After all the waiting around on Saturday, you would have thought management would have scheduled enough clerks on Monday morning to distribute the mail to the carriers in a timely manner. Alas, that wasn't the case, as one of our key clerks wasn't scheduled. There wasn't as much waiting time as Saturday - only about 45 minutes today instead of the hour on Saturday. At least management is consistent.
As for volume, I know it's a tired cliche that there's never any mail during route check week, but... I'm forced to say it again: Where's the mail? We got about half the volume today that we got last Monday. Two routes were very telling. These two routes in the White Rock Lake area have million dollar homes, and usually there's mail stacked everywhere at these route's cases. Yet, both carriers were on waiting time about an hour into the morning. Now I'm not saying management cut any mail back at the plant. Perhaps, today being the first day of new rates, lower mail volume is the new reality.
From what I'm being told, there is a semi-major initiative to get post offices route checked in Dallas. Last week, four post offices were checked. This week six. And next week four more post offices are scheduled to be checked. We have postmasters as far away as northern Arkansas helping conduct these checks.
Today was my day for an examiner to check my route. I worked all the way through. I didn't hear any negative comments from my examiner about my performance. Yet, when I got back to the office, my PM supervisor angrily asked where I had been. (She isn't exactly a great motivator.) I pointed to my examiner and said if you want to know, he (the examiner) can tell you to the minute where I've been all day! It left a bad taste in my mouth, and I came home feeling dirty after being associated with the entire route check process, which isn't conducive for either carriers or management.
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!
I've heard a rumor from managers in the Postal Service that the USPS is looking to cut 60,000 jobs and offer early out incentives because of the worsening financial picture for the USPS. I don't know if there is any truth to this rumor - it could be people just passing bad information - however I just wanted to bring this to the light of day to see if this rumor can be proven or dispelled. Tom
A PostalMag.com reader says they have contacted the USPS OIG about their supervisors falsifying clock rings. However, according to this reader, the OIG said the Department of Labor investigates such complaints. However, according to this reader, the Department of Labor said the USPS should investigate these complaints. So I want to know, who is supposed to investigate?
I can't imagine anyone at my office giving nothing but the worst marks on the VOE survey about our management team. Yet, the team stays and nothing is done about their sometimes abusive and always ineffectual management. Some unions or branches encourage their members to not take the survey. I'm starting to see why. Though I had hopes that something would be done about the surveys, I'm realizing they do no good... and in fact they may be helping management. What if the top managers in my area see the awful scores my local management team is getting, and instead of removing them, they say "wow, this manager is really giving the employees hell, she must be really sticking it to them and doing a great job for the postal service!?"
On a similar note, when it comes to EAS employees being abused, something is done about it. EAS employees at the Southwest Area office in Dallas recently complained about a certain employee, and that employee was removed from their position.
