Mark Mercado Is Ingleside’s Packing And Shipping Wiz

Mark Mercado puts extra care into Ingleside’s shipping and notary needs.

Mercado, the manager of The UPS Store, is no stranger to customer service in the neighborhood. Before he packaged fragile items and rented mailboxes, he helped them find their home basics at Target. But once the retailer closed in 2021, he ended up just one block over at The UPS Store.

“I enjoy it,” Mercado said. “I love the workers who work in the neighborhood. In general, it’s just really nice. I haven’t met a single person who makes me say, ‘I got to leave. I got to get out of here.’ You get so many gems.” 

Aside from connecting with the community, he also serves as one of the few public notaries in the neighborhood. His real specialty is ensuring packages are shipment ready while keeping the cost low and the contents secure.

“I do my best to make sure to say, 'OK, this is the smallest that I can make it while it’s still strong enough to withstand any kind of impact damage,”’ Mercado said. “Basically, if I pack something, I will feel confident dropping it from a high level and it falling and it not breaking whatsoever. If I can’t do that, I don’t feel comfortable shipping it out.”

The Ingleside Light caught up with Mercado to learn more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Did you ever see yourself working in this line of work?

This is The UPS Store, which is individually owned; they're just affiliated with UPS. But my mother works with the actual UPS. She gets up at like 1 or 2 in the morning, goes to load the trucks at the UPS downtown, then gets off work maybe like 8 or 9 o'clock. My whole family did seasonal work there. I wasn't, personally, a big fan of it, but I could see myself going to like being in the customer service department over there and just being on the phone helping everybody. My brother works like every other season as a driver's helper. We're pretty used to the UPS  situation. I never really saw myself doing it, but at the same time, now I can.

What does a typical shift look like?

I'm so used to not going in the morning anymore. It used to be every day, I would go in and I would open a lot. If I do open, I open the gates, make sure all the money's counted, make sure all the packages from the previous night are just kind of sorted if they weren't already and just throughout the day taking people's Amazon returns which are still a big thing so Amazon returns, Happy Returns, which are the Amazon equivalent for UPS and then there’s Temu returns. I also do notaries.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to start a similar career?

Be flexible, but also don't give up on your personal life. One of the biggest things for me is when I go home, thankfully, there's always at least one of my brothers at home if they're not working, they're not doing their other job, so I don't have to worry right when I get home. Usually, my dad's fine. The dogs are OK. I don't have to clean up after anything unless it's like my specific chore, so when I get home, I'll usually just hop online. I'll play some games with friends, or I'll talk with some other friends, like “You want to go to the movies or something?” Keeping that social connection outside of the family, outside of work. It's just kind of what keeps you sane. It doesn't even have to be social or anything, you can just do your own thing. I’m a huge Pokémon nerd. I’ll have some “me time” for a few hours before I go to bed.

Don't be afraid to say, “Yeah, I want some money. I'll take that extra shift.” But if you're having a bad week, maybe something happened family-related-wise, maybe you couldn't do something, just keep that day for yourself. You want to be flexible, especially when you're first getting hired on. The boss needs people to fill in the missing gaps for a new schedule that works for everybody, so be flexible, but don't be breakable.