New Career? Following My Dad at Work
He has a couple kids and a wife to spare. A house is somewhere in that shuffle also. His past careers have included Wawa worker, Super Fresh cashier and controller/financial manager at numerous places. All of these careers ended up not panning out or they weren’t being beneficial to his family’s financial situation anymore. It you probably haven’t guessed by now, this person that I am talking about is my own father. 2 years ago, his career of being someone’s part time accountant was coming to an end. I was looking through the classifieds as I always do.
The thought of him in the hunt for a job was in the back of my mind. As going through the jobs section, I saw an ad that stated that no experience was necessary and that part time work was available. Upon seeing this, I mentioned it to him and suggested that this position may be up his alley. After telling him about it, he called the number and inquired into it some more. A few days later, he had a new possible career to add to his list. That new possible career was being a courier.
Being a courier does have its ups and downs. After the interview with him, I was able to gather some thoughts of what it was like to be a courier. As far as the positives of the job, there are multiple ones. First there is minimal stress. You are not saving the world from evil at all. All that is involved is reading a map and dropping a client’s payroll off to them on at a reasonable time.
Next, the people are happy to see him because their payroll is being delivered. Heck, who wouldn’t be a happy person when someone delivers their payroll so people can get paid and have some money for weekend fun? Third is the level of solitude that comes with the job. You are not stuck behind a desk in some stuffy office somewhere. You’re out in the elements of weather regardless of weather or snow delivering payrolls. It is you only in your car. For those who work best alone by themselves, it is a dream come true.
Someone who needs to work with other people, I can tell you that you may want to look for another career because courier work may not be for you exactly. The pleasure of enjoying the art of driving can be taken full advantage on this job. Next, it is the fact that everyday is the same in one sense yet there are new challenges that come up each and everyday as a payroll may be delivered to a new client or travel may be made to a new part of a town that was never done before.
The path of travel is also unknown since there is the opportunity of running payrolls to a long distance out of town. This is known as specials. From the Fort Washington office, specials can be run a few miles into Philadelphia or almost a hundred miles away to Scranton, northern New Jersey or even Maryland. As far as drawbacks or downsides to the job, the only one he could really think of is that there is no definite shift. This is a job where you get into work at 9 and work at 5. Your day may start at 6:30 am and end as early as 1 pm or go as late as 7 pm after returning to the area from running a special to a far away distance. All of these ups and downs have been keeping him at the job for 2 years and 2 months to be exact.
During the course of the day that I observed him on the job as a courier, many things were exhibited. The first thing is willingness to adapt. This job requires one to wake up at a relatively early time in the morning usually around 5-5:30 am which would drive some people insane. You have to be willing to wake up early in the morning to arrive at work on time.
With being required to wake up early in the morning, this may go against your natural trait of being a night person. Being a night person and having to get up early for this job won’t mesh very well and it will turn into trouble sort of quickly. Your schedule and day in general has to be altered so everything that is included in your daily routine can be accomplished so a reasonable bedtime with a decent amount of sleep can be under your belt by the time 5 am and a loud alarm emerge in the morning.
The next thing is ability to get work done in a short amount of time. When arriving at headquarters in Fort Washington, you have to gather your route list and the pile of payrolls to be delivered and be able to set up shop as a section of the table and sort your pile into your individual delivery bin so the payrolls are not out of order and so they can be delivered to the right place at the right time in a reasonable fashion. Doing this successfully can lead to the route going smoothly and trouble free for that day.
The next thing about this job is being able to comprehend ideas and concepts. This would include reading a map and mapping out all of your stops and not getting lost. There are many stops on a single route and some sort of routine on hitting them all has to emerge or things will turn to pure chaos. Next is the ability to interact with people. You are delivering payrolls to people the whole day so having decent people skills is essential. If you are not a people person at all, this may hurt your ability to do this job since you are interacting with people left and right when meeting them face to face and handing them their payroll envelope.
The final thing that I observed on this job is the ability is to comprehend and look at things from more than one angle. For example, if there is a certain street that you need to travel down to reach a stop that is closed, you need to be able to think outside of the box and find an alternate route to reach that stop to make up for that important street being closed down.
This especially comes in handy when doing stops in Philadelphia and having the barrage of one way streets and roads closed down for construction or being blocked off for another reason. Over the course of the day, these are all things that were added together to make up the the psyche of being a courier.
After conducting this interview and watching my father on the job, I was able to reach another point. A courier does have some things in common with a waitress. The first thing in common between these two is that there are expectations. A waitress is expected to be able to set a table, serve customers as efficiently as possible and get them their food and make them happy as possible.
A courier has to be able to take a route, work their way around it without getting lost and deliver all of the payrolls successfully as efficiently as possible. The next is that a waitress needs to be working by the clock. They need to be able to take a customer’s order, process it and get the food to them as soon as possible so they do not get disgruntled and complain to the manager. In a same sense, a courier needs to be working by the clock.
They need to get the payroll to the client as soon as possible and on the right day so they continue to use their service and give business. If they do not get the payroll delivered on time and on the right day like it should be, they may cease to use that courier service and switch to a competitor which would not be good for the original courier company. The next similarity is the ability to walk. A waitress needs to be able to walk since they will be on their feet for most of the shift and be able to move from table to table and back into the kitchen. A courier needs to be successful on their feet since they are getting out of their car and walking up to the door of each client and dropping off the payroll.
Since this occurs the whole day, a good walking ability is very vital. The last similarity is being a people person. Waitresses need to be a people person since that is one thing that depends on their tips earned. If they are able to interact with people and make small talk, they tips may increase as a result. On the other hand, if they are not as friendly and not talkative, their tip may suffer as a result. A courier needs to be a people person since they are greeting clients and delivering their payrolls to them all day long. If they are not willing to interact with people on their route, all I can say is that it is going to be a long route that day.
My definition of intelligence definitely has gone through an overhaul after seeing the day in the life of a courier. The definition of intelligence in my head would now include the following: the willingness to adapt, comprehend ideas and concepts, being able to interact with people successfully and being able to look at things from more than one angle. A courier has to do all of these things on a daily basis in able to be successful at their job. They do show signs of intelligence through their daily day on the job that my definition consists of. As a result of my research, my definition of intelligence has been changed for the better and is more direct and precise instead of being long and kind of stale. Courier, I have got a few words for you. They would be deliver on!
