Going Postal

It has been 22 or 23 years since I worked for the Postal Service. It was a terrible place to work. Though I did have a lot of fun I still have bitter memories. It seems that when I worked in smaller offices, ten routes or fewer, everyone got along just fine, but in larger offices there was always fighting between the management and the workers.

There was also internal fighting between the workers. There were "Lifers" and "Runners." Runners were the workers that worked as fast as possible and wasted time elsewhere. The Lifers were the people that did everything as slowly as possible because they figured if they showed they had more time on their hands they would be assigned more work. All the work got done when you average the out-put from the two groups to the median speed.

The worst part was the route inspections. Every year the regional or sectional center would send a team of people to follow and watch every move each carrier made for a week. The end result dictated how much additional work the carrier could be assigned. The funny thing was that mail volume was generally high with lots of junk mail to weigh the carriers down every day, but during the inspection week the junk mail was all being warehoused somewhere and the mail volume was much less.

Every tray of mail was measured for each route every day, so there was statistics showing what the real volume should be for any given day of the year. All data was compiled with SPLY (Same Period Last Year)statistics.

I saw this happen for nearly ten years; heavy junk mail volume for 51 weeks and nothing on inspection week. I was recently talking with a carrier and he told me it still goes on.

It is a wonder more workers don't snap with the unfair tactics that have become tradition with the management of an agency we are all supposed to trust.