I Love the Smell of Rat in the Morning - To CIM Survey or not to CIM Survey?

By Mel Carriere


Our Post Office sits at the edge of a large vacant lot that is actually a huge sinkhole in which water accumulates during one of our rare California downpours.  Only the penny-pinching Postal Service would buy land next to a vacant lot that serves as a swimming pool for ducks during the sporadic occasions when there is water there, and when there is not becomes a hotel for stray cats that are artificially sustained by a well meaning cat lady that for years has hauled buckets full of cat food through an opening in the fence, from which she will feed the homeless tabbies who have become dependent on her kitty compassion. 

During these dry times, which is almost always, whatever rodents are trying to eke out a perilous horror movie existence in a place saturated with bored felines on the cat-lady dole; attempt to escape the nightmare by creeping out of the sinkhole and moving into our Post Office right next door.  These mice do not know, and do not care about defiling the sanctity of the US mail.  They see our building as a convenient sanctuary against cat depredations, and nothing else.

There is clear evidence of rodent infestation in the building.  Any food unwisely left out on the workroom floor overnight is found nibbled the next day.  At times a whiff of the unpleasant odor of decaying rodent flesh can be detected percolating through the walls.  The death of rats despoiling our building cannot be attributed to any pest control efforts on the part of the Postal Service, however.  Do you really think they are going to take a rodent problem seriously when we have had broken toilets in the men's room for months now?  No, the rodents pretty much have the run of the building, and I suppose we postal employees have learned how to coexist with them.  I guess it is expected that every once in a while one is going to die a natural death.

Yesterday I smelled another rat in the building that was even nastier than the usual four legged furry carcass that keels over in the walls occasionally.  I found this particular rat on the ledge of my letter case, in the form of a questionnaire that was labeled "The CIM Delivery Survey."

Unlike the Voice of the Employee surveys that are distributed to poll Postal Employee opinions about working conditions, job satisfaction, etc., our supervisor told us that this CIM survey had nothing to do with the job, but rather with how we perceive our mail delivery at home.  It asks seven different questions which, if you have not received it, I will list for you here:

• Q1 - Just thinking about your overall experience with the mail or packages you recently RECEIVED, how satisfied are you with USPS performance (9 choices).

•  Q2 - Mail or packages are delivered to the correct address (Accuracy)

• Q3 - Mail or packages are delivered in good condition (Effectively)

• Q4 - Letter carriers are friendly and courteous (Image)

• Q5 - Letter carriers perform their job well (Efficiently)

• Q6 - Tracking information for packages is accurate (Product Information)

• Q7 - In the future, what should the USPS do to improve your satisfaction with how we DELIVER your mail or packages?

Our supervisor seemed pretty desperate that we fill out these surveys.  She gave us a stand up talk yesterday, and another one today on the subject.  When she came around for commitments this morning she asked me if my survey was ready.  I told her I was still thinking about it.  She didn't seem happy about this answer when she walked away.  I think someone upstairs has issued marching orders that getting these surveys filled out needs to be a priority.

The reason why I told her I was thinking about it was because I was beginning to detect the unmistakeable perfume of rat in the room, and the more I sniffed the more it stank.  The smell was not coming from the walls, as it usually does, it was coming from the survey on top of the ledge.

The more I meditated upon the ostensibly well meaning intentions behind having employees rate their own mail delivery, the more I began to detect an insidious ulterior motive.  It occurred to me that, in light of the recent reductions in first class mail standards and the near deafening public outcry this has caused, the Postal Service is trying to rise above this customer service nightmare image by having its own largely biased employees provide some positive appraisals that will up the score.

Being familiar with the grueling demands of the job and the inner workings of mail delivery, postal employees are probably less likely to complain about the condition their own packages arrive in or the bad attitude of their letter carrier.  Burdened with a long checkered history of substandard technology, they are probably also less likely to grumble about missed scans.

Poking my finger into this festering rat corpse a little more, I also noticed that Q8 was mysteriously missing.  The curiously absent Q8 should read:  Mail or packages are delivered in a TIMELY MANNER.

Is it just me, or is timeliness in mail delivery kind of important?  I guess not.  Not anymore.  The Postal Service seems to be in an ostrich bury your head in the hand state of denial when it comes to mail being delivered on time.  It doesn't seem to matter anymore when mail gets there, as long as it gets there eventually.  So let's close more processing plants and post offices, fire more clerks, and maybe if we don't put Q8 TIMELINESS on the survey the public won't think about it.  Better yet - when members of Congress read these survey results they won't be reminded of that nagging, annoying Q8 because it won't be sitting there snarling and hissing at them through rotten rat teeth.

In conclusion, I can't bring myself to fill out this CIM survey.  I probably would, but I just can't write and plug my nose at the same time.


You or someone you know looking to join the ranks of the perpetually disgruntled?


 The Postal Tsunami gains its coastal destroying power with copious amounts of Starbuck's coffee,  which is not cheap.  Unless they completely annoy or offend you, please see what my sponsors on this page have to say. 

More by Mel about rodent infestations on Hub Pages 

Photo produced by: ICANHASCHEEZBURGER.COM - Taken from:  http://www.politics.ie/forum/us-politics/199538-decision-day-us-presidential-election-obama-vs-romney-54.html

Postal Saturdays Ain't What They Used to Be

By Mel Carriere

When you start to get nostalgic about the good old days, you know you've been working for the Post Office way too long.  Of course we didn't know they were the good old days  - lord knows we found a lot to bitch about then too, and nothing has changed.  If there were some sort of bitchometer that could travel back in time and take readings of the whining and complaining that used to snivel forth from our malcontent postal mouths 20 years ago it would be interesting to stack that up against the level of grumbling, fussing and bellyaching we rise to in today's Postal pressure cooker.  My bet is we piss and moan more today, but that's only because I'm looking at things from a modern postal perspective.  Maybe back then if we would have known how really bad it was going to get we would have kept our mouths shut to save our energy. 

One of the things that has definitely changed for the worse in the Postal Service is Saturdays.  Believe it or not all you newbies out there, but Saturday used to be an easy day.  The mail was almost always light, there was no pivoting to speak of and no busybody scanner snitches sticking their little blue noses into your business and tattling back to the boss via GPS.  Therefore, if you had a favorite shade tree you could usually get away with a little extra napping to rest up for Monday, which was a real pain in the butt even back then.  Your supervisor wouldn't catch you snoozing because he was probably sleeping with his feet up on the desk too in those days before nit-picking micro management became standard business practice.  As long as you were a relatively good carrier nobody was going to take you to task about your load time or your street time or any of those other times that snap at your heels today like that psycho Yorkie that nearly bit me in the foot yesterday, because those were the pre-DOIS glory days, nobody knew what any of those times meant, and nobody cared.  And guess what else?  We were PROFITABLE!

I know this sounds like a real fairy tale, children, but there used to be a thing called 701 time on Saturday that allowed carriers to go home an hour early.  You were supposed to help out on another route to get 701, but no one really enforced that rule, which is probably why they eventually did away with it.  In the halcyon 701 days if you were working 8 hours on a Saturday you were a real loser with no life, and it was awfully depressing to pull into the deserted postal parking lot at 3 PM to see the supervisor waiting by the gate, tapping his foot impatiently because he wanted to go home early too and you were the one epic fail dork in the bunch who just didn't get it.

Somewhere along the line things changed.  I think it was a gradual process, I don't think there was a date you could draw a line under and say - this is when it happened, this is when Saturday got all screwed up.  The first step in the insidious plot was when some sadistic District or Area Manager realized that those lazy carriers will run their butts off on Saturday and you don't even have to whip them to do it because every normal, non postal person in America is having a barbeque or a birthday party or watching a football game and they would like to get there too before the sun goes down.  So the powers that be decided to clean out all the bulk mail from the plant on Saturdays because they knew we would hustle and get it delivered without costing them overtime.  This was something like the phenomenon we call "load leveling" today, except without the fancy name that the post office probably paid some Think Tank 5 million dollars or so to come up with.

The transformation continued to get uglier and uglier until we were left with the unrecognizable monstrosity that Postal Saturday has now become.  I don't have a spreadsheet full of facts and figures I can use to prove how Saturday has become the second heaviest day of the week next to Monday, but I do have some probably meaningless anecdotal information to back up my theory, which in the absence of hard facts is the next best thing to outright lies that a second rate blogger hack like me can use to prove his point.

To cite one such anecdote, this past week my DPS count was between 1100 to 1200 Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  I was practically sleep walking out there wondering where all the mail went, but then on Saturday all the missing mail chickens came home to roost and my DPS skyrocketed to 2700, just like that!

I'm not a conspiracy theory guy.  I actually believe the astronauts landed on the moon, Paul McCartney is still alive, Obama's birth certificate is real, and every other conspiracy is bogus except the CIA black helicopters flying over my house and the DPS being stockpiled during the week so they can dump it all over us on Saturday.  Further proof of the conspiracy is that there weren't even any water or electric bills in the mail, just a lot of Presort Standard casino adds and stuff that says things like "send Donald Trump your money so he can deport Barack Obama and Ricky Martin."  This is the kind of crap that ferments all week in the stinking back bilges of the processing plant and then they scrape it up and run it through the DPS machines on Saturday so I can miss yet another nephew or niece's birthday party or, even worse, get there after all the beer is gone.

Okay, I admit that picture up there is not my LLV stuffed for Saturday, I just put it there for shock value.  I was looking for a gloomy quote about Saturday to close this out with, but it seems like the poets, songsters and everybody else are all in love with Saturday, so I couldn't find any sympathy.  It's just us lowly, lonely mailmen and clerks singing the Saturday blues, and no one else cares.

Here's a good read for a Saturday or any day:


The Postal Tsunami gains its coastal destroying power with copious amounts of Starbuck's coffee,  which is not cheap.  Unless they completely annoy or offend you, please see what my sponsors on this page have to say.

Is It Just Me, or Does the Mail Now Suck? - Father's Day Rant

By Mel Carriere

I am not the most faithful of children when it comes to Father's Day.  But just as my Navy stories improve the more I repeat them to my yawning children, I think I've also gotten better with age in the Father's Day department; the proof being that I actually mailed off my Dad's gift before June 21 this year.  The way things are looking these days with the US mail, however, mailing early might not be a safe bet anymore.

Being a Postal employee, there is sometimes a tendency to forget what it is like to be a Postal customer that has to deal with the consequences of delayed mail.  We letter carriers are exposed to the daily monotonous litany of "Hey Mailman where's my check," which lately seems to be growing louder and more frequent as processing plants close and bags of first class mail are left piling in corners to age awhile like barrels of fine wine.  Naturally we grown weary of these complaints and tend to form protective mental barriers against them so we can get about our business. 

Then comes the time when we too have to stand in line at the Post Office just like everybody else to send a Father's Day card or some other time sensitive item, just like I had to do on Thursday, and we discover to our displeasure that mailing a letter or a package just ain't what it used to be.  Or is it just me?

I thought that since it was Thursday, our recently degraded delivery standards would impede the gift card I was mailing from arriving on Saturday via first class mail, so I decided I would try Priority.  The clerk behind the counter entered my Dad's zip code, and informed me that the card I put in the flat rate Priority envelope would get there on Monday, the day after Father's Day.

I looked up at the menu board above the queue of window clerks.  My eyes fell upon a spot that said "Priority Mail - 3 to 5 days."  I scratched my head.  Is it just me, or does anybody else out there remember a time when Priority Mail used to be 2 to 3 days?

Wanting to be a dutiful son for a change, I decided to bite the bullet, pay the $19.99, and send it Express; or Priority Mail Express, as we now call it. The clerk behind the counter smiled and cheerfully told me that my card would arrive on Saturday.

I scratched my head again.  Like I said it was Thursday, and I recalled a time when the day after Thursday was Friday, not Saturday.  I asked the clerk about it, and he assured me that Friday still came after Thursday, but my very expensive letter would arrive on Saturday because my Dad's home was located far from a major mail hub.

Is it just me?  Am I being unreasonable to think that if I pay $19.99 to mail a gift card it should get there the next day?  My Dad does not live on Mars and he does not live out somewhere in the middle of the icy Alaskan Tundra.  I could understand the delay if he did, but he lives in Arizona and I live in San Diego.  Where he lives is not even rural Arizona, exactly.  He resides in a town of approximately 15,000 people that is located about 80 miles north of Phoenix.  One gets there over a good highway that has two lanes going into the town and two lanes going out.  I can drive there in about 7 hours with light traffic.  Maybe I should have.

Sometimes I have this paranoid tendency to believe that I am the only one who complains about certain things.  Maybe it is just me.  Maybe I'm just a grouchy old fart.   But then I read an article on Postal News that kind of reassured me that perhaps I am not completely delusional, that maybe it is not just me after all.

The article was about the House Appropriations Committee voting to restore the recently lowered service standards back to the levels that were in place on July 1, 2012.    It seems to me that if a Republican dominated House passes an amendment that makes the Postal Service better instead of worse, it's a pretty reliable indication that Congressional constituents are really pissed off now by the slow mail, and some of those Representatives that are normally deep in the pockets of anti-postal interests are starting to get fidgety about reelection because they are being bombarded with phone calls about slow delivery.

Postal leadership responded indignantly to this vote in the House by complaining that it will cost the USPS 1.5 billion dollars annually.  Once again I confess to being befuddled by Postal math.  I remember that back when 5 day delivery was the flavor of the month, the Postal brain trust was saying the elimination of Saturday delivery would save the organization a whopping 2 billion a year.  Whoo-hoo!  We're saved!  But now they contend that throwing an extra bag of Express Mail into the back of a truck already going 80 miles up a good highway is going to cost them nearly as much as an entire day of delivery?  Is it just me, or does none of this make sense?

Who is this current Postal leadership in league with anyway, besides the devil?  I'm not a conspiracy theory guy, but this insistence upon deliberately providing bad service is certainly starting to stink of an intentional, organized plot to destroy the public's faith in the Postal Service so that it can be privatized, dismantled, and then have its broken pieces handed over to its greedy competitors.

Seems like the mail kinda sucks now, and it might be on purpose.  Or is it just me?

Oh yeah, Happy Father's Day to all you remarkable Dads out there.




Where is my check? More by Mel on the death of first class delivery standards here.

The Postal Tsunami gains its coastal destroying power with copious amounts of Starbuck's coffee, which is not cheap. Unless they completely annoy or offend you, please see what my sponsors on this page have to say.



Image of Mel making his rounds:  By Smithsonian Institution from United States [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARural_carrier_in_automobile_at_mailboxes%2C_c.1910.jpg

Rural America's Postal Passion

By Mel Carriere

I just returned from a family reunion outside a very small town in rural New Mexico.  I am relieved to report that there is no truth to the rumor about romantic relationships being initiated at such events.  My countless multitude of cousins and I remain on a non-kissing basis, except perhaps for a few innocent, non-committal pecks on the cheek.

As I made the long drive to the reunion from my Mom's home in Colorado, my Mother briefed me from the back seat on all of the current family dirty laundry, which was quite an impressive pile of soiled clothing, the family being so big that I can't keep track of them without a scorecard.  Mom had a lot of sweet things to say about many people, but the litany of past sins and slights on the part of a few select genetically connected villains was enough to make me want to turn the car around and wonder "Why do we go to these things if there is such an explosive undercurrent of hostility at them?"  Truth was, I hadn't seen most of these people for at least thirty years and they were effectively strangers to me, which once again prompted the question - "Why do we torture ourselves?"

Despite my misgivings, the outcome was wonderful.  I was reacquainted with a lot of great people, many of whom I have already connected with on Facebook.  I was also exposed to some of the realities of small town life, both of a positive and negative nature.

On the positive side, in a small town you become aware of the existence of the broader Universe surrounding our planet without having to read about it in an astronomy book.  My son and I left the motel room the first night to walk down to the gas station - the "filling" station as they call it there, and were amazed and somewhat intimidated by the depth of darkness existing in a town that has no street lights.  When we looked up at the sky, we were absolutely awestruck at the number of stars  in the sky.  We beheld the fuzzy band of the Milky Way for the first time in a long time, and it was absolutely beautiful.

On the negative side of things, there ain't no beer in that town.  It's not exactly a community of prim and proper morals, there just isn't enough commerce in the place to justify the expense of getting a liquor license.  I had to drive to the next town over, 24 miles away, to satisfy my craving for some cold suds.

Another negative facet of small town life these days, in this particular New Mexico burgh and rural America in general, is that reliable mail service is an increasingly iffy proposition.

One morning my Mother and I parked beside the Post Office, which you see in the photo above, to buy some cinnamon rolls at a little bakery that sits next to it.  Of course I had to stop and take a picture of the place, and after I put my phone back in my pocket I remarked to my Mother that they were lucky their little Post Office hasn't been shut down yet, which seems to be a growing trend across the length and breadth of our land.

Immediately a lady sitting in a parked car in front of the building shouted out "We'll never let them close our Post Office!"

"Good for you!" I said, giving her a little fist pump.  "Fight the good fight!"

People in rural America are passionate about their Post Offices.  Hmmm...let me guess why.  If you have to drive 24 miles to get your beer, can you imagine driving 24 miles to get your mail?  Except for a few hard core alcoholics most of us can skip beer if we have to, but how many of us can skip our mail?  How would you like to drive nearly 50 miles there and back to retrieve your pills from your PO box and buy some stamps to mail your letters?

I just read an article on Postal News about a little town called Cranfills Gap, Texas that recently had their Post Office closed, the building supposedly being condemned for "health and safety" reasons.  Now the good people of Cranfills Gap have to drive 20.3 miles to Clifton.  More than one hundred people got locked out of their PO boxes, and they are "tired" of the commute.

Besides the usual pursuit of amorous connections, family reunions in small town America can be useful in a lot of other ways.  One of these ways is to remind those of us who live in cities not to take the mail for granted.  It's already happening out in the sticks, and when these rural POs start falling like dominoes its only a matter of time before those of us that live in more populated areas are going to be shaken out of our urbanized smugness too.

"Never!" is what the lady in the small town post office parking lot yelled at me, and "Never!" should be the rallying cry of every postal customer, everywhere.
 

The Postal Tsunami gains its coastal destroying power with copious amounts of Starbuck's coffee, which is not cheap. Unless they completely annoy or offend you, please see what my sponsors on this page have to say.



 

Meditations on Postal Leadership - A CCA Speaks Out

By Mel Carriere

When words fail me, when the Post Office has been treating me in a relatively benign fashion for a few days, when one of my Supervisors hasn't done something incredibly stupid or uninspired that I naturally have to share with the whole world, I can still turn to an incredibly deep well of comments made by people on my various blog sites for inspiration.  Since many of these commenters are CCAs, they always have some woe begotten story to tell that, while sad and frustrating to read, in a way serves as a useful outsider's view of the Post Office looking in.  We old time regulars have become so accustomed to life in Postal Hell that we have thick protective callouses growing over our souls.  What other people might perceive as stressful or abusive we regard with a "suck it up, Buttercup" attitude because we've been through it so many times.  When you have a painful Kidney stone slowly passing down your urinary tract, like I have had, the first couple of weeks are hell, but after a while you become inured to the pain.  Such is life wallowing around here in the Postal Service urinary tract; you become so adjusted to the misery that every once in a while it is a good idea to bring a newbie on board to remind you that this can hurt.

Not all of these CCA newbies are kids, a lot of them have been around the block a few times, and a lot of them have been immersed in levels of stress and outright danger on the field of battle that would make our whining about disapproved overtime seem a bit infantile.  But these battle-hardened CCAs still suffer when they join the Postal Service, because they have learned the hard way what real leadership should be and they find it difficult to conceive how an organization such as ours can have such crappy leadership and get away with it.

Yesterday such a CCA, I will just call him Anonymous Mystery CCA, graced one of my pages with a comment that cuts to the core of what is really lacking in the Postal Service; the substance, or lack thereof, that leaves a lot of these newbie CCAs scratching their heads, then throwing up their hands in frustration and hanging up the satchel for good.  I'll shut up and let him speak.

"Thank you for the response Mel.

Well I'm halfway through my probation and have done far exceedingly well compared to those that came before me, according to my Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde supervisor. The problem is one that "piling on" part you've mentioned. You do well, they add on. And then you have a bad day and it's suddenly, you're incompetent all over again. But on all the good days, rarely do hear a "good job" from my supervisor. If anything, I just want to make it through probation, if anything just to prove to myself that I can do it. Not out of love for the USPS, but out of courtesy for some of the good carriers there that needs the help. After that, I'll likely leave simply because of the poor leadership alone. As a former platoon leader, I'm aware of the importance of orders and how they have to be carried through. Even then, I don't impose or ridicule members of my squad when they can't accomplish the impossible i.e. when it takes longer just to walk a route, let alone deliver the mail and be back at the hour "expected." I'm a fast walker thanks in part to my "rucking" days in the army. Yes I do stick my head out for my team. But such is not expected from the leadership at the USPS. There is no compassion, no understanding, and no empathy for us ccas at my office. I'm the last cca out of four and recently three new faces just showed up. I pity them, but wish them the best.

Part of me wishing to leave is because moral is so low at office. The only time when employees actually smile is when greeting customers and that itself is a rarity."

Here's more from Mystery CCA:

"...one is expected to outwork and outshine the regulars. Case in point, I'm expected to do a full route in 4 hrs. Yes! You heard it right 4 hrs!!!! And be back before the regulars do. Did I mention starting out an hour later than the regulars too. Ha! The one regular that did the right before I got on even told me it was impossible. He went to the union and they worked it out, where he got moved onto a more "reasonable" route. So I come aboard, and it's all deja vu again as I'm tossed onto that route. I may have to go to the union as well. I rather not, if reasonable heads can prevail. The last thing I want is to cause unnecessary tension in the work place. Guess what, I managed to get that route done in just a little over that 4 hrs. How was it possible then? It took all the right condition to make it work. Minimal mail volume, no third bundles, many houses not getting mails skipped, minimal parcels, registered mails, certified, and express mails too. And best of all, I worked through my 2 ten minute breaks. Even then I worked up a tremendous sweat to the point where homeowners were offering me bottled waters. I got back and left before the regulars got back. Even then, days like this are rare and few in between. You'd be lucky to get a day or two like this in a week. Otherwise, the mails keep coming. Even when the mail is light, you still have to walk the loop so consider that. The majority of the time, it is not possible. But management don't want to hear about it, despite knowing all about it."

... I got a call from my supervisor telling me I should've been long done already. Told him, I'm working my best. Long story short, I got back to the office at the same time all the regular career carriers got back only to get repeated earfuls. I've pretty much tuned him out the moment I got back inside the office.

 Synopsis is I've done a full route, plus an extra swing, bypassing breaks and lunch at the same time starting an hour later than the regular carriers, yet I was the "bad guy" supposedly "milking" the time I was told. That's gratuity for you. One can't make this stuff up."

Anonymous Mystery CCA sums it up with these words:

"To which I can only smile and tell them, the expectations and demands of the USPS is just that rigorous and walk on by. The public interaction along with the challenge of creating harmony out of anarchy once the last tray of mail is dished out are the only things I enjoy about this job. Aside from that, morale inside the post office resembles that of the morgue. This is a fact that the public does not see. The dark side to working at the USPS."

 I love that "harmony out of anarchy" line.  I wish I had thunk that myself.  That part about our morale resembling that of the morgue makes me wince, but I guess I can't argue that it is probably true, at least for our overburdened, under-appreciated CCAs.

Let's see, are there any other parts of what this already jaded CCA with not even three months in the Postal Service has seen that I can relate to, now that he has softened the callouses growing around my Postal pain receptors?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Supervisors? - check

Piling on? - check

Poor leadership? - check

Expecting the impossible? - check

No compassion, no understanding, no empathy? - check

What this very perceptive, schooled in the grim reality of warfare CCA has pointed out is not a localized problem, unique to where he works.  This ostrich head in the sand, reality denying, what have you done for me in the last five minutes attitude is an institutionalized condition that starts at the top and filters its way slowly and painfully down to the bottom, just like that jagged edged, fiercely painful kidney stone I had that ripped up my innards for several weeks as it made its agonizing journey downward.

These inept, uninspired supervisors we deal with are ripping up the Postal Service's innards folks, and sometimes it takes someone with fresh eyes, someone who knows what qualities are really expected of real leaders, to remind us of it.

Is this the job for you?



Read the blog that inspired Mystery CCA's rant here:

Image from:   "John Wayne in The Longest Day trailer" by trailer screenshot (20th Century Fox) - The Longest Day trailer. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Wayne_in_The_Longest_Day_trailer.jpg#/media/File:John_Wayne_in_The_Longest_Day_trailer.jpg