mindofw1nnergame3.icu
Hi, my name's Craig. I'm 43 years old, I'm from Birmingham. And no, this isn't fake — in March, it was exactly 20 years since I started working at UPS. I'm a Delivery Driver. Every morning I'm up at 4:30, drive to the depot, load up my van, and deliver parcels to drop-off points and lockers all over Birmingham. On an average day, I've got between 120 and 170 stops. Scan, put it on the shelf, explain to the customer why their parcel ended up somewhere they didn't expect. Sometimes it's pissing down with rain, sometimes it's +30°C inside the cab. Sometimes the customer's shouting, sometimes they smile and say thank you. But mostly, it's just routine. My salary now is pretty much the same as it was five years ago — about £30,000 gross a year. Take-home is around £2,100–£2,300 a month if I don't skimp on overtime. You'd think that should be enough. But over those five years, everything's just gone through the roof. Rent's gone up £180 a month, council tax has shot up, electricity and gas are an absolute joke. Petrol, food, car insurance, school uniform and bus fares for my son — everything's getting more expensive, and my wage is just standing still. At home, I've got my wife Sarah and my son Liam, he's 16. Sarah used to work in a shop, but she got laid off two years ago and hasn't found a proper job since — just a part-time gig, 16 hours a week. Liam's in sixth form, wants to go to college to be a mechanic. I look at him every evening and think: "Son, I don't want you to be 43 years old, still busting your arse in a van for the same money." I've felt like I've been drowning for a long time. I wake up at 4:30 and instead of getting ready for work, I just lie there thinking: "How the fuck are we going to get through this?" At the end of the month, after all the bills, there's £40–60 left. Sometimes we even go into the red. I've been spinning my wheels for two years — credit cards, a small loan, then another one. First I took them "to cover things", then "to pay off t
