Waiting For Mail
Dec 1st, 2008 at 7:20 am by Susie
Remember when the Postal Service actually did its job?
In interviews with the Daily News, postal service employees and a manager have described chaotic conditions in the chronically understaffed plant, which processes nearly six million pieces of mail a day on Lindbergh Boulevard near Island Avenue.
In recent months, a manager and several employees said, unsorted mail sat for weeks in overflowing bins on the plant floor or was stuffed into trailers in the parking lot and - in some cases - even shipped in desperation to other distribution plants, from where it often returned for sorting days later.
In some cases, the mail was destroyed, the employees said.
The postal employees and a manager spoke to the Daily News on condition of anonymity, saying they feared retribution if they spoke publicly.
Nice to see some documentation of poor mail service - but it’s just one city. Poor mail service has been a fact for years and I’ve had the experience in four states. First class mail once could be counted on for three working day delivery. Now you can’t even count on delivery, period.
I can think of one good way to alleviate the work load and save tons of stuffing for the recycle bins. Think about the ratio of junk mail to first class mail. The answer for me is obvious.
I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Our mail service has always been very slow, but lately there’s been a new step added; “Quality Mail Service”, I think is the postmark on my mail these days. No one knows where it is, or what it does. All I know is that I haven’t seen an electric bill in a couple of months. I don’t have money to pay it, or I’d get up the nerve to track it down.
as a former postal employee, the problem isn’t simply the volume of mail–which, with e-billing, has actually dropped off substantially. It’s something bigger—they cut back on hiring several years ago by not replacing many retirees and they also can’t get extra help to come in during the busy holiday season. Why? Well, there are long-term employees who are very good but there are many who are serious malcontents and take their issues out on everyone around them. It is the most hostile environment I have ever worked in. The post master where I worked hid out in his office and the only good supervisor was driven out my another who wanted his job and manufactured falsehoods. The malcontents ran the floor and abused the quieter members of the staff and let’s not get started on the racial issues in that place….. Then, there were frequent sorting machine breakdowns–you know how the rates keep going up? The extra money is taken by the government instead of putting it back into the post office. The post office actually makes a lot of money off the shipping of catalogs and other assorted “junk” mail and we often referred to that as job security.