Non-existent work/life balance (NOKY)
Pros
The pay and benefits working as a manager for FedEx Ground are great! You get paid weekly, health insurance premiums are incredibly affordable. You gain a lot of management skills very quickly in this role.
Cons
Absolutely no work/life balance when it comes to this job. If you work the AM sort, you’ll be coming in an hour early (approx. 10:30pm) and you stay until the work is done (approx. 9-10am). During peak season, we wouldn’t get out of there until 12:00-1:00pm. This puts a HUGE strain on your life at home if you have a S/O or children. Many managers got divorced because of this job. You get handed a TON of responsibility in this role, which adds a lot of stress. After 1 month of being there, I managed 30+ people. You are responsible for training them, watching their every move, improving their performance, documenting them for not showing up or not performing up to standards, ensuring they get paid, etc. FedEx has virtually no vetting process for who they hire as a package handler, so this makes your job much harder and you are essentially a babysitter for all of your employees. Add this to running your area, ensuring trailers are loaded properly and timely, completing online and classroom training, and inventorying your equipment. Like I said, you get a ton of responsibility. The level of professionalism in the chain of command is horrible. I can only speak for the hub I worked at, but I think it’s safe to say this for most hubs/stations out there. They only care about your performance numbers, and if your numbers are bad they put all of the blame and pressure on your shoulders, which forces you to come down hard on your package handlers. You will hardly ever hear when you are doing stuff right, and ALWAYS hear about when you’re doing something wrong. You get yelled at on a daily basis in front of every manager in the building (literally), get belittled and shamed if you make a mistake, and get treated as an expendable “body”. This job put a huge stress on my family at home, and it wasn’t feasible for me to continue working there, so I decided it was time to move on to another role that had a more accommodating work schedule. I gave them my two week notice, and two days later I was walked out of the building. I asked if I was being walked out because I put in my notice, and it was confirmed that was the reason. I was told by several other managers that if you show you aren’t loyal to FedEx (i.e. put in your two weeks), then they don’t want you in the building. What a horrible way to treat your employees when they are transitioning out of the company!