After the call came inviting me to interview at UPS that November, I drove over to the building. I was directed to a snack room, where I joined a dozen other applicants, and together we sat in silence. Soon the local head of human resources, Jed Barnes, entered the room to give us an overview of the job. He had salt-and-pepper hair and was of medium muscular build. Those of us hired would ride shotgun in a truck to help reduce the amount of work for each driver during December’s uptick in package movement. Barnes emphasized that it would be a fun and “energetic” job.

He handed out a job description with a checklist that reduced our required set of skills to a surprisingly specific group.

You have to be able to: Illustrate ...

Get Punching In now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.