The friendly postman is not so friendly any longer. My postman tells me he no longer works for the post office, he works for Amazon.
Just for curiosity, do you think your not so friendly mailman prefers unemployment to overtime?
I worked for the USPS for 8 years. I carried the bag on the street for 7 1/2 of that. I quit in 1986 and I am shocked they lasted this long. That company is SO POORLY RUN it was shameful. My office had 20 routes and 1 auxiliary route. 21 full time carriers, 5 utility carriers (who all rotate an a set 5 routs so the "regulars" get their day off) and 2 temps to fill in sick calls and do "catch-all" stuff. That was 28 people on teh carrier craft side of the house. (Clerks were their own thing.)
I had 5 bosses. 5. 5 salaries paid for work that 2 could do. Multiply that by every office across the country and total up the waste. And now that it has caught up with them they are whining about it.
As far as working 7 days a week, THAT carrier won't mind it but THIS one will. Some of them will drink up every minute of overtime they can and some despise it. I was in that second group. I once told them, when told I had mandatory overtime, that I would NOT work overtime unless I chose to, and they were free to fire me if they chose to and deal with the VA for you being so insensitive that you fired a veteran for refusing to be worked into the ground. Remember overtime for a mail carrier in those days was an extra hour of walking on top of the 5 miles I had already covered that day.
These days they have a manpower shortage. Does that sentence stop there? Let's add "because" and continue it.
They have a manpower shortage because...
...supervision is groomed to treat employees as if the USPS is doing them a favor by ALLOWING them to work there.
...supervision is taught in classes about how to build a solid case to fire an employee.
...people don't want to work anymore. They prefer to stay home and let Uncle Welfare feed them.
...the job itself is stupid and unnecessary. We know what year it is, right? With that "internet" thing everywhere?
...the job is for unskilled, barely literate people who are willing to be abused by management.
Do you know supervisors are sent out to the street to time how long a carrier takes for lunch. You get 30 minutes. At minute 31 you are given a reprimand for "excessive lunch break." They also observe how often and how long you take for bathroom breaks. They (back then) had devices in the cars to track your mileage, speed, and acceleration on paper discs that were collected and reviewed daily. If your tracker showed any rapid acceleration you were counseled about your safety practices.
Now allow me to add that I was their worst nightmare. I did what I wanted to do and dared them to discipline me. The supervisors were the biggest offenders. One in particular used to claim he had doctor appointments one day every week. Well, I had a friend who had no job and nothing to do, so I sent him out with my camera and 200mm lens and had him watch the guy's house. He left work at 11am and did not leave his house again until5:30 when he went to his kid's little league game. Had a carrier lied like that to get time off he would have been terminated immediately. That guy did that so often that eventually I filed a grievance (I was union steward too) with evidence of that wrongdoing as well as another stunt he pulled. He ended up with a 4 week suspension without pay. I WANTED him fired, but there wasn't quite enough. I made my point though.
And THAT is at the core of the USPS problems is the "us against them" hostile workplace the supervision creates. They have no people because nobody wants to shovel coal into the engines of that sinking ship.
Personally I want mail on Tuesday and Friday only. The union will NEVER allow that big of a layoff so it won't happen, but just think about what you get in your mail in 2021 vs what you got in 1981. Do you need 90% of that garbage? Do you READ 90% of that garbage? Nobody gets bills in the mail anymore. Again' that thing called the internet...
And for the 5% of the country who has either failed to accept the time of life we are on and still demands paper newspapers filled with stuff that happened yesterday rather than read online, and demands paper bills (and are willing to pay 51 cents per bill to mail in their paper checks), ask yourself if 5% of the population really matters enough to keep a government subsidized business that is failing in historically grand fashion alive.
Again. 2021.
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