Zachery Scalf, who was driving for UPS, stopped at Natural Grocers in Hazel Dell earlier this month to make a delivery.
When he turned around, he found the rented truck was gone, stolen. Days later, he was fired.
“It sucks, because not only did this thief drive away with the truck, but it’s like they drove away with Zach’s job,” said Alison Gootee, Scalf’s wife.
Scalf is searching for a new job now, but to him and his wife the UPS response seemed overly harsh and short-sighted.
The couple moved from Atlanta to Vancouver a year ago. Scalf had worked as a flight attendant for a few years. He was still based in Atlanta, and commuting thousands of miles each week proved draining. So he got a new job as a seasonal delivery driver for UPS in Vancouver.
“I really liked the job that I had with UPS, driving around town, meeting all the people I was delivering to,” he said. “Everyone was always happy to see the UPS guy.”
But UPS apparently wasn’t happy. Before his next scheduled shift, he called his supervisors and dispatchers. He heard some talking in the background, and then they let him know he was fired.
The abandoned truck was recovered several days later, Clark County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Brett Waddell said.
Gootee increasingly thinks UPS should simply be grateful her husband wasn’t hurt.
They were told the thieves had box cutters, and were apparently savvy enough to find and steal boxes of Apple iPads in the back. After delivering to Natural Grocers, Scalf was to deliver the tablets to the nearby T-Mobile store.
Also, the thieves coated parts of the truck in WD-40, to try covering up fingerprints, Gootee said, who finds it all very suspicious.
“Maybe that’s crazy, maybe that could be a little bit too conspiracy theorist, but I’m thinking like, ‘Who gets lucky enough to come across a van for this guy that’s brand new, stressing about time during the holidays, and you happened to get a truck with a bunch of iPads in it?’ ” she said.
Scalf apparently has little recourse, since temporary, seasonal hires like him often don’t have a union to turn to for support, he said.
A UPS spokesman declined to comment on Scalf’s firing, saying the company doesn’t talk about personnel issues.
Scalf had been working with UPS since October, and said one of the few instant-firing offenses he was warned about was having a vehicle roll away when not put in gear.
He’s unsure how the thieves got his truck. The drivers’ training focuses on speed and efficiency of movement, and all with the more feature-laden UPS trucks. It’s possible he left the keys in the seat or on a bumper out of misplaced reflex, he said, but considering UPS has built-in protections against this in their own vehicles, what happened to him seems less like a fireable offense and more like an honest mistake.
He said UPS’ practice of giving rented trucks to seasonal drivers may come back to bite the company even harder later.
New drivers, he said, are trained on UPS-owned vehicles loaded with safety and security options, like keyless starters and locks.
Gootee joked they can’t get a break for the holidays. Since they were burglarized during Christmastime several years ago, it feels like there’s always been some new challenge to handle each season.
After the truck was recovered, the two learned one of the surviving packages carried a wallet that had been previously stolen, and was being shipped back to its owner.
Gootee recalled thinking, “How lucky is this guy?”
