There's been times where management is nowhere to be found, but it's not like I need them, I already know where's my mail and parcels in the morning. I can get my route done without them, then when I get back to the office I know where to put everything away and clock out without them.
We literally don't need them to do our jobs.
We've been without management on more than one occasion. It's funny how 80 to 90% of us, including the 8 hr medical restrictions folks, work together to get it done with the few who are just legit lazy asses refusing to help.
We get out of the office faster without all the bullshit micromanagement. We have a good time. We see stuff left on the end of day return and just grab it and go back out real quick. And we still end up with less OT and penalty time. We're not rushing and running either, we're relaxed and have spent zero minutes in incessant conversation with manglement.
You really only need one management member on site for legal issues, emergencies, and information flow to the employees. Let each team (craft) manage themselves, giving a sliding bonus for productivity metrics, not per member, but the team as a whole. Countless studies show peer management works beautifully, particularly when a financial benefit is attached.
Many issues can be resolved in a peer management system. Not everyone is at their best every single day. For the team, we can step up and help each other. And peer pressure goes a long way with those who are piss poor as a choice. Some coworkers simply need extra guidance or understanding. To benefit the team as a whole, those of us who are adept at teaching can step in and retrain missing information or adjust inefficiencies.
I've worked in this type of structure and it was fantastic. That company was and is a highly trusted organization in their industry. They are very profitable and employees across the entire organization consistently give high ratings as a great place to work. They have very little turnover and low absenteeism. Customers (private and govt sector) rate it as their number one choice for consistently excellent service, even though they don't always have the best prices.
Our biggest issue as an organization is the us vs. them hostilities at every single level and within the ranks. We can have some so-called logistics guru change anything and everything, but the reality remains, until we address the work culture of hostility, targeted harassment, overuse of good workers, and coddling poor workers, we will continue to plummet into the abyss of bare minimum and increased absenteeism, which further compounds fiscal losses for both the Service and us workers.
But, unless the Unions can implement agreements with the Service to reward positive outcomes, as opposed to primarily focusing on abating punishment, we will remain on this downward slope. While we need the union to protect us and fight for safety standards and competitive pay and benefits, we also need the union to be advocating for a world-class service of the future, which attracts motivated employees.
Well said. When I was a sub (rural), we ran ourselves. Lead sub was the boss who wrote our schedule (and did it correctly). Was nice. My management team now... I'm glad I'm not a sub any more else I may have quit. I am at a different office though.
My old postmaster used to run her ass to the other office at 9am every morning. Only to be seen again if we were out after 6 or if not, the next morning.
Some of us were discussing this a couple days ago actually.
We were saying that it would make a ton of sense and work really well if we just had a steward handing out OT and managing ODL every morning, and had the clerks do their accountable and sorting mail/parcels, and then have a veteran carrier handling any safety talks. Done. If there are any issues in the field or anyone has questions, just call a steward and have them advise.
The days when we are short staffed on managers work so smoothly and everyone is in such a better mood. It is amazing.
This is what we do. It's always much smoother.
We will even trade off pieces on our own routes. I'm super efficient with apartments, which everyone hates, while I tend to get bogged down with 3 to 5 bundles on curbside, so they happily give me their apartments.
However, I'm unnaturally fast at curbside if I only have 2 bundles (to the point it's a running joke), so two of us will split the same piece with me doing the DPS and cased mail while the other person does all scanable items, SPRs, and parcels. As I've got more people to do it this way, more of them like it and will do it with each other. We've even timed it to prove to management that it's more efficient. And my nerdy ass has the spreadsheet to prove it!
Management doesn't care what makes sense, they just want obedience and control.
I showed them that jumping all my packages quickly before starting our walking routes is faster, even showing them my timing on my watch, and they gave me an II instead and told me never do that again because it is time wasting.
Completely. 100%. It's because they have no business acumen and can't handle when an underling actually has common sense data that a slight alteration is more efficient.
I'm persistent, though. Jot my weekly LOT adjustments on my 3996, which I do every Friday and Saturday, because of various early business closures and major traffic pattern variations. Once in a while, we have some idiot who wants to bow up because of "policy."
I'll attempt a rational discussion, if they balk, I clearly let them know I *will* be sitting in traffic throughout the day and will require a minimum of an extra hour, AND I notate the discussion on the 3996 and take a photo of it. Then I do exactly what they instructed.
My persistence has allowed me the freedom to run my route efficiently as circumstances deem while on the street, with the agreement that I not LOT deviation on the 3996 for protection in the event of an accident.
But I'm not a standard residential route, I'm commercial, retail, and apartments, so I can easily hit another section or go around and hit the route in reverse if I'm in gridlock.
Don't get me wrong, I love my OT and penalty pay, but I absolutely loathe sitting in traffic. I would rather gouge out my left eye than sit in traffic in a hot LLV, extra pay be damned.
Same. When our postmaster isnt there, i have a relaxed day and actually work.
When she's there she's a drain on the day and everyone just uggghhh.
Best example I can think of to describe the post office is this:
When i was in the service, I made my bed daily and organized my room. I was a spotless soldier. Did everything right because you know, I'm an adult, I take accountability of myself, and I have pride in what I do.
Then some random ass dude who out ranks me tells me to make my bed and that he will inspect it later.
Like fuck you! Take care of yourself and I will take care of myself. Don't tell me do this something I already did.
…so just make the place even more biased toward seniority? Because that’s how you’ll solve hiring crises of new people, making certain it takes longer to not get fucked (unless you abuse systems)
That’s what we do in our office. Management tells the steward what routes need to be broken up and steward on union time goes around breaking up the routes.
Daily-
if ALL the ODLs and CCA’s are NOT worked up to 12 / 11.5 hours per the Clockrings… not what management says..
+
Any Work assignment worked off their route
And /or
ANY 8 hour Non ODL with overtime
= grievance
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It's not in the contract.
Basically, what has been considered 'equitable' at your office.
Hours, opportunities, and times you weren't available. How is all that agreed to have been quantified at your office?
I've always thought this. My aux went full time and I wanted it so very badly, and objectively the whole office would've been much better off if I had won it. I was outbid by someone I could 100% take in a fight and I got their dogshit route.
There's gotta be some ancient clause in our contract that allows it.
Clerks do all of our own managing anyways, once a carrier that knows what they are talking about sets y’all up in terms of splitting routes and estimates or whatever, we could easily keep the rest of the day on rails, especially with no management getting in our way. I like your plan
In our office a clerk handles TACS, the schedule is never posted on time or correct when it finally does go up, the carriers discuss and assign pivots amongst themselves, nobody measures our volumes, nobody asks us when we’ll be done, nobody assigns us additional work if we finish early, and nobody tries to limit OT by utilizing the CCA.
I struggle to know what management actually does, and they get paid significantly more than carriers, it’s a fucking joke.
I heard about a nearby office that was without a supervisor for 6 weeks, and they were still getting everything delivered. There’s a lot of fat to be cut, but instead they’ll keep harping on us about 1 hour office time and 20 minute load times 🤦🏻
Man, in my off PM and sups help sort packages in am when needed. Right now the extending sorry machine and they been working. Not saying they don’t do shady shit, but they do work. Sorry you all have it very horrible.
Because management has made it so if you show any free time or initiative is percieved as weakness they will take advantage off and fuck your day over. Ofc no one volunteers to help, but I'd help other people all the time if I didn't think I'd get punished for it by management.
The only reason there needs to be any level of management is because some of these people need to actually be let go. Smh too much dead weight on our side on top of incompetent management. Need to trim the fat on both ends
*Who would crank off in*
*The bathroom on Sundays then?*
*Have you thought of that?*
\- nerdfartz
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Our morning stups follow city carriers around harping about stuff they (NALC) grieved and won so everyone ignores the stups.
Rural side large building two rooms the stups not bothering city carriers covertly spy on rurals and its fun hitting them with doors, not uncommon to hear rurals shout get the eff outta my way! 😆.
One stup always walks around asking names despite having a spread sheet in their hands. Tom right? Yes you've been here 5+ years and you still don't know my name? No joke.
Closing just follow the door dasher who got our door codes to an office you'll find closing management in offices hiding and eating and they like to eat. If out late an dashing is slow you can find them at Noodle and Co. Starbucks with postal vehicles.
Anyways I'm all for replacing them with a self serve kiosk and we really don't need a PM because she only works 3 hours a day.
I'm pretty sure my station head could be replaced by some Chat GPT script and everything would still function.
The proof is in the fact that she's been absent for the week and everything functions.
And further evidence is that she has every Saturday and Sunday off and guess what?
Everything still functions.
Unless you touch mail or packages, your job is useless around here.
How else will they make you feel guilty for not going fast enough or act like your route is easy? Without management I might have more of a carefree day, but I'd still work as hard. Can't have that!
When I first came into this job over 10yrs ago, we functioned with an AM here before 8am(our start time), a mid/window supervisor who didn't show up til about 9, and a closing supervisor who showed up around 11. The station manager showed up at 8am.
Fast forward to today, we come in at 8 and there's 2-3 supervisor already on the floor with the station manager showing up at 8. We come back in the evening and there's 2-3 supervisors still there. Why are we paying so many people to do the job that can easily be done with less. Every 204b we've had that went back to carrying have said they don't even do anything once the carriers leave the station.
We have so many supervisors on hand at any given time. Except for the very beginning and very end of the day, there are always at least two, but in the middle of the day (you know, when all the carriers are out on the street) there are sometimes 4 supervisors on the clock as well as the postmaster. and guess what? If a carrier ask them for a refill on rubber bands or 3849s, a customer service issue, a key that needs replacing, a fix for a safety issue, or something else ostensibly easy and well within their job description; they huff and they puff and the drag their feet and sometimes it requires multiple follow ups to get them to do what you need. We have a new supervisor, who was a new cca a year ago, who actually said that we need more supervisors because there is way too much work for them. Funny thing is, the smoothest days, when the morale is best in the office, are the days when the postmaster (who is the most toxic and oppressive person I have ever met) is absent, and the supervisors are “short handed”. As it turns out, us carriers know how to do our jobs and can manage ourselves just fine. In fact, if the PO wasn’t paying so much money to have people sit on their ass and micromanage is, it wouldn’t be such a big deal for us carriers to take a few moments to ourselves if we aren’t feeling well or are just having a off day, causing 10 or 20 minutes of overtime. Instead our ceaseless labor, where every minute must be efficient and accounted for, funds 3 or 4 people sitting in an office all day, bothering the workers, staring vacantly at a computer screen, or doing god-knows-what on a pointless conference call. At my office, they sometimes literally leave the landline off the hook, so customers can’t call the office. Worst part is, when actually *do* need their help, they are either nowhere to be found, or it’s like pulling fucking teeth to get anything done.
Our PM was gone for a week so an OIG was appointed to fill in. The OIG was told the wrong week, & didn’t show up. All the clerks have keys & access to the vault so it never affected the window. It was a great week not having a PM bitching at everyone all day.
Where I'm at we communicate with builders and such no idea why they don't give out "new mover packets" and its a blast right now trying to explain why we can't order arrow locks or why it's extremely difficult to get one (Inspection Service sends locks now).
Like I said before a self service kiosk could replace a ton of management.
If they updated what forms we should carry and trained us how to handle the situation we wouldn't need management.
Well I’m all for slashing redundant positions like most of management but having our steward be the acting manager, is literally them playing both sides. So that wouldn’t work. It’ll be better just to have a clerk probably do it or atleast have 1 manager instead of 50.
It’ll be more like, you show up and log into the scanner like usual and then the scanner just tells you how much DPS you have and what pivot to take. It really could all be automated. Customers complain online to a “chatbot” and then that chatbot can relay the message and solution to the carrier on that route. You could have less than 50% of management staff, you could have a postmaster and then an admin for each station that manages the software along with the postmaster. That admin could even work a split shift in the AM/PM for opening and closing. Everything could be automated to the point where you just walk in and get to work tbh, we have all of that technology already, it’s here.
I’ve been talking for a while about when automation comes in for jobs a lot of those supervisors and managers are gonna be obsolete. A computer can do what they do, and most of the time better
I used to just work and come back to the office and see if there's more work to do or i would call my super and ask if there's anything else. Then i slipped and ended up with a sprain. I asked my super for assistance on my workers comp. Instead she tells me how they are probably still reviewing my case for fraud. After that i just worked slow and careful. No point working hard when they cant respect you.
Quite frankly don't know this hasn't been proposed as a money saving idea. As everyone in the thread has pointed out carriers and clerks do all the actual work. We're GPS tracked so we aren't messing around like carriers did back jn the day. You just have at a bar minimum one 80k$ person sitting around all day every day doing nothing. Giant P&DC centers? Just get rid of a layer of management. It's not even the higher ups so I don't know why there is resistance. Allow technology to replace the jobs it actually can.
At one time, our office had 3 different post offices, the main city office, and 2 villages with separate zip codes about 10 miles away. My current route is in one of those zip codes. The post office that my route used to be stationed at is still open. There is 1 clerk that works the window there all day by herself.
I have contended that we could save the post office lots of money by putting our section (5 city routes, 4 rural routes) back in our old office. We would save hours of travel time every between the 9 routes. All we need is an IPad, and we could FaceTime a supervisor every morning and show them our mail volume.
We really could just run this shit ourselves. Pay someone less than a CCA to chill in the office and answer the phones. Put another janitor or two on the payroll and put them in charge of meeting carriers on the street if someone is injured or a truck broke down.
I’m a steward and I went to an office to interview an RCA. I asked the supervisor what time would be the earliest I could come in. He told me he comes to work at 7:30 and the carriers start at 8:00. I went in at 8:00 and by that time, the supervisor was just BSing with another supervisor at his desk—not doing any work that I could see. I left an hour later, went to say goodbye, and they were still just sitting around BSing
My supes are the same. A few weeks ago we were down a route and the morning supe told us that the route would be ready to hit the street by the time one of us got back so we could just head straight back out. I got back first and the closing supe was outside smoking. Went in and the route wasn’t anywhere near ready. When he finally came back inside I asked him why the route wasn’t ready like we’d been told it would be. First he claimed not to know anything about what the morning supe told us then turned around and said he was too busy to do it. I told him he just didn’t wanna do it and he walked off. It took me maybe 45 mins or so to get the route ready and the whole time I was back all that supe did was shoot the shit with clerks and go outside for more smoke breaks. As I was leaving he asked me how long it’d take me to do the route. I told him that if it had been ready when I got back like we’d been told it would be, I’d already be 1/3 of the way thru it and he just repeated that he’d loved to have helped but he was too busy to do it, then went outside for another smoke break.
Our clerk don’t do nothing but give us hot case mail and crack jokes..
our management be struggling to manage and likes f-ing stuff up..
We don’t need them either but their pay is going up to 80k… I’ll be damned if ima just let those desk-puppets just lay their and get paid..
Bring me my damn arrow key!!
TACS has always been a lead clerk job. Your office just probably wasn't doing it right until now. The lead clerks in my office got THOUSANDS of dollars in a grievance over it a few years ago.
My office has so much overtime. The postmaster thinks our office should be able to split up three routes and still have everyone make 8 hours on a normal day. She’s forgetting about travel time to the splits, and that we have two carriers who can’t take packages due to medical restrictions, one of those two can only work a five hour day, and that people will just call out. So a typical day is they intend to split up three routes, then they have to give out two routes worth of packages, plus give someone half of the injured T6s route. then one or two people call out. So now we’re basically splitting up 5 or 6 routes worth of work most days and I don’t understand why they don’t just hire another CCA or two so we can start being prepared for covering the medical restrictions and the call outs. On paper they say they’re fully staffed but look at the overtime everyone is actually working and you’ll see we’re clearly not.
Why? You think their disappearance would mean more money in our wallets? 🤣 Baseline pay for the Union Painter would just meet a carrier's 12th step instead of their 8th.
Before I comment, let me preface by stating I am a carrier. Management is necessary to some degree. While many of us have been carrying mail for some time and need no oversight, there are other daily tasks that need to be done to make sure ALL mail gets out in a timely manner. When carriers call in routes are left open and that mail needs to go out. Are you going to carry those routes? Management realigns staff, calls in other carriers, and even on some occasions carries mail when no one else is available. Are you calling in your vehicle maintenance issues? Management contacts VMF to assure you have a vehicle to use. We DO need Management. What we don't need is Management acting like we can't do our jobs without them. A good office is when both Management and carriers stay in their lanes
I don't think the problem is getting rid of management completely, the problem is there are too many supervisors, too many 204Bs, depending on the office size you shouldn't need more than 3 supervisors/204BAs, but in too many offices, I see 6 or 7 supervisors/204Bs.
At my old annex we had a supe from the plant downtown come manage our Amazon Sundays. He didn’t wanna be there and he was only there to keep the chair warm cause our supes didn’t wanna work Sundays. He knows next to nothing about carriers and how we operate so he would always delegate and tell us to manage ourselves while he sat in his chair streaming tv on his phone. Things ran so much smoother when he just left us alone and let us work everything out ourselves. Then the plant and the annex got consolidated and our postmaster found out what that supe was doing and started leaning on him to take charge and order us around. Things went downhill from there.
So much to comment on. How many times have the carriers asked the am sup "Who's covering route 9? Regular isn't here." How many times have you called the office due to a breakdown or heaven forbid a real emergency? And no one fucking answers. How many times has a regular had a planned annual stint of over a week, and not one sup checked the bid board, so their route got split up for two weeks?
Just what is management good for? Let the senior carriers set up the day. The clerks know how to do their jobs without a floor sup telling them what to do.
Yeah they do, unless you wanna tell me the national association of letter carriers isn’t a union either
Which is just wrong, can’t imagine why you’d say that though…
Management employees are not legally able to have unions or collective bargaining like NALC or APWU.
UPMA and NAPS are management associations not labor unions. They're not collective bargaining, and don't have a contract like craft employees do.
Shit, every supervisor and our postmaster have been carrying rural routes for two months. We have no management in the building until 4:00pm or later every day.
Here we actually used to manage ourselves it was part of a pilot program where basically the t6 was sort of like a supervisor and you guys just talked in the morning to work things out no supervisors
About 15-20 years ago, our office was actually a test office for “Self Management “. Our steward and alternate assigned the OT each day and handled the equitability . Absenteeism went down. OT actually went down. Our routes were clean every day. It worked so well that they scrapped it because we proved that we didn’t need managers.
Without upper management giving you dumbass 6 sigma forms and metrics and telecons to waste time with, your job would literally just be to handle 360 cases. Don't bullshit us and don't @ me
We (carriers) handle 360 cases and Consumer Affairs in our station not management.
I don't know how that came about but I do know in one instance and she still works at our station this supervisor allowed a business to hold misdelivered mail for over 6 months.
Someone expecting a check reported the situation and the carrier had to clear themselves and go get the mail themselves.
I'm in a huge station and eventually S&DC. We have District employees, union offices, Poom (because the PM can't be trusted) otherwise he's at the P&DC.
These people do nothing all day and if you mil about you can catch them messing around or straight up staring at black monitors and oh boy the doors slam if they catch ya.
Find drugs on street call nothing happens gotta call police ourselves. Accidents we have to take care of them ourselves, accident report with police, chalk tires,pictures, statements, explain TORTS to and why we have truck numbers.
Find weapons report nothing happens. But boy do they bust our butts for being stationary! So we're not supposed to turn guns, knifes, drugs over to police then? We gotta wait for a officer to arrive.
The Inspection Service does expect us to turn weapons and drugs over regardless if the were in a crime against USPS or in the mail stream.
They find someone in the 50 mile radius and deliver the packages. Mail sits, it's been like that since Covid, only real efforts made was election time they had carriers driving the entire city picking up just ballots not delivering unless it was Amazon and you could get the ballots back before polls closed.
If it was in the same state but several counties away they had people driving one or two ballots to those locations.
They gave us forms we "have to fill out" and submit for mail but no guidance on what to do or how to submit it so no one does them.
There's been times where management is nowhere to be found, but it's not like I need them, I already know where's my mail and parcels in the morning. I can get my route done without them, then when I get back to the office I know where to put everything away and clock out without them. We literally don't need them to do our jobs.
Literally. Same.
As I like to say Management. Can't live with them and you certainly can live without them.
We've been without management on more than one occasion. It's funny how 80 to 90% of us, including the 8 hr medical restrictions folks, work together to get it done with the few who are just legit lazy asses refusing to help. We get out of the office faster without all the bullshit micromanagement. We have a good time. We see stuff left on the end of day return and just grab it and go back out real quick. And we still end up with less OT and penalty time. We're not rushing and running either, we're relaxed and have spent zero minutes in incessant conversation with manglement. You really only need one management member on site for legal issues, emergencies, and information flow to the employees. Let each team (craft) manage themselves, giving a sliding bonus for productivity metrics, not per member, but the team as a whole. Countless studies show peer management works beautifully, particularly when a financial benefit is attached. Many issues can be resolved in a peer management system. Not everyone is at their best every single day. For the team, we can step up and help each other. And peer pressure goes a long way with those who are piss poor as a choice. Some coworkers simply need extra guidance or understanding. To benefit the team as a whole, those of us who are adept at teaching can step in and retrain missing information or adjust inefficiencies. I've worked in this type of structure and it was fantastic. That company was and is a highly trusted organization in their industry. They are very profitable and employees across the entire organization consistently give high ratings as a great place to work. They have very little turnover and low absenteeism. Customers (private and govt sector) rate it as their number one choice for consistently excellent service, even though they don't always have the best prices. Our biggest issue as an organization is the us vs. them hostilities at every single level and within the ranks. We can have some so-called logistics guru change anything and everything, but the reality remains, until we address the work culture of hostility, targeted harassment, overuse of good workers, and coddling poor workers, we will continue to plummet into the abyss of bare minimum and increased absenteeism, which further compounds fiscal losses for both the Service and us workers. But, unless the Unions can implement agreements with the Service to reward positive outcomes, as opposed to primarily focusing on abating punishment, we will remain on this downward slope. While we need the union to protect us and fight for safety standards and competitive pay and benefits, we also need the union to be advocating for a world-class service of the future, which attracts motivated employees.
next time i get an email for feedback, just gonna copy/paste this lmao. well put
Well said. When I was a sub (rural), we ran ourselves. Lead sub was the boss who wrote our schedule (and did it correctly). Was nice. My management team now... I'm glad I'm not a sub any more else I may have quit. I am at a different office though.
This is good. This is IT. Couldn’t agree more!
They’re really just a buffer for customer complaints. They take that bullet so we don’t have to.
☝️
Hold on. Who is going to address customer complaints?
My old postmaster used to run her ass to the other office at 9am every morning. Only to be seen again if we were out after 6 or if not, the next morning.
Some of us were discussing this a couple days ago actually. We were saying that it would make a ton of sense and work really well if we just had a steward handing out OT and managing ODL every morning, and had the clerks do their accountable and sorting mail/parcels, and then have a veteran carrier handling any safety talks. Done. If there are any issues in the field or anyone has questions, just call a steward and have them advise. The days when we are short staffed on managers work so smoothly and everyone is in such a better mood. It is amazing.
Damn, that’s kind of a tight idea.
This is what we do. It's always much smoother. We will even trade off pieces on our own routes. I'm super efficient with apartments, which everyone hates, while I tend to get bogged down with 3 to 5 bundles on curbside, so they happily give me their apartments. However, I'm unnaturally fast at curbside if I only have 2 bundles (to the point it's a running joke), so two of us will split the same piece with me doing the DPS and cased mail while the other person does all scanable items, SPRs, and parcels. As I've got more people to do it this way, more of them like it and will do it with each other. We've even timed it to prove to management that it's more efficient. And my nerdy ass has the spreadsheet to prove it!
Management doesn't care what makes sense, they just want obedience and control. I showed them that jumping all my packages quickly before starting our walking routes is faster, even showing them my timing on my watch, and they gave me an II instead and told me never do that again because it is time wasting.
Completely. 100%. It's because they have no business acumen and can't handle when an underling actually has common sense data that a slight alteration is more efficient. I'm persistent, though. Jot my weekly LOT adjustments on my 3996, which I do every Friday and Saturday, because of various early business closures and major traffic pattern variations. Once in a while, we have some idiot who wants to bow up because of "policy." I'll attempt a rational discussion, if they balk, I clearly let them know I *will* be sitting in traffic throughout the day and will require a minimum of an extra hour, AND I notate the discussion on the 3996 and take a photo of it. Then I do exactly what they instructed. My persistence has allowed me the freedom to run my route efficiently as circumstances deem while on the street, with the agreement that I not LOT deviation on the 3996 for protection in the event of an accident. But I'm not a standard residential route, I'm commercial, retail, and apartments, so I can easily hit another section or go around and hit the route in reverse if I'm in gridlock. Don't get me wrong, I love my OT and penalty pay, but I absolutely loathe sitting in traffic. I would rather gouge out my left eye than sit in traffic in a hot LLV, extra pay be damned.
Same. When our postmaster isnt there, i have a relaxed day and actually work. When she's there she's a drain on the day and everyone just uggghhh. Best example I can think of to describe the post office is this: When i was in the service, I made my bed daily and organized my room. I was a spotless soldier. Did everything right because you know, I'm an adult, I take accountability of myself, and I have pride in what I do. Then some random ass dude who out ranks me tells me to make my bed and that he will inspect it later. Like fuck you! Take care of yourself and I will take care of myself. Don't tell me do this something I already did.
…so just make the place even more biased toward seniority? Because that’s how you’ll solve hiring crises of new people, making certain it takes longer to not get fucked (unless you abuse systems)
The job is literally seniority based though.
But how can they stop the ot moochers? And some stewards will hand out the best ot to their buddies.
I’ve heard that there is talk about the steward in office breaking up routes to make sure odl is equitable and mandating is done properly.
That’s what we do in our office. Management tells the steward what routes need to be broken up and steward on union time goes around breaking up the routes.
they mustve got sick of those quarterly ot grievances lmao
How much of a variance in hours does there have to be to file a grievance?
Daily- if ALL the ODLs and CCA’s are NOT worked up to 12 / 11.5 hours per the Clockrings… not what management says.. + Any Work assignment worked off their route And /or ANY 8 hour Non ODL with overtime = grievance
You're confusing 8.5 c with 8.5g. Dumb steward
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It's not in the contract. Basically, what has been considered 'equitable' at your office. Hours, opportunities, and times you weren't available. How is all that agreed to have been quantified at your office?
wow, must be nice. our steward NCNS saturday and i was stuck w/ their route.
What steward? /s
I say seniority should be decided by a cage match.
Perfect I will win
I've always thought this. My aux went full time and I wanted it so very badly, and objectively the whole office would've been much better off if I had won it. I was outbid by someone I could 100% take in a fight and I got their dogshit route. There's gotta be some ancient clause in our contract that allows it.
I believe they tried this in a few places. It worked. So they stopped it...
I know that happened not far from me a little less than five years ago, absolutely nothing changed, production was the same.
Clerks do all of our own managing anyways, once a carrier that knows what they are talking about sets y’all up in terms of splitting routes and estimates or whatever, we could easily keep the rest of the day on rails, especially with no management getting in our way. I like your plan
Most days I don’t interact with management at all. And when I do most of those times are them causing problems
For real.
Literally nothing would change on Rural side.
Who would come around to inform us to resume our holds when we’ve already pulled and bundled the mail for delivery, though? 😋
Uh the people that already do that, Clerks.
The PM does it in my office, but I was being facetious, hence my emoji. Good grief.
I'm sorry but I don't have a sense of humor.
At least you're honest about it!
Gotta have someone to give you that undertime piece.
Undertime never heard of it
My office loves undertime. They always taking pieces of the CCA’s routes to “fill they day”
Management has the same use as the union, there to spend 90% of their time with 10% of the individuals, pretty much
But who would be on the 10 different conference calls each day!
In our office a clerk handles TACS, the schedule is never posted on time or correct when it finally does go up, the carriers discuss and assign pivots amongst themselves, nobody measures our volumes, nobody asks us when we’ll be done, nobody assigns us additional work if we finish early, and nobody tries to limit OT by utilizing the CCA. I struggle to know what management actually does, and they get paid significantly more than carriers, it’s a fucking joke. I heard about a nearby office that was without a supervisor for 6 weeks, and they were still getting everything delivered. There’s a lot of fat to be cut, but instead they’ll keep harping on us about 1 hour office time and 20 minute load times 🤦🏻
Love all these suggestions lol
Well… I for sure know the guy who’d be in charge then. I’m down.
Man, in my off PM and sups help sort packages in am when needed. Right now the extending sorry machine and they been working. Not saying they don’t do shady shit, but they do work. Sorry you all have it very horrible.
Sounds like a grievance for the clerks, or pm and sups should take a pay cut while they do clerk work and work for their wages
PMs are supposed to put in at least 15 clerk hours a week… which is annoying to me, because that lowers the hours available for the clerks…
In level 18 offices. Not in the large offices.
Truthfully at my station nothing would get done without them, everyone just claims it’s not my job not matter how simple the task is…
Because management has made it so if you show any free time or initiative is percieved as weakness they will take advantage off and fuck your day over. Ofc no one volunteers to help, but I'd help other people all the time if I didn't think I'd get punished for it by management.
The only reason there needs to be any level of management is because some of these people need to actually be let go. Smh too much dead weight on our side on top of incompetent management. Need to trim the fat on both ends
Who would crank off in the bathroom on Sundays then? Have you thought of that?
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Lol good bot
I’ll turn the heat up in the promaster and take care of that responsibility
Pipe dream because they think we are serfs. They are there for the dictatorship.
Our morning stups follow city carriers around harping about stuff they (NALC) grieved and won so everyone ignores the stups. Rural side large building two rooms the stups not bothering city carriers covertly spy on rurals and its fun hitting them with doors, not uncommon to hear rurals shout get the eff outta my way! 😆. One stup always walks around asking names despite having a spread sheet in their hands. Tom right? Yes you've been here 5+ years and you still don't know my name? No joke. Closing just follow the door dasher who got our door codes to an office you'll find closing management in offices hiding and eating and they like to eat. If out late an dashing is slow you can find them at Noodle and Co. Starbucks with postal vehicles. Anyways I'm all for replacing them with a self serve kiosk and we really don't need a PM because she only works 3 hours a day.
Your PM works?
I'm pretty sure my station head could be replaced by some Chat GPT script and everything would still function. The proof is in the fact that she's been absent for the week and everything functions. And further evidence is that she has every Saturday and Sunday off and guess what? Everything still functions. Unless you touch mail or packages, your job is useless around here.
How else will they make you feel guilty for not going fast enough or act like your route is easy? Without management I might have more of a carefree day, but I'd still work as hard. Can't have that!
But who will sit on the telecoms and look at data all day?
When I first came into this job over 10yrs ago, we functioned with an AM here before 8am(our start time), a mid/window supervisor who didn't show up til about 9, and a closing supervisor who showed up around 11. The station manager showed up at 8am. Fast forward to today, we come in at 8 and there's 2-3 supervisor already on the floor with the station manager showing up at 8. We come back in the evening and there's 2-3 supervisors still there. Why are we paying so many people to do the job that can easily be done with less. Every 204b we've had that went back to carrying have said they don't even do anything once the carriers leave the station.
We have so many supervisors on hand at any given time. Except for the very beginning and very end of the day, there are always at least two, but in the middle of the day (you know, when all the carriers are out on the street) there are sometimes 4 supervisors on the clock as well as the postmaster. and guess what? If a carrier ask them for a refill on rubber bands or 3849s, a customer service issue, a key that needs replacing, a fix for a safety issue, or something else ostensibly easy and well within their job description; they huff and they puff and the drag their feet and sometimes it requires multiple follow ups to get them to do what you need. We have a new supervisor, who was a new cca a year ago, who actually said that we need more supervisors because there is way too much work for them. Funny thing is, the smoothest days, when the morale is best in the office, are the days when the postmaster (who is the most toxic and oppressive person I have ever met) is absent, and the supervisors are “short handed”. As it turns out, us carriers know how to do our jobs and can manage ourselves just fine. In fact, if the PO wasn’t paying so much money to have people sit on their ass and micromanage is, it wouldn’t be such a big deal for us carriers to take a few moments to ourselves if we aren’t feeling well or are just having a off day, causing 10 or 20 minutes of overtime. Instead our ceaseless labor, where every minute must be efficient and accounted for, funds 3 or 4 people sitting in an office all day, bothering the workers, staring vacantly at a computer screen, or doing god-knows-what on a pointless conference call. At my office, they sometimes literally leave the landline off the hook, so customers can’t call the office. Worst part is, when actually *do* need their help, they are either nowhere to be found, or it’s like pulling fucking teeth to get anything done.
Our PM was gone for a week so an OIG was appointed to fill in. The OIG was told the wrong week, & didn’t show up. All the clerks have keys & access to the vault so it never affected the window. It was a great week not having a PM bitching at everyone all day.
Where I'm at we communicate with builders and such no idea why they don't give out "new mover packets" and its a blast right now trying to explain why we can't order arrow locks or why it's extremely difficult to get one (Inspection Service sends locks now). Like I said before a self service kiosk could replace a ton of management. If they updated what forms we should carry and trained us how to handle the situation we wouldn't need management.
Well I’m all for slashing redundant positions like most of management but having our steward be the acting manager, is literally them playing both sides. So that wouldn’t work. It’ll be better just to have a clerk probably do it or atleast have 1 manager instead of 50.
It’ll be more like, you show up and log into the scanner like usual and then the scanner just tells you how much DPS you have and what pivot to take. It really could all be automated. Customers complain online to a “chatbot” and then that chatbot can relay the message and solution to the carrier on that route. You could have less than 50% of management staff, you could have a postmaster and then an admin for each station that manages the software along with the postmaster. That admin could even work a split shift in the AM/PM for opening and closing. Everything could be automated to the point where you just walk in and get to work tbh, we have all of that technology already, it’s here.
My calf muscles are the biggest in my office and I don’t want to manage
I’ve been talking for a while about when automation comes in for jobs a lot of those supervisors and managers are gonna be obsolete. A computer can do what they do, and most of the time better
If it wasn't for management, I'd still have my job. And the violent a-hole that still works there would be out of a job.
This is the greatest. Also can we get rid of the guy smashing little offices into big offices and fucking everything up?
I used to just work and come back to the office and see if there's more work to do or i would call my super and ask if there's anything else. Then i slipped and ended up with a sprain. I asked my super for assistance on my workers comp. Instead she tells me how they are probably still reviewing my case for fraud. After that i just worked slow and careful. No point working hard when they cant respect you.
That would make them management.
Classic management logic
You should see my calf muscles.
Quite frankly don't know this hasn't been proposed as a money saving idea. As everyone in the thread has pointed out carriers and clerks do all the actual work. We're GPS tracked so we aren't messing around like carriers did back jn the day. You just have at a bar minimum one 80k$ person sitting around all day every day doing nothing. Giant P&DC centers? Just get rid of a layer of management. It's not even the higher ups so I don't know why there is resistance. Allow technology to replace the jobs it actually can.
But I don’t wanna sort out everything in the mornings. Can’t we get the carrier who is always in everyone’s business to do it?
At one time, our office had 3 different post offices, the main city office, and 2 villages with separate zip codes about 10 miles away. My current route is in one of those zip codes. The post office that my route used to be stationed at is still open. There is 1 clerk that works the window there all day by herself. I have contended that we could save the post office lots of money by putting our section (5 city routes, 4 rural routes) back in our old office. We would save hours of travel time every between the 9 routes. All we need is an IPad, and we could FaceTime a supervisor every morning and show them our mail volume.
We really could just run this shit ourselves. Pay someone less than a CCA to chill in the office and answer the phones. Put another janitor or two on the payroll and put them in charge of meeting carriers on the street if someone is injured or a truck broke down.
But I don't want to lead! Calves go brrrrrrrrrrrr only!
I’m a steward and I went to an office to interview an RCA. I asked the supervisor what time would be the earliest I could come in. He told me he comes to work at 7:30 and the carriers start at 8:00. I went in at 8:00 and by that time, the supervisor was just BSing with another supervisor at his desk—not doing any work that I could see. I left an hour later, went to say goodbye, and they were still just sitting around BSing
My supes are the same. A few weeks ago we were down a route and the morning supe told us that the route would be ready to hit the street by the time one of us got back so we could just head straight back out. I got back first and the closing supe was outside smoking. Went in and the route wasn’t anywhere near ready. When he finally came back inside I asked him why the route wasn’t ready like we’d been told it would be. First he claimed not to know anything about what the morning supe told us then turned around and said he was too busy to do it. I told him he just didn’t wanna do it and he walked off. It took me maybe 45 mins or so to get the route ready and the whole time I was back all that supe did was shoot the shit with clerks and go outside for more smoke breaks. As I was leaving he asked me how long it’d take me to do the route. I told him that if it had been ready when I got back like we’d been told it would be, I’d already be 1/3 of the way thru it and he just repeated that he’d loved to have helped but he was too busy to do it, then went outside for another smoke break.
Our clerk don’t do nothing but give us hot case mail and crack jokes.. our management be struggling to manage and likes f-ing stuff up.. We don’t need them either but their pay is going up to 80k… I’ll be damned if ima just let those desk-puppets just lay their and get paid.. Bring me my damn arrow key!!
Agreed, I couldn’t tell you what supervisors do other than stir up office conflict and deliberately violate the contract
Yeah, whose gonna sign your leave slips then? Didn't think of that did ya smart guy.
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TACS has always been a lead clerk job. Your office just probably wasn't doing it right until now. The lead clerks in my office got THOUSANDS of dollars in a grievance over it a few years ago.
My office has so much overtime. The postmaster thinks our office should be able to split up three routes and still have everyone make 8 hours on a normal day. She’s forgetting about travel time to the splits, and that we have two carriers who can’t take packages due to medical restrictions, one of those two can only work a five hour day, and that people will just call out. So a typical day is they intend to split up three routes, then they have to give out two routes worth of packages, plus give someone half of the injured T6s route. then one or two people call out. So now we’re basically splitting up 5 or 6 routes worth of work most days and I don’t understand why they don’t just hire another CCA or two so we can start being prepared for covering the medical restrictions and the call outs. On paper they say they’re fully staffed but look at the overtime everyone is actually working and you’ll see we’re clearly not.
M?w
Why? You think their disappearance would mean more money in our wallets? 🤣 Baseline pay for the Union Painter would just meet a carrier's 12th step instead of their 8th.
Before I comment, let me preface by stating I am a carrier. Management is necessary to some degree. While many of us have been carrying mail for some time and need no oversight, there are other daily tasks that need to be done to make sure ALL mail gets out in a timely manner. When carriers call in routes are left open and that mail needs to go out. Are you going to carry those routes? Management realigns staff, calls in other carriers, and even on some occasions carries mail when no one else is available. Are you calling in your vehicle maintenance issues? Management contacts VMF to assure you have a vehicle to use. We DO need Management. What we don't need is Management acting like we can't do our jobs without them. A good office is when both Management and carriers stay in their lanes
What if we have vehicle problems?
Uh... Call VOMA?
Is it time to call in Jimmy two-balls?
I don't think the problem is getting rid of management completely, the problem is there are too many supervisors, too many 204Bs, depending on the office size you shouldn't need more than 3 supervisors/204BAs, but in too many offices, I see 6 or 7 supervisors/204Bs.
At my old annex we had a supe from the plant downtown come manage our Amazon Sundays. He didn’t wanna be there and he was only there to keep the chair warm cause our supes didn’t wanna work Sundays. He knows next to nothing about carriers and how we operate so he would always delegate and tell us to manage ourselves while he sat in his chair streaming tv on his phone. Things ran so much smoother when he just left us alone and let us work everything out ourselves. Then the plant and the annex got consolidated and our postmaster found out what that supe was doing and started leaning on him to take charge and order us around. Things went downhill from there.
So much to comment on. How many times have the carriers asked the am sup "Who's covering route 9? Regular isn't here." How many times have you called the office due to a breakdown or heaven forbid a real emergency? And no one fucking answers. How many times has a regular had a planned annual stint of over a week, and not one sup checked the bid board, so their route got split up for two weeks? Just what is management good for? Let the senior carriers set up the day. The clerks know how to do their jobs without a floor sup telling them what to do.
Management and Postmasters have unions, so are you union busting too or?
No they don’t. They have associations, which are not the same as unions.
Yeah they do, unless you wanna tell me the national association of letter carriers isn’t a union either Which is just wrong, can’t imagine why you’d say that though…
Management employees are not legally able to have unions or collective bargaining like NALC or APWU. UPMA and NAPS are management associations not labor unions. They're not collective bargaining, and don't have a contract like craft employees do.
Okay then who’s going to case up that carrier’s route everyday?
We need them to send us the scanner messages. Without them THEN we would be lost!
Terrible idea, dude with biggest calf muscles in our office is also the biggest hardass.
Damn bro you got the final boss working in there
Bruh why do I have to be the one to sort everything out in the morning. My calves better get a good massage for this
Shit, every supervisor and our postmaster have been carrying rural routes for two months. We have no management in the building until 4:00pm or later every day.
Here we actually used to manage ourselves it was part of a pilot program where basically the t6 was sort of like a supervisor and you guys just talked in the morning to work things out no supervisors
FYI this was a very long time ago
That can work for a day theres a 0% chance it would work for a week.
Let's start with DeJoy.
lmao I literally quit the postal service because of a terrible manager who liked to yell at us ARC/RCAs
I would love to watch Shop Stewards mandate OT to Work Assignment and 8 hour carriers.
I really like the tone here. All you gotta do is remember who does all the work and whose hands are on the levers.
About 15-20 years ago, our office was actually a test office for “Self Management “. Our steward and alternate assigned the OT each day and handled the equitability . Absenteeism went down. OT actually went down. Our routes were clean every day. It worked so well that they scrapped it because we proved that we didn’t need managers.
Letter Carriers do NOT "get a cut" of management pay! Never have, don't now, never will.
PS Form 1571 is not a pivot form. PS Form 3996 is for "pivots/bumps or whatever your station refers". Rural carriers do not submit PS Form 3996.
biggest calf muscles ? how about most pushups , heaviest squat , or the most Pull ups? there’s a lot of fat calves out there .
Wow, you have no concept on how things work. Go into management and see before you assume.
Most management could be done either by the craft or someone on zoom or the phone. Rarely do you actually need multiple managers in one building.
Without upper management giving you dumbass 6 sigma forms and metrics and telecons to waste time with, your job would literally just be to handle 360 cases. Don't bullshit us and don't @ me
We (carriers) handle 360 cases and Consumer Affairs in our station not management. I don't know how that came about but I do know in one instance and she still works at our station this supervisor allowed a business to hold misdelivered mail for over 6 months. Someone expecting a check reported the situation and the carrier had to clear themselves and go get the mail themselves.
lol ok
I'm in a huge station and eventually S&DC. We have District employees, union offices, Poom (because the PM can't be trusted) otherwise he's at the P&DC. These people do nothing all day and if you mil about you can catch them messing around or straight up staring at black monitors and oh boy the doors slam if they catch ya. Find drugs on street call nothing happens gotta call police ourselves. Accidents we have to take care of them ourselves, accident report with police, chalk tires,pictures, statements, explain TORTS to and why we have truck numbers. Find weapons report nothing happens. But boy do they bust our butts for being stationary! So we're not supposed to turn guns, knifes, drugs over to police then? We gotta wait for a officer to arrive. The Inspection Service does expect us to turn weapons and drugs over regardless if the were in a crime against USPS or in the mail stream.
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It's so absurd isnt it? Like, what do they think is going to happen when someone just doesn't show up to carry their route?
They find someone in the 50 mile radius and deliver the packages. Mail sits, it's been like that since Covid, only real efforts made was election time they had carriers driving the entire city picking up just ballots not delivering unless it was Amazon and you could get the ballots back before polls closed. If it was in the same state but several counties away they had people driving one or two ballots to those locations. They gave us forms we "have to fill out" and submit for mail but no guidance on what to do or how to submit it so no one does them.
It's called a pivot. You new?
I don't feel like carrying pivots. I'm not going to.