Route checks started today at my PO. As always, a lot of fun. A few highlights.

The route check team leader testily told the carriers that he would conduct the check by the M-39 and if we didn't like it he would take his team and leave. Really, that's all it would take? Very tempting to just let him leave...

The route check team found that three routes had been cased on last night. It was funny when they told us they took all the mail out of the case and rearranged it so that it could be cased again for the route check.

Today was also Food Drive day, so I don't see how they'll be getting any reliable data from today.

As usual we had two clerks trying to do all the distribution. (Sometimes we have one clerk and one limited-duty carrier.) Usually it's no big deal when we all sit around for 45 minutes waiting on the hot case because there is no one there but local management to know about it. Well today, everyone on the route check team saw it and they weren't happy to say the least. Practically all the 30 or so carriers and a dozen or so route checkers stood around and watched the lone hot case clerk work the mail. Poor Ros was not happy, as she was the only one in the building working for about thirty minutes. She stepped out for a minute and you would have thought someone just shot Kennedy. The team leader made a note of this in his notebook.

The team leader informed us that we will be doing this route check the same as we have been working all year. There will be no special changes for this week. Apparently he didn't know that local management had already made some special changes in recent weeks, including moving our AM break back to the office from the street. When informed of this he was not happy and asked WHO AUTHORIZED THIS? Anyway, we haven't been doing vehicle checks for the last year because we haven't had a clerk to give us our vehicle keys in the morning until the last minute when it's time to go. So there WILL BE NO VEHICLE CHECKS THIS WEEK, according to the route check team leader!