Rainey Blogs on Some Days

We were given a choice whether or not those of us who were having a milestone service year wanted to speak on Founders Day in our department meeting. Since the one consistent feedback I have gotten during my entire 25-year career at UPS was that I don’t speak up enough in meetings, I thought I would make up for the whole thing here today. No one intends to have a long career at UPS. You come to work at UPS as a temporary thing while you are planning your life. Those plans do not include UPS. We come for the benefits, the tuition assistance, the non-standard hours that don’t interfere with classes or our other real jobs. Parents don’t envision their kids growing up and working for UPS. I think these are just the basic realities of life. I worked the majority of my career in Information Services Learning & Development or Corp HR Learning & Development. I would have never lasted 25 years had I been in Operations. I know exactly how long I would have lasted in Operations had I wo...

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” Annie Dillard, The Writing Life I have to admit something: I am obsessed by the passage of time. It is a constant presence in my life, as if I have some allergy that results in irritation or an itchiness that I must constantly attend to. I am constantly paying attention to the passage of time. I have no idea how this happened. Here's an example: I do not really want to be celebrated on my birthday like so many do. I prefer to take the day off from work and contemplate, not be rushed, sip the coffee slowly in the morning, sit by a stream for a little while, anything but be glad that I am another year older. The changing of seasons, say from summer to autumn, is also an emotional experience for me because I see it as a kind of dying, an ending to something that is now being lost. I wish I could see the new season as a new beginning, but I do not. I focus on ...