The headline is significantly linkbaity. Courier job applicant was told to arrive 5-10 mins early for interview, arrived 4 mins early and was unapologetically told to go to the next session in 30 mins.
If I were a delivery company then I might decide that I didn't want to hire the people that merely show up <i>on time</i>, or even the people that show up a few minutes early. I want the people who go out of their way to show up a lot, lot earlier than they're expected to.<p>Even if that wasn't true, though, I suspect that I would not be interested in hiring the guy who didn't show up early the <i>second time</i>.
It depends on your understanding of the invitation. I agree that this is contentious, but I could see how Postmates would argue that the invitation <i>only incidentally</i> states that the orientation begins at 6:00pm. The time you are requested to arrive is 5-10 minutes before that.<p>This isn't about the forces of the courier market (although I'm sure there's a fascinating market in NYC). This is about breeding a culture where participants in that culture have a sense of punctuality that supersedes all else. I wouldn't have been much more surprised if showing up <i>too early</i> would have gotten the author turned away. It's easy to show up 45 minutes early to something if you blow out everything leading up to that appointment, which you can do because you see it as a one-off. Being on time for every appointment you make takes more diligence. It takes cutting people (even yourself) off from an arguably more interesting diversion.<p>I wouldn't lose much sleep over this story; the author describes another courier who's been in this situation before. He clearly failed and was given a second chance. This isn't one of those "fail once and you're banished for life" kinds of things. Postmates will probably keep slamming the door in these people's faces until they show up 5-10 minutes early (ie they learn the lesson Postmates is trying to teach).<p>Or, you know, they find another job, where this kind of nitpicking isn't normal.
This reminds me of Van Halen and their "no brown M&M's clause"<p><a href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232420" rel="nofollow">http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232420</a><p>To sum it up, Van Halen would put in their contracts that they are to be served M&M's with no brown ones present. If they found that there was indeed brown ones, they would not play because they felt the gig was not paying attention to detail.<p>Seems to me that if you are applying for a job that basically is all about time (delivery in 30 mins) then it is a great litmus test to not let people who are late to the orientation have a job. These people obviously did not care enough for the job interview- It stands to reason they likely wont care to be extra fast once/if hired.
Well, if it's a courier service that hopes to distinguish itself by being unerringly on-time...I guess this is a good way to enforce such a mentality from the get-go. Kind of like Van Halen being a stickler about brown M&M's, except that showing up on-time for the interview is directly related to the services at hand.<p>(If the OP arrived at 5:55, then unless he knocked on the dot, he was technically later than the "5-10 minutes early" notice. OTOH, it seems to be a common convention that when a time is set, i.e. 6:00PM, that is the actual drop-dead time)
This is unfortunate, but I have to wonder why 557.png (the image of the phone in this post) was last edited by Photoshop. :tinfoil:<p><pre><code> $ extract downloads/557.png
Keywords for file downloads/557.png:
mimetype - image/png
image dimensions - 1170x869
produced by software - Adobe ImageReady
comment -
created by software - Adobe Photoshop CS6 Macintosh
mimetype - image/png
video dimensions - 1170x869
pixel aspect ratio - 1/1</code></pre>