Rather than a story from a friend, I actually used to work in a UPS hub!
I worked the day sort as a loader for a few months shortly after dropping out of my first stab at college. I was pulled off my truck 3 separate times to work the unload. (One side of the building unloads trucks while the other side loads trucks).
I can truthfully say that they try to pay attention to "fragile" labels, along with "this side up" and "do not bend". The ones they pay much more attention to are "HazMat" and "This is heavy; get help". The problem at the hubs is that the most important thing is time. The line supervisors are somewhere in between a slave driver and a football coach. You feel like you are on a sports team. They keep track of everyone's stats and post them publicly...how many did you load, how long did it take, how many were mispicks (zip code doesn't belong on your truck), etc. It was very survival of the fittest. In orientation, you learn to handle things with care while maintaining a level of urgency. After a week on the line of being yelled at for loading the wrong packages on your track at half the speed of the guy that has been there for 10 years and never gets a mispick, all concern for the well-being of the packages is out the window.
And the unload is even worse, because they can't screw up. There is zero reason to go slow because there is nothing to sort or check the zip on, which is the primary reason you stop and look at each individual package on the load.
At the end of the day, if the package is still sealed, it goes on the truck. It has to have substantial holes in it or flat out have missing chunks for them to send it to the "damaged" pile.
I know none of that is very encouraging. But as with most problems with big companies, the problem is management. I can assure you its not that the package handlers see "Fragile" and think "Yay! Eff this guy! Break his stuff!". It just isn't on their priority list thanks to management.
BC