It has been broadcast all over the news in my area that UPS is hiring, and that the average UPS driver makes around $76,000 annually! That just totally makes me feel devalued as a nurse. I am not sure what the national averages for nurse salaries are right now, but I am pretty sure it is not that much. I mean, seriously, these people deliver packages (not to devalue them, I have known a few and they work exceptionally hard), but we nurses deliver babies, we keep people alive, we take care of children and the elderly. We are highly educated, knowledgeable, and the responsibility we hold is immense. If the UPS guy screws up, someone might not get their package delivered on time. If a nurse screws up, someone could die. I just cannot reconcile this in my head!!!!
When I first saw this my initial thought was "screw nursing, I'm going to drive the brown truck!" My next thought was, how sad that we are so seriously devalued. What will it take before people realize our value to society? Am I overreacting to this? What are your thoughts?
Again, I want to add that I do not want to sound like I am putting down UPS drivers or similar careers. They work hard and do a great job. It is just that in comparison to the responsibility that we nurses hold, it does not seem that the pay is in line. Not that they deserve less, it is that we deserve at least as much or more for the work that we do!!!
Oh boy! Nurses get paid very well and have pretty secure jobs for the most part. The problem is with you and only you for feeling unhappy with your job and what you feel you should be making. The last time I checked nurses hourly wage is well above what most make so I would say "Society's opinion" made the financial adjustment to your hourly wage when it comes to showing the value of being a nurse. I find it strange that my sister being a nurse for 20 plus years and my girlfriend a nurse as well for 10 plus years have never complained or said anything about how little " Society Values" nurses. Buddy.... I'm sorry your a nurse not a Doctor so either quit your job and find a job your content with but you will sooner or later be unhappy with that because you found out what the trash man makes.
I find your comments rude. It is not unreasonable to expect good pay when you do a job with people's lives in your hands. Also society doesn't determine our wages, the hospitals that hire us do! They work together to keep wages the same so their staff doesn't jump to a competitor and to save money in general! Some people are grossly overpaid, personally I think sports stars, movie stars and CEO's are grossly overpaid. Nurses are many times underpaid! What is the solution to that? You can simply work overtime to make up the difference and many do just that! Or you can look toward a strong successful union to advocate for fair wages and working conditions. The best and most successful union I've seen is the National Nurses United of CA. I've read they are starting to branch out and unionize in other parts of the country! That is the best solution for nurses if you ask me!
I agree that a nurse should be paid more than a UPS driver simply because of the education. However, don't tell me lives depend on your work. It doesn't. The ultimate responsibility falls on the Dr., not the nurse. Yes I work at UPS and my wife is a nurse. I made $81,573 last year and she made $62,126. But, she is home at 230 everyday and all she does all day is hand out meds and take blood pressure. Is 4 years of college really required to do that? To make the $81K I'm away from the house for 13 hours everyday.
And to the nurses who want to become UPS drivers for the money, think again. The first day your sent out with 195 stops with the 2nd stop being some guy getting 15 90lb. packages of computer equipment that needs to be 2-wheeled up his 1/10th of a mile driveway, you're going to quit. Then you can go back to taking blood pressure and handing out medication.
Trust me, you have a good job and good pay. I'm not going to be able to walk or play with my grandkids at age 70. You will.
Hmmm ok I only saved a baby's life today no biggie
I wouldn't want to be a truck driver of any sorts. I have a good friend who does it and he is rarely ever home. I wouldn't want to go that long without seeing my family or sleeping in my own bed.
It's interesting that so many people are upset about their salary and are so defensive.
I'm sure everyone who decided nursing looked into / had a vague idea of what they would be making as a nurse. So, it seems futile to be angry about how much you make or how much another job makes, since you did the research (hopefully) and still decided that the pay was worth being a nurse. If pay is what really motivates you, there are states where you can get paid 70+/h with less than 3 years experience.
For me, the work load of being a nurse was worth the amount I would get paid in the areas I wanted to live. Would I be a nurse if I was paid very little / felt undervalued? Probably not.
I picked nursing because I enjoy what I do, but like anything it's a job. I think we put too much value on the mystic surrounding being a nurse...we forget it's a job; you go to work and you get paid. It seems like the people who put a lot of emphasis on the "nurse calling" or make it something more than a job are the ones who are angry. If you had treated it like any job, you probably wouldn't be so upset, since your pay and what you do would not be a surprise.
I don't get what the big deal is. Education has never been a guarantor of a high salary. Sometimes higher education correlates with higher pay, sometimes it doesn't. Librarians have to have a masters degree, yet most of them barely break the $20/hr barrier. I know where I work I make more with my year of education than our social workers do with their four-year and masters degrees.
I also think it's naive to say nurses should make more than UPS drivers because we "save lives". Most EMTs spend a larger portion of their time providing life saving care than the majority of RNs do. But EMTs don't make anywhere near as much as RNs do. Nor should they. That's not how compensation works.
Package delivery is is a lucrative business. Millions, maybe even billions, of people ship and receive packages every day. UPS relies on its drivers to generate the company's profit and they compensate them accordingly. I doubt very much the average annual salary for a UPS driver is 70k. But even if it is, I see no problem with that. Good on them if it is!
Its childish to say "I should make more than a UPS driver because I went to school for a long time and/or because I save lives". I don't know how the intricacies of how the free market works, nor do I really care. But I do know its a lot more complicated than 'more education=more money' or 'more altruism=more money'. There's supply and demand. There's the amount of actual revenue a job creates for its company. Smart, practical people research pay rates before they pursue a career and weigh their options accordingly.
UPS package deliverers are overpaid. You deserve your overtime pay, and god knows you do a crap-ton of it. But your hourly rates are absurd.
Just because nurses feel they should make more money doesn't mean they didn't do research or they don't like what they do. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of us do NOT WANT to be physicians. The level of skill needed and the value nurses add to the health of all people is not adequately reflected in the salary. There is not job security, it is not easy to just find another place to work.
Knowing 2 nurses does not mean you know the nursing profession. The fact that they don't talk to you about the frustrations there are within the profession may be evidence of them actually knowing you have these askew opinions, and not wanting to hear such ill-informed ridiculousness.
Police, firefighters, nurses, corrections workers, teachers, social workers, ALL occupations that serve to directly improve the health and safety of the general public should make so much more than they do. Entertainers, athletes, sales people and yes, UPS drivers, should make less. Those two lists are definitely missing occupations deserved of them, but you get the point. If salary is meant to be reflective of value of contribution to society and/or education, then the priorities of our society are severely messed up.
I'm proud of you for having pride in your job. You're on a message board for nurses. You're not going to find many people who are going to agree with you here, and continuing to come back to further defend your point just tells us you're either trolling us, or maybe you do actually think one of us is going to agree with you. Or maybe you want to sway us from our delusions of grandiosity. Idk. Maybe you took a wrong turn trying to find "wehatefedex.com" and thought hazing nurses might be fun. I hope you've enjoyed your visit, nonetheless.
UPS package deliverers are overpaid. You deserve your overtime pay, and god knows you do a crap-ton of it. But your hourly rates are absurd.
Just because nurses feel they should make more money doesn't mean they didn't do research or they don't like what they do. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of us do NOT WANT to be physicians. The level of skill needed and the value nurses add to the health of all people is not adequately reflected in the salary. There is not job security, it is not easy to just find another place to work.
Knowing 2 nurses does not mean you know the nursing profession. The fact that they don't talk to you about the frustrations there are within the profession may be evidence of them actually knowing you have these askew opinions, and not wanting to hear such ill-informed ridiculousness.
Police, firefighters, nurses, corrections workers, teachers, social workers, ALL occupations that serve to directly improve the health and safety of the general public should make so much more than they do. Entertainers, athletes, sales people and yes, UPS drivers, should make less. Those two lists are definitely missing occupations deserved of them, but you get the point. If salary is meant to be reflective of value of contribution to society and/or education, then the priorities of our society are severely messed up.
I'm proud of you for having pride in your job. You're on a message board for nurses. You're not going to find many people who are going to agree with you here, and continuing to come back to further defend your point just tells us you're either trolling us, or maybe you do actually think one of us is going to agree with you. Or maybe you want to sway us from our delusions of grandiosity. Idk. Maybe you took a wrong turn trying to find "wehatefedex.com" and thought hazing nurses might be fun. I hope you've enjoyed your visit, nonetheless.
I'm going to play devils advocate.
Do you know a UPS worker? Do you know first hand what their job entails? If not, it seems hypocritical to say they can't talk about nurses but it's okay if you make blanket statements about their job and salary and what their worth is. This goes in line with people who believe nursing is a "calling" or something more than a job and think nursing should be held higher than other professions (I hate this elitist belief that is rampant in nursing).
Nurses who feel they should be paid more, did not do their research. If you knew you were going to be paid $15/h to be a nurse and you still went through school and once you start your job you complain about low pay, that's your fault. You knew what you were getting into and the pay. Also, I didn't read through the entire post but I don't think anyone accused nurses of wanting to be doctors, in fact, I make more in my position than many primary care physicians who are starting out.
Police and Fire both make very comfortable salaries where I live, in fact in the large urban city where I live, the top paid government employees were nurses and fire fighters. This is not the norm, but you cannot make blanket statements about those positions.
My point comes back to, if you are so unhappy with your job vs what you get paid, you probably should have thought about it more before getting into it or move to a place that will pay you what you believe the job is worth.
The frustrations and challenges of being a nurse is something you signed up for, including the pay before you started the profession.
If you feel that UPS drivers or whatever profession get paid too much for the job they do, why not go get a job with UPS then? if you know of a job that gets paid a lot more and you feel is way less work, why wouldn't you work there? Your most likely response will be because you love being a nurse and helping people...if that's true, then you have to accept what you are being paid and realize you value helping people / being a nurse more than a higher salary. Sorry to sound harsh.
It's amazing how entitled some people in this thread are. Just because you feel your job is demanding and incredibly hard, doesn't make someone else's profession any less difficult and I hate that so many of you feel you can diminish what another person does.
I'm having issues with quoting, so I'll leave it at this instead of the lengthy ramble I attempted:
I do know UPS workers closely, I do know what their job entails, and no, their hourly rate is not in my opinion reflective of what the job entails.
Someone did say on a previous post that if we don't like our salaries, we should become doctors.
You don't sound harsh. You sound like you don't understand that it's possible to be satisfied with pay, yet feel that if this were a world that did pay based on education and contribution to society, nurses would make more. It is possible to be happy and recognize something could be better simultaneously.
It wasn't until I started dating a UPS driver did I realize all the BS many of them have to put up with. He has a pretty tough route in a major US city. Many days he doesn't take his hour lunch. He starts at 9am and gets home anywhere from 9:30 to 11:00pm. His overtime is lovely, but even he realizes he can't do such backbreaking work for another 20+ years to get a pension. He does make close to what the OP stated but he is not happy at all with the stress and hard work. He does nothing more than work, sleep and eat (less than he should since he has little time to do so) during his work week.
Do not discount other professions, they all have their own skill sets.
Nursing has a lot of potential and variety, which is the main selling point looking at is purely as a profession.
I have ben a nurse for 5 years and currently make well over 6 figures, it all depends on how hard you are willing to work and what you invest yourself in.
That just totally makes me feel devalued as a nurse. I am not sure what the national averages for nurse salaries are right now, but I am pretty sure it is not that much. I mean, seriously, these people deliver packages (not to devalue them, I have known a few and they work exceptionally hard), but we nurses deliver babies, we keep people alive, we take care of children and the elderly. We are highly educated, knowledgeable, and the responsibility we hold is immense. If the UPS guy screws up, someone might not get their package delivered on time. If a nurse screws up, someone could die. I just cannot reconcile this in my head!!!!
brandy1017, ASN, RN
2,909 Posts
I find your comments rude. It is not unreasonable to expect good pay when you do a job with people's lives in your hands. Also society doesn't determine our wages, the hospitals that hire us do! They work together to keep wages the same so their staff doesn't jump to a competitor and to save money in general! Some people are grossly overpaid, personally I think sports stars, movie stars and CEO's are grossly overpaid. Nurses are many times underpaid! What is the solution to that? You can simply work overtime to make up the difference and many do just that! Or you can look toward a strong successful union to advocate for fair wages and working conditions. The best and most successful union I've seen is the National Nurses United of CA. I've read they are starting to branch out and unionize in other parts of the country! That is the best solution for nurses if you ask me!