Working Full Time

Dear Zach,

Right after my last post, I tried applying for full time courier for SPX on their official website. I also tried a few ways such as courier hiring ads on FB to send in my application. But my main choice is SPX, of course, as Shopee is the leading online shopping platform in SEA. I did not have much hope getting a reply because they usually ignore or reject or taking us for a joyride having us to fill in application.

The next day my application was approved and I was given a ID right after. The best part was that I was assigned to my preferred hub nearest to my home - like 5 minutes away.  All things happened so fast that I was required to check in with the supervisor on Thursday afternoon and started to work on Friday.

I arrived slightly earlier just to check out how the scanning apps run and so on. Then this stocky malay - one of the supervisor - told me to scan a code on his device to get the list of the parcels, and led me to the cage of parcels. No tutorial given. No advice given. I was expected to read the courier onboarding slides which I was emailed with a day before I report to work. And thankfully, I did. I carefully sorted out the parcels according to the area. I was a mess. I was frantic and no one seemed to convenient to help as other couriers were busy sorting their own business. And I was the only chinese there. Others all malays. Can't complain much because I was there to work. 

Since those assigned parcels were to delivered to areas less than 5 km away, I was pretty sure I was familiar with those places. Boy was I wrong! What I didn't expect was that walking up the flight of stairs of those ultra-low cost apartment was physically demanding. On my first day, I was confused by the signage, frantically searching for correct unit number of the super confusing apartment layout - probably the stupidest layout ever existed. Walking up the flight of stairs was a workout itself. Not to mention the extra steps walking from one unit to another, smelling like urine and cat shits. On my first day of work, I have walked 10K steps in just only 5 hours!

I finished delivering by 6 pm. I was all sweaty and slimy and exhausted. This is really a physical-demanding job and, no wonder, most of the couriers are lean and skinny all because of the work nature itself.