Made a complaint about a FedEx employee and it quickly escalated (2023)

Once one of my many jobs was shipping and handling, so I became familiar with all the delivery men. There is no bribery involved, just simple greetings.

One of the USPS workers was the grandma I've ever met, the kind that you secretly wonder if they've ever seen Arsenic and Old Lace? The UPS ground handler was efficient but friendly enough if I needed to wait a moment. It was painfully obvious every year when he was on holiday. People at DHL were the most interesting, be it Santa Claus or Mr. Share Everything.

But this story is about FedEx.

We represent FedEx Express, we have S* and representing FedEx Ground is M.* Together they make something kinky, but I promise it's not that kind of story.

Why did I complain?

M* knocked on the glass door before opening hours and left deliveries with a thud as soon as he saw us. Sometimes he got the delivery wrong because he ran away quickly. He was rude and abrupt, but as long as he was doing his job, I didn't dwell on his personality. Sometimes I even envied him.

Quite a few people in the neighborhood had problems with him, to whom he used to point the finger, and life went on. One of our interactions provoked me, clearly my tolerance had reached its peak. It was petty, but I decided she could use one more complaint on her post. (S* told me many other people have complained over the years). I was aiming for a more substantial complaint than the usual dismissible "attitude problem". If I were to file my first complaint, it would be legitimate, even if the impetus was not.

My "dirt" on him

For many weeks he signed all our packages with the name of a former colleague - they were smoking buddies. When I reported it to FedEx, they told me our packages didn't require a signature, so I asked, "well why did you sign with one?"

My concern was signing someone's name, and even worse, someone who no longer worked there, and holding that person accountable. FedEx seemed dismissive and asked me to fill out a form.

what happened after

What I didn't expect to happen the next day was to be confronted with what should have been an anonymous tip. M* pointed a finger at me, "you called and complained about me." I replied "yeah I emailed him about you" wondering what he might do next.

M* didn't really look scary, a bit skinny, a few inches taller than me, but raiders don't come with warnings. He knew where he worked, my name, and now he knew I was complaining about him.

No one at work thought it was a big deal.

The next day he and his boss came to talk to me. Once again it was without warning. It was a memorable day, there was no light in most of the center. Yes, my workplace had no power, but our door was open, because who knows who would want to shop in the dark, right? Other businesses closed early, but we waited for the opportunity! So here these two men stood before me in the dark. I was left alone and tried to get a little closer to grab a table for some similar support.

M*'s boss shook my hand, tried to lure me by saying that M* had a big family, 8-12 people, and he didn't make much money. That's why he was so brusque with his deliveries.Bueno, I considered, but you could pay him better ifActuallycautious? If I had been bold enough to say it out loud, I'm not sure what would have happened. I wondered if his boss would have used the same tactics if a man had filed the complaint.

One of my colleagues was convinced that M* would lose his job because of me. M* had initially asked aboutellafiled the complaint against him because he regularly argued with him and had threatened to "cut his balls off" if he didn't do a better job. He asked her to help her.

So he asked me to help him. I asked him what he meant because from what I could see I didn't have the power to fire him. What was wrong with all these people and their illogical conclusions?!

I did not work for FedEx, nor did I write their paychecks; so if M* worked for pennies I believed it but found it irrelevant as an argument. Ironically, all he wanted to hear from his boss was what a great employee M* was, but it never came up. It was like everyone skipped that topic, because it was reasonable that when you earn low wages, you don't have to be a good employee.

It's controversial, I know, and I don't blame people who think this way. I just don't agree. I also don't agree with bosses who expect the world from you but can't agree to pay you fairly for it. So in this case M*'s boss had clearly looked the other way when it came to M*'s professional conduct because he was benefiting from M*'s work.

It was exhausting dealing not only with M* and her boss, but also with my colleague who was the closest thing I had to HR, so I relented a bit. I made it clear that I wasn't trying to get him fired, I reiterated my position that M* was doing his job properly and that he needed to understand why he signed.ourpackages were incorrect. As for his personality, I didn't expect the man to do a 180 and I didn't like forcing that on people because it's fake and without merit.

All this made me quite uneasy. S* explained that M* worked for an independent recruitment agency; so FedEx couldn't really do anything about it. S* also told me that when people complained about M* he didn't care because it was a job he got through connections. FedEx clearly didn't care for years, but my complaint must have been the final straw. fedexcouldhe lashed out at his employer, who could lose his contract, which explained why M*'s boss showed up. M* earned little money without any of the benefits other FedEx employees like S* had.

It all made sense, but I decided not to base any conclusions on hearsay. The only facts were that he didn't do his job right, and this complaint clearly meant a lot more to him than it did to me. Most people don't realize how stubborn I can be until they meet me, but I decided that if FedEx contacted me, which they initially emailed me and said within a few days, I would not escalate case if I got the choice. There would be no termination either, as I said, I am stubborn.

Back to normal"

Nothing really happened.

M* was better at pacing their deliveries and actually expected real people to sign off on them. It was only a short time before I found him using my signature to sign things. Did he want to go through all this again? No. I just told my company that I would not sign for these packages and that I would not be responsible. They didn't care either.

I never heard from FedEx, which was not a surprise. When it came to tracking packages, I never got a phone call back, despite many promises of 24-48 hours, and all phone reps could not reveal their names for privacy reasons (although this is commendable, it certainly didn't help that having to explain the same story about the package being lost 5 times to different people or give a responsibility).

Oddly enough, I learned that FedEx responds to snail mail. I was almost tempted to reply because I was addressed as Mr. Mel and I wrote notes throughout the letter with a red pen as a joke, but I decided it was better to leave that sort of thing to the people on Twitter.