Employees Only

Bob Radliff's work begins at 3:30 a.m., when he picks up freight from Southwest Florida International Airport. A FedEx courier for 12 years, Radliff sorts, scans, loads, unloads, picks up and delivers packages. He makes, on average, 65 stops a day and delivers 125 packages, mostly to retail stores in the Coastland Center mall in Naples.

Mall rat: Each store is a whole different world to deal with, and you have to know how to deal with each one: This one might be grumpy, this one has kids, this one's husband might be mad at her. But that is what I like about it: Every time you go to a different store, something different happens. And that's what keeps my day from being about just delivering packages. If I have 70 different stops, I get 70 different personalities.

For the birds: The other day, I went up to a home and rang the doorbell and someone said, "Hello?" I said, "FedEx," and waited. Then they said hello again. I yelled, "FedEx!" No one answered, so I peeked my head in the window, and there's a parrot looking at me saying, "Hello."

Grunt work: At the mall, the stores have posters to put in their big windows, and those boxes are enormous; they're seven or eight feet tall. I have to load them in my cart and take them in one at a time-that's the thorn in my side. At some of the stores, I have to deliver to a back door. The music is blasting, so I'm back there ringing the doorbell and standing in the hot sun, and no one comes to the door. But now I have their numbers, and I can call them on my cell phone and let them know I'm back there.

TGIF: People love me on Fridays; I'm a hero on a Friday at the mall because I deliver payroll. They're usually waiting for me at the door.

Tricks of the trade: I've been in the area for so long I know all the back streets, all the short cuts, who to go to get things done. A lot of delivering is common sense: As you live it, you learn it. You know not to go up to a house with 10 newspapers by the front door. Or if there are dog signs everywhere, you know where the bad pooches are. You have to know when someone is going to have a lot of stuff to pick up so you leave room for it [in the truck]. Now my shelves don't get filled up, so I can be relaxed about it. But there is nothing like season-it's like a puzzle then.

An artist and a hero: Nobody wanted the [3 a.m.] position when I first got here. I wanted it so I could get out early. I'm a folk artist; when I get home, I paint. Last week in the mall, I was doing my rounds and I encountered this little boy who looked about six years old. He was crying, had lost his mother. I got on my cell phone and called mall security, and they located his family. FedEx saved the day.

-Rebecca Loveridge