Posted on 05/31/2010 4:23:09 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Yes - they are true Procrusteans indeed, being liars to the bone!
smaller stations and post offices the work often does not allow you to take a break? In the multiply-duplicated, hyper-redundant Post Offices ‘round my home, the “workers” often seem to see customers as a break from the personal phone calls, internet surfing, and naps.
I was talking more about in the back out of public sight where the mail gets sorted and distributed. The window clerks are only the tip of the iceberg and not always the best advertisement for service. I think some people coming in to work at the USPS get the wrong idea of postal employment from seeing window clerks. They come in expecting a cushy job and are sorely disappointed when they are told to come into work at midnight on some grunt job.
To anybody who does not like the challenge of meeting dispatches and deadlines while working night hours, I would recommend looking for a less physically demanding job.
You've been in a GMF a lot more recently than I. My GMF experience ended a generation ago in the letter sorting machine (LSM) era.
RE: window clerks are only the tip of the iceberg.
In the, again, repeatedly-redundant village post offices ‘round here, 6 or 7 of ‘em within 15 miles of my house, the window clerk is the sort-and-distributor and the Postmaster/mistress and the janitor. And, again, they seem glad to see me when I walk in. Drop the paperback, pause the video game, yawn, stretch, etc...
I don’t doubt you a bit. You can only report what you can see. “Associate offices” like the one you speak of are usually a whole different animal than city stations with a full complement of carriers where the real fun comes in getting the incoming mail distributed and sorted to the carriers in time so they can get to the street in a timely fashion. Of course staffing decisions vary and that causes varied working conditions. A lot of the problem at the station we worked at was that it served a growing area and while the number of routes increased from 12.5 to 15, the USPS saw fit to decrease the number of clerks working there. Thus my coworker would think he had come in early on his own time to give himself a fighting chance to get his job done on time.
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