code for his office was the UPS guy’s birthday. So critical that many people have the UPS guy’s phone number. So critical that when one of our old UPS guys retired a few years ago, people put up signs all over town to wish him luck. In a place where it’s genuinely hard to get goods and services, any downgrade is problematic.

I think people assumed that we would always have daily delivery. I certainly did. We’ve had daily delivery in some form since the post office was created. But that contract is changing.

Last summer, without notice, UPS quietly changed their delivery routes. They cut all of my town’s deliveries from five days a week to three.

You can still pay to overnight me a package. UPS will happily charge you the full price and tell you to your face that it will be delivered overnight. But if the ‘overnight’ you picked is Monday to Tuesday, or Wednesday to Thursday, it will not be overnight. They only deliver here Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

If you don’t time it right, the package will spend 24hrs sitting in a warehouse instead. You, the shipper, will not get a refund. And I will just get a “delivery exception” notice on the tracker — no apology and no attempt to make it right.

This change caught many people by surprise. I heard of people who missed several days of medications. The dairy factory, one of our only industries, lost tens of thousands of dollars over perishable shipments that got delayed — even though they paid the business rate for daily pickup (note: I’ve heard that UPS now picks up there every day, but they won’t deliver on Tuesdays and Thursdays even to the dairy factory).

In this respect, even though I live in a backwater, I am seeing the future before you do. This degradation in services is happening everywhere. You feel the standards shifting — and there is nothing you can do.

You had an implicit contract. In some cases, like overnight delivery, you even had an explicit contract.

But one side gets to rewrite that contract whenever they want — and it ain’t you.

A few weeks ago I ran into a guy I know. We mostly exchange pleasantries about writing; he retired here to write military novels.

We do not have much, if anything, in common beyond writing + various charitable and municipal activities. Last year, I saw him the same week that Alligator Alcatraz opened. He was already wearing an ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ baseball cap, in the same blaring red as all his other MAGA hats. Of course the American version of authoritarianism would figure out how to distribute merch as quickly as possible. The fucking grift is endless.

Anyway, this guy and I got into a debate about working from home. The (under)paid director of a board that we’re both on wanted to work from home a day a week to save on gas money. I had zero issues with this; I work from home all the time, except when I’m flitting off to San Francisco for a week of excess. But this guy had a real problem with it.

After we dug into it, past his surface-level annoyance about whether anyone should be allowed to work from home, he said, “You have a contract when you take a job. You can’t change the contract.”

You can’t change the contract.

I’ve been turning that phrase over in my head for weeks.

You can’t change the contract. He didn’t emphasize any particular word, but clearly it was, “You can’t change the contract.” Bold, italicized, and directed at the person with the least power in the arrangement, since the board could theoretically fire her at any time.

Society is based on all these implicit, unwritten contracts. We make choices based on various facts: live in a good school district, work for a good boss, obey the rules in exchange for a promised reward. Or make life in the hinterlands a little easier by getting things delivered on time.

We pretend that the contracts are symmetric, and that we have power within them.

But then schools get defunded. Bosses leave, or get AI-pilled and lay you off. Rules change and suddenly you’re out of luck with the green card you’ve worked toward for decades. And UPS decides it’s going to aim for “greater efficiency” — even though three days a week saves fuel but costs more overtime for shorthanded drivers with bigger loads.

We all hate these shifting contracts. One of the oldest surviving letters in the world is a cuneiform complaint to a copper merchant in 1750 BC; Ea-nāşir would find himself quite at home in the C-suite, enshittifying everything, if he were reincarnated today.

But the underlying structure of all these contracts is America’s agreement with capitalism. The broader terms haven’t changed. We’re just living through the end stage, when the adjustable interest rate skyrockets and the balloon payment is due.

The monopolies will point to the terms and conditions and say: this is what you signed up for.

The ones who benefit will shake their heads and say: it’s your fault you didn’t save enough, prepare enough, get rich enough to survive this.

Some guy in an Alligator Alcatraz hat will say: you can’t change the contract! Then he will vote to rip up all the implicit contracts that formed American democracy.

UPS drivers used to seem pretty happy. It was a good, high-paying job. Most of them could retire in their fifties before their bodies gave out. They still have some protections built into their Teamsters-negotiated contract — but that contract negotiation took months and came close to a major strike. UPS is “in trouble” because their billions in operating profit last year weren’t enough to satisfy Wall Street. Their stock is down 50% in the last five years. UPS will undoubtedly change the contract again when the next negotiation comes up, citing declining share prices.

Sometimes, though, an even bigger asshole comes around and changes the terms again. Enter, from stage left: Amazon. They only ship via UPS or USPS here. For months, even though I pay for Prime and should get two-day delivery, my delivery windows have stretched up to a week past placing the order.

A couple of weeks ago, suddenly, I was offered two-day shipping again. And then my next delivery came, and I found out that Amazon has begun to use FedEx here.

My UPS driver said he’d heard UPS might go back to five days a week in my town. I wouldn’t be able to force that. Neither could the dairy factory. But Amazon is big enough to make it happen.1

When Amazon first started, it built its business on great customer service and extremely fast delivery. In late-stage capitalism, is our only hope that Amazon will keep some of that vibe, and use its monopoly power to force other monopolies and duopolies to treat us marginally better?

That’s not the bleakest thought I’ve had recently… but it’s not great, is it?

My instinct is to do some online shopping to make myself feel better. But it’s Wednesday, so it’s already too late to get delivery this week. By the time my package finally arrives, I’ll probably be mad about something else.

Cheers,

Sara

p.s. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do — it’s a free and easy way to support my work. I’m grateful you’re here!

p.p.s. When I’m not beefing with UPS, I’m beefing with the railroads — another business model that loves to change the contract, with a proud history of enshittifying everything for the last two centuries. Here’s a post from the archives:

Wrong side of the tracks

·

December 16, 2023

As much as I like trains, and as much as I want to see high-speed passenger rail criss-cross the US, I strongly believe that all railroads are bastards.

p.p.p.s. My favorite Ea-nāşir meme (yes, there are enough memes that I can have a favorite):

p.p.p.p.s. If you missed my last post, I talked about winning my city council election with 64 votes:

Protecting your peace is a psyop

·

May 5

Inside me there are two wolves: the wolf who wants to run for governor of Iowa, and the wolf who wants to protect my peace.