The Strike

Something bad is about to happen at my house. I’m not sure if we will survive it.

 

United Parcel Service is going on strike.

 

As we sat and watched the news this morning, my beautiful wife gasped as the perky little journalism school dropout gleefully rattled off a story about how the union members at UPS were getting ready to walk off the job.

 

“Nooo!” my wife yelled. “My packages!”

 

Apparently, she was expecting quite an influx of various goods in the next few days and this strike might delay their arrival.

 

“What am I going to do now?” she lamented.

 

In these situations, I have learned that when my wife asks these types of questions, I know she is not actually looking for an answer. So I said nothing.

 

There was a time when, if we needed a new pair of shoes or a case of dental floss, we just got in the car and went to the nearest store.

 

It was usually a Dollar General Store since they conveniently built one right in our front yard.

 

And two right next door.

 

But not these days. If we need something, we just pick up our phones and order it.

 

I like to think it’s because we love technology. The truth is that we just don’t want to put on pants.

 

There was a time when my wife asked me what I wanted to do today, my answer would have been, ‘let’s go to the beach, the lake, the mall.’

 

Or maybe I would suggest some fun outdoor activity like playing tennis or repaving the driveway.

 

Now when I am asked where I want to go and do, my answer is simple. I want to go to the bathroom without falling and breaking a hip.

 

That’s all.

 

My long term goal is to just make it to my chair in front of the TV. Without injuring myself.

 

It’s not that I don’t have any energy. I have plenty of energy. I would just prefer to save it for important things like opening the door of the refrigerator and finding the tv remote.

 

I can understand why the people at UPS want to go on strike. Have you ever been inside a UPS truck? If you have, you will notice two things that are conspicuously missing from those big brown vans.

 

A radio. And air conditioning.

 

Now, I could live without the radio. Spotify gives me access to 4.7 billion songs on my phone.

 

If I were a UPS driver, I would just crank up the AC/DC and gleefully toss packages labeled ‘fragile’ from my the cab while singing ‘Highway to Hell’ at the top of my lungs.

 

But no air conditioning? That is a big nope.

 

We are in the middle of a summer heat wave. Yesterday, it was 99 degrees with 278% humidity. Imagine being inside the cab of a UPS van with no radio and no air conditioning in those kind of conditions.

 

I can’t…. simply because the first time I was handed the keys to a vehicle with no air conditioning, I would probably say. “No thanks. I’ll just go back to my job in the coal mine.”

 

Our UPS driver is a skinny young guy who looks like a good strong cup of coffee might put him in the hospital.

 

I’m sure he was a strapping young man when he first started driving for UPS but after a few years of driving around without air conditioning, the poor fellow has sweated off a good hundred pounds or more.

 

He comes to our house pretty much every day about 5 o’clock. By this time of the day, the poor guy is a wreck.

 

His hair is wet. His shirt is wet.

 

There is so much sweat coming off this poor fellow that I don’t dare order a box of instant mashed potatoes from Amazon.

 

He stumbles from the cab of his van and hands me a few packages (there’s never just one) while panting like a dog whose been continuously chasing squirrels for the last nine years.

 

I say thank you and he tries to say you’re welcome but his mouth is so dry and his core body temperature is so high that all he can manage to say in return is, “please shoot me!”

 

But that skinny dude still shows up, day after day, wearing his short brown britches and brown shirt with the big sweat stains under each arm.

 

I sometimes wonder if I am going to go out to his van one day and just find a pile of ashes in the drivers seat.

 

So, when the union for these drivers announced that they were going strike, I was fairly sympathetic.

 

Not my wife.

 

“They can’t go on strike. What about my packages?” she said to perky young blonde on TV.

 

I made the mistake of speaking at this crucial moment.

 

“Maybe that’s God’s way of telling you to stop ordering so much stuff from Amazon,” I said. I was joking of course but my wife didn’t see the humor.

 

“Keep talking and I’ll make you go to the store.”

 

I closed my mouth so fast, I chipped a tooth.

 

There is only one thing worse than having the UPS people going on strike and that is having to go to the store.

 

Have you been to the store lately? There are people there. Lots of people.

 

I like people but not when there are twelve of them standing in front of me at the self checkout line.

 

If I can order socks, radiator fluid, toothpicks and hemorrhoid cream and have it delivered right to my door the next day, why would I want to stand in line at Wal-Mart?

 

The answer to that is pretty obvious. I don’t.

 

But if UPS goes on strike and stops bringing us stuff from Amazon, how am I going to get my daily delivery of Vienna sausage and popsicle sticks.

 

The answer is pretty obvious. I won’t.

 

So, I’m praying that UPS and the drivers can come to some kind of agreement. Otherwise, I will starve to death.

 

Give them poor sweaty guys some air conditioning. And a radio. And maybe let them wear something other than brown.

 

Nobody looks good in brown.

 

If the strike goes on for a while, the UPS van will stop coming to my door everyday.

 

Or I will be forced to go to the store.

 

Shoot me now.