Are All Postal Supervisors Created Evil? - With Bonus Thoughts!

By Mel Carriere

A month and a half ago, I published an article on Hub Pages relating the events that prompted me to disavow dark side  204B life and return to righteous living as a letter carrier.

My story was well received, taking in a lot of views.  Like a horror movie, people get a visceral thrill looking behind the curtains of a secret torture chamber where they would never set foot, but still can't resist a voyeuristic peek into.  I thank you all for reading.  

After I shared the post on Facebook, most of the feedback was favorable, meaning that people were entertained or informed without making value judgments about the author. But there was also an undercurrent of hostility also, which I kind of expected.  A certain percentage of letter carriers extends no tolerance or forgiveness to anybody who has ever dabbled in the arcane magic that is postal supervision.  In the opinion of this small but vocal minority, all 204Bs past, present and future should be strung up, drawn and quartered, and roasted on a spit, not picking one of the three as punishment for this mortal sin, but doing all of them in order, starting with the most painful.

Here is an example of the outrage expressed:

"The truth?  You're one or the other.  Make your choice, stick with it, and don't try to justify the things you do to the one's you have done it to.  No one feels sorry for you.  No one cares. Own who you are."

What can I say to assuage the offended feelings of this individual, or anybody else, who despises me for once being a 204B? Probably nothing.  No amount of chest pounding mea culpa, self-flaggelation, wearing of the hair shirt, rolling around in sackcloth and ashes, would change this or any other similarly-opinioned person's perception. 

So I'm not even going to try. I actually did write a long harangue to respond, then decided to scrap it. This blog is about letter carrier life in all of its facets, it is not a crying-hanky platform to defend my hurt feelings.  Instead, I will pose the following question:

Are all Postal supervisors created evil?

We all know some good ones and some bad ones, some smart ones and some dumb ones, some stressed out and some laid back ones.

There are those who get into it for the right reasons, because they sincerely want to change things for the better. There are those who do it because they couldn't handle working for a living in craft (Note: these seem to be the managers who rise highest up the ranks).  Then there are a few who got pressured into the job by spouses who got tired of washing their sweat-soaked uniforms.

To me, supervisors are not automatically born with the mark of the beast stamped upon their foreheads, or with devil horns. Sometimes they start off good but their position of power, however pathetic that power may be, goes to their heads.  Even the meekest mouse of a man can become authoritative in such a role.  Still others revel in the power from the beginning and become consumed by it.  Finally, a significant portion manage to retain their humanity through the constant floggings from above.

My conclusion? Postal supervisors are not one size fits all. I don't think they are necessarily created evil. I believe they are a regular cross section of humanity within a normal standard deviation, containing good apples and bad apples who somehow got stuck in a superheated forge in which a few melted beyond recognition, others pulled their nuts out of the fire before it was too late, and still more learned to become pretty handy with a pitchfork, both on the giving and receiving ends.


Good Cop / Bad Cop Supervisors (Bonus Thoughts!)

This next part is only marginally related to the above theme. Still, it is close enough that I don't think it merits its own blog post, because it serves to demonstrate how management takes advantage of different supervisor personality types to enforce its insidious agenda. A prime example is what I call the good cop / bad cop routine.

Good cop / bad cop is a real interrogation technique, included in the training manuals of Federal agents.  I know this, I am not making it up, because a friend of mine managed to get a copy of one. Now, I am not saying they send postal supervisors to torture training, though that lady quoted above, the one who accused me of all sorts of high crimes and misdemeanors, would probably say they do.

In Good Cop / Bad Cop the really mean, nasty, fire-breathing SOB bad cop enters the interrogation room first to verbally abuse, then threaten to beat the bejesus out of the poor guy in the hot seat unless he cooperates.  After this they let the interrogee simmer in his juices a while, worrying all the time if Bad Cop is coming back. Next they send in Good Cop, who is just the opposite of Bad Cop.  Being a super chill dude, he goes to the poor sucker handcuffed to the table with a lamp pointed in his face, possibly electrodes taped to his family bling, gives him a cigarette, tells him everything will be all right, nobody is going to hurt him. They rotate through the Good Cop / Bad Cop cycle a few times. Then at last Good Cop complains that if he doesn't come up with something soon they are going to kick him off the case, leaving the suspect squirming in the chair to the not so tender mercies of Bad Cop alone. The interrogee is so afraid of Bad Cop coming back he confesses everything to Good Cop.

This week, they tried a variation of this technique in my office. We have a Good Cop and a Bad Cop Supervisor in house, but Bad Cop isn't smart enough, Good Cop isn't devious enough, neither one communicates to the other anyway, so they don't give me the impression they planned it on purpose.  I think rather that they stumbled across the scheme by accident, but I could be wrong.

Anyhow, on Tuesday Bad Cop informed us in the morning stand up talk that Good Cop was in trouble. On Tuesday he had to go to the postmaster's office and give account for his sins, to explain why he had so many carriers out past 1800 on Monday.  Of course it was his fault, it had nothing to do with the mail volume, the available manpower, or any other circumstances out of his control.

Naturally we all felt bad for Good Cop, because he treats us with respect and doesn't hold us to unreasonable expectations.  He also works really hard and does his best to get us the things we need to do our jobs properly, like changing out broken CBUs and parcel lockers.  When most of your requests to management fall on deaf ears, you appreciate a guy like that. To a point.

But Bad Cop was really laying the guilt trip on us about Good Cop, insinuating that if only if we had behaved better Good Cop wouldn't be lugging his cross up the hill to Calvary right now, sneakily implying that if we wanted to keep Good Cop around in the future we better get our act together.

Maybe as a younger, more naive letter carrier I would have been stirred emotionally by Bad Cop's plea into doing whatever it takes to help out poor Good Cop, like cutting a break here and there, or even giving up that most sacred interval of my day, my half hour lunch break. But now I'm older, considerably jaded, and cynical as hell.  Furthermore, having sat in that hot seat myself and escaped with my soul more or less intact, it is hard to sympathize with people who willfully continue to subject themselves to it, like an abused spouse who keeps going back to take more beatings.

Therefore, in lieu of my reluctance to work myself to a complete frazzle for Good Cop, I will offer him some advice instead:

If you can't take the heat stay out of the kitchen.

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

No, not all supervisors are created evil, some have evil thrust upon them, but I'll be damned if I'm going to follow them down that narrow road to hell.  Good cop, bad cop, I cop out.


Footnote:  Good Cop later confessed to me that he wasn't singled out for punishment with the postmaster, but that the subject of 1800 carriers was just one of many topics addressed at a supervisor's meeting.

Postal Tsunami Musical Guest: George Thorogood Bad to The Bone

Image from Pixabay.

Give a Brother a Break - Mel Bemoans Angry-Villagers Response to Dog-Spraying Mailman

By Mel Carriere

I like to keep it light here on the Tsunami. Although I deal with some weighty issues, I try to tackle them in a satirical way because, as the late Robin Williams said, "Comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma."

Alas, there wasn't enough comedy in the world to help Robin deal with his demons, and these days I'm not laughing much either. Don't go all crisis intervention mode on me. I'm not suicidal, I am simply deeply disappointed how people, including letter carriers, so quickly go into mob mentality to drive one of their own out of town with flaming torches and pitchforks. Especially when, in this case, those letter carriers should know better. It also disturbs me to have complete confirmation on what a bunch of muck-raking whores the media are, and how easily people believe those shameless tarts.

And to think at one time in my life I aspired to be a journalist, deluded into thinking the profession was a pillar of truth and integrity. How gratified I am now that I did not pimp myself out to those scoundrels, that instead I am an independent commentator, not being yanked by anybody’s puppet or purse strings.

What I am specifically speaking about is a Facebook post made earlier this month, which shared a televised news report of a mailman spraying a dog behind an allegedly secure fence, allegedly repeatedly. I’m going to use the word allegedly a lot in this post, because I think the lies were thicker than the flies on that steaming pile you just skipped around on your way to the next mailbox. For some reason the story gathered momentum, probably because the report included endearing footage of the alleged victimized animal being lovingly embraced by small children, who allegedly had to be rushed to the emergency room because they allegedly came into contact with the pepper spray that allegedly painted the dog from his furry white ass to the tip of his slimy nose. It was picked up by a lot of networks, even on Spanish speaking news channels.

This is not the first time I have written on the subject of why letter carriers should not be so quick to throw a brother or a sister under the bus when they are caught on Candid Camera doing something that apparently looks bad (See September 21, 2018 edition of the Tsunami). To your credit, a lot of you hard-hearted cynics out there who commented on this post, those of you who aren't suckers for every furry face, came to the carrier's defense. Others, unfortunately, could not wait to blast this mailman with the same dog-repellent he allegedly used to needlessly douse the dog. Here are some of the comments the news report evoked among the letter carrier lynch mob:

He's a scumbag

He's a douche bag

He's a piece of shit

He should be fired

Asshole.

Point me in the direction of this piece of excrement.

As The Smiths Morissey, an artist who as far as I know never pepper-sprayed a dog or any other beast in anger, once sang: Heavy words are so lightly thrown.

These heavy words particularly weigh upon my soul. For once, I am not writing the Tsunami from the isolated sanctuary of my kitchen table, trying to interpret events hundreds or thousands of miles away via the distortions of the cyber medium. For once it hits really close to home. This is because I personally know the clear-headed, intelligent young man who is the alleged perpetrator of these allegedly evil needs. I also know his beautiful young family, whose lives have all been permanently affected by the public outcry and the kickback it has caused.

So I ask all of you angry villagers, so eager to string this young man up, to deprive him of employment and ruin his life, to those of you so evidently hypnotized by touching scenes of allegedly brutalized animals that you even insinuate violence against his person, I ask you Why are you acting this way?

Because postal customers always tell the truth?

Give me a break. Good one. Really?

A few weeks ago, a customer complained to the boss that I neglected to attempt a signature confirmation package at her door, claiming I didn't show up on her doorbell cam. What really happened was that I forgot to take a 3849 with me, so I actually stood there facing that camera, for a couple of minutes, praying that someone would answer. Then I left a notice left slip downstairs in her CBU mailbox, because there was no way I was going to drag my ass up those steps again, cam or no cam. One good thing that came out of it is that I learned I am invisible on camera, like a vampire, which creates the potential to cause all sorts of mischief.

And if I had a peso for every time a box full customer swore they checked their mail every day, and I just had it in for them when I killed their mail after holding it the required ten days, I could buy one of Chapo’s villas and retire comfortably.

Then, lest we forget, every mailman's favorite Customer fabrication, - my dog is never loose, or even better, That's not my dog. Ever heard those doozies?

Still, in your righteous indignation, overwhelmed like Donny Osmond with puppy love, you sit there telling me customer mendacity doesn't apply in this case. I can hear you murmuring all the way over here on the west coast - yes, I can perceive your snarky comments above the crashing of the waves. You're saying Mel - you're one of those indiscriminate, trigger-happy dog sprayers yourself, that's why you're defending the guy.

To which I answer, I have sprayed exactly one dog in my postal career, about 23 years ago. This was an Australian Shepherd, who blinked twice and kept coming. The bitch later fell in love with me. I have that effect on women. Anyhow, ever since then I don't bother. Don't tell my boss but I don't even carry the stuff. Twice I have used my rather Sasquatch-proportioned foot on attacking dogs, because it packs a more powerful punch. I didn’t do it on purpose, it was a reflexive act of defense, but I have to say these snarling beasts slink away like the cowardly little curs they really are inside, after getting my shoe leather lodged up their nostrils.

I have to admit that, in this current case of the pepper-spraying mailman, I too was at first overcome with righteous indignation by what I saw on the news. But then, because the incident strikes so close to home, I became privy to important information about the case by people in the know. The accused letter carrier was not among them. Although I know him personally we have not spoken since the incident. At any rate, his personal account would be naturally biased, and therefore unreliable. I'll just say I got my scoop from a reliable source, someone who is not a friend of the carrier and has no reason to defend him.

After a great deal of soul-searching, I have decided I am not going to disclose the particulars. If details of the postal investigation are supposed to remain secret, I am going to let them remain secret. Furthermore, if I let the cat out of the bag here, no amount of pepper spray will force it back in, and it might lead a damning burnt-orange trail back to yours truly. Let's just say that the information is convincing.

I'm not going to jump out a limb and say the carrier is completely cleared of malfeasance here, because such a claim might come back to bite me in the butt, or at least in the back of the leg, like that little yapping cocker spaniel who got me many years ago. And although I do love poultry, crow meat is pretty gamey. All I’m saying is that there appear to be enough irregularities, enough holes in the dog owner's story, to give this brother the presumption of innocence until the alleged clouds of dog spray mist settle and the mess can be sorted out.

Even if cleared of animal cruelty, and of the alleged respiratory problems of the children in the household, allegedly caused by the repeated pepper sprayings, does this mean the carrier is innocent of all wrongdoing?

Not by a longshot. There was plenty he did wrong, plenty that I would and have done differently. If this really was a problem dog, I would have held the mail. The first time the customer would have to move the mailbox, the second time the customer is done. That’s being generous, because in our district the official policy is that one incident is the death penalty, but I believe in giving everyone a second chance.

Some letter carriers, however, are intimidated by the residents on their route. This is understandable, because in rare cases postal customers can be downright psycho. I make no assertion that this was the case here, but certain mailmen just don’t want to deal with any potential problems. They don’t want the threats and confrontations stopping someone’s mail privileges can cause, so they continue delivering, choosing instead to protect themselves the best way they can. Me, I’m old and ornery, so I don’t care. I have stopped mail for multiple houses, and had the box moved for countless more. Bad things have been flung at me because of it, but I wipe myself off and keep on trucking.

Now about those whores in the media who reported this, all I can say is that it must have been a slow news day, and here was a sensationalistic piece with a tear-jerking angle those TV hounds could really sink their teeth into. Did the so-called newsmen exercise journalistic integrity by waiting until the investigation was over before roundly condemning the letter carrier involved? Hell no. If the mailman in question is eventually exonerated, do you think his vindication will get any air time at all? Hell no. WIll an apology be issued for the disruption in his life their sloppy, unprofessional reporting has caused? Again I say Hell no.

Time will reveal the complete facts of what really went on here. But in the meantime, I admonish you, my beloved readers, to please exercise restraint. Remember all the times you have been falsely accused of something you didn’t do because, if you have spent any length of time as a letter carrier, somebody has already spun a tangled web of lies about you. Think about how you feel when this happens, and Give a brother a break.


See the report yourself here

Postal Tsunami Musical Guest:  The Smiths, What Difference Does it Make

Image by Fqugdvin via Wikimedia Commons

Postal Supervisors Been Doing Bird Box Challenge Since Like Forever

By Mel Carriere

A Utah teen was recently involved in a motor vehicle accident, driving blindfolded, doing the Bird Box Challenge.  She joins the rising tide of people who have switched from swallowing Tide pods to engage in this latest, dangerously edgy craze.

If you are one of the ten people left on the planet who does not know what Bird Box is I congratulate you for not being trendy and for possibly extending your lifespan by not engaging in movie-induced risky behavior.  In said  Netflix blockbuster thriller, survivors of an apocalypse walk around blindfolded, in order to avoid being driven to suicide by looking upon certain alien entities. By now thousands of the film's hard core fans are emulating Bird Box star Sandra Bullock by doing daily tasks, including driving, with their eyes covered.  They are even encouraging their kids to do it, which could either be child abuse or good for the gene pool, depending how you look at it.

But now Netflix has been forced to issue a warning to Bird Box viewers not to try this at home, and leave blindfolded driving to trained professionals.  This is similar to the sticker on my bottle of Drano under the sink that  cautions not to make it part of my cocktail hour.  Such advisories are necessary because there is always a subset of humanity that will want to drink Drano or drive blindfolded.  Question is, can these people really read warning labels?

Anyhow, to get to the point, because like it or not this is not a movie review, what Netflix does not realize is that Postal Supervisors have been doing the Bird Box Challenge ever since I can remember, walking around blindfolded as they conduct their daily tasks.  They might not call it Bird Box Challenge in the Post Office, but I still think there are enough grounds to claim copyright infringement.

I have often tried to explain a postal supervisor's inability to view working conditions as they really are as being caused by wishful thinking (hear no evil see no evil) or a lack of mental acuity, but now the scales have been lifted  from my own eyes and I see clearly they've been bird boxing it.

I used to think my manager just needed new glasses or a math book when he told me I have a foot of mail, when clearly there are three or four stacked up, but now I realize his vision has been obstructed by some kind of eye covering device.  One day when he asked for a pivot, then walked away in a huff without seeing the fifteen certifieds I held up I thought he was just stressed out, but now I know he had accepted the challenge of doing his job without ever opening his eyes.

Then last week I thought the boss needed a seeing eye dog when he said it took me 23 minutes from my last street MSP to my return to office scan.

"Wow that's pretty good," I said in self congratulatory fashion.

Then it hit me he wasn't seeing what I was seeing.  I don't think he was seeing anything at all because he wasn't smiling.

"That's excessive," he said, pointing to a report on his computer.

"But it takes me eleven minutes to drive back from the route," I explained.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get my manager to see the rush hour traffic I had to slog through on my way back to the PO.  In his bird box challenge I was supposed to make my LLV fly like those two birds in the box from the movie, soaring above all the idling cars.  He was also blind to the outgoing mail and the empty equipment I had to unload and wheel across a wide parking lot once I did get back.  He wouldn't have gotten the picture had I written the whole thing down in Braille.  23 minutes was excessive.  23 seconds would have been excessive.

I tried not to get mad before I just let it go and walked away.  I had to be gentle.  I was dealing with the handicapped.

The predicament I had understanding my boss's ocular infirmity was that there didn't seem to be any physical obstruction impeding his vision.  A gag would have done him nicely, but there was nothing bound over his eyes as he stormed around dragging his knuckles and thumping his chest.  Oddly enough, as he raged that he didn't see why I couldn't load my parcels in ten minutes even though they were spilling over the brim of the lobster cage, he wasn't tripping over or bumping into anything, a mystery indeed. For a few days I brooded over this paradox, and then realized that his bird box blindfold was of another sort altogether.

In an illuminating epiphany, it struck me that the bird box blindfold issued to postal management is called DOIS.  It doesn't make supervisors run in front of the outgoing mail truck or walk off the edge of the loading dock, but it spits out numbers that make them blind to the reality of the mail.  This is why every time I tell my boss the truth he shields his eyes with the report in his hand, as if just looking at me is going to drive him to suicide.  Suddenly it all makes sense.

If you can't beat em join em I say, so I have hopped aboard by trying Bird Box blogging, quite evident by the gibberish scribbled down here.  But I will never, I repeat NEVER attempt the Postal Bird Box driving challenge, and you shouldn't either, as if I had to tell you that.  The picture you see above is just me on my half hour Postal nap.  Keep it down please.

Postal Tsunami Musical Guest

Please Welcome ZZ Top - Arrested for Driving While Blind

Political Mail Tsunami 2018 - Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

By Mel Carriere

I'm a couple weeks late reporting my analysis of the 2018 mid term political mail season, but the deep paper cuts gouged into my skin from the razor thin edges of those shiny cardboard fliers are just now healing over to where I have recovered normal use of my hands for common everyday tasks - like writing and for giving my evaluation, on a scale of one to one, of the driving skills of the guy who tailgated me on the freeway today.  I could have slit my own wrists with the knife edges of those useless scraps of paper, which must have defoliated all the forests between here and the Arctic Circle, and there were times I wanted to.

But the exhausting grind is over, and I suppose I should give thanks for that when I slice into that bird this week. It will be stuffed fatter than normal because of the overtime from working two days off and the double time I got casing mail when I should have been tucked in sawing logs in dreamland, instead of aiding and abetting the sawing down of hectares of old growth forest so we can find out why your opponent is unfit for office just because he picked his nose at a PTA meeting.

Here's a little bit of heresy to make you squirm in your skivvies.  We can't even blame Donald Trump for the biggest mass decimation of trees since Agent Orange cleared the South Vietnam jungles.  Here in California, an open primary state, there were very few Republicans on the ballot, but our normally green Dems were more than willing to shed their leaves and let the lumberjacks turn the woods into pulp mill fodder, in the interests of one party democracy.  Although our most prescient pundits predicted heated Congressional battles stoked by the embers from the Don's flaming hair, the endless reams of propaganda I had to sort through every day were mostly produced for city council elections, plus a slate of propositions longer than all the begats in the lists of Old Testament patriarchs.

Although I do not generally approve of fat-shaming, I declare fair game on those political candidates who appear to have fattened themselves at the taxpayer trough.  Taking cheap shots from behind the protective barrier of this disclaimer, I now feel safe to report that the political battle producing the greatest number of casualties among the stately, centuries old California coastal redwoods was between two candidates I can only call fat and fatter.  Both of these office seekers were so engorged on their own smugness that the combined photo shop skills of a crack team of computer geeks working around the clock from their mothers' basements were unable to trim them down onto a standard flat dimension mailer.  They were forced to resort to sheaves of paper roughly the size of movie posters just for a single head shot.  All postal mailing requirements were suspended for this endeavor, and the rustle of folding paper in post offices throughout our state pinged the seismograph at Cal Tech.  

For roughly two to three weeks I was forced to endure the disagreeable visage of both of these corpulent candidates, firing accusations of obesity at one another, something along the lines of "I'm not fat, you're fat," answered by "I'm fat, but you're fatter."  Not exactly engaging political discourse in the spirit of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

For these reasons I confidently declare the California 2018 mid terms to have produced the worst political mail ever.  You say Mel, how could you make such an outlandish declaration? Every political mail season is bad, this one was no different.  Time has merely healed your psychological paper cuts from previous elections. In response I say that you are fat, and also that I have statistics to prove it, along with some lies and damn lies to pepper your potato.

I am a stats nerd, probably because of some congenital defect from toxic metals in the Rio Grande flowing through the tap in my birthplace of El Paso, Texas.  I keep spreadsheets on nearly every aspect of my life.  While you are having fun throwing them down in some sports bar, I am cataloging your drinks consumed per hour and the progression of your obscenities launched at the referee as you approach complete inebriation.  This is my idea of fun, and you can form your own opinion of me accordingly.  So naturally I document the pertinent numbers on my postal route, including average street and office time worked.  Therefore, I can present you with real numbers that prove how exceptionally burdensome the 2018 fall election season was.

To arrive at my results, I pulled the data three weeks prior to the June 5 primary, and three weeks prior to the November 6 general election, the approximate periods in which the political mail was gushing like a Tijuana sewage break into the Pacific Ocean. Except, comparatively speaking, the primary was the trickle off an iceberg slowly floating southward, whereas the general election was the flood caused by that same berg ripping open the hull of the Titanic.

By way of baseline, the average non-political mail delivery day on my route for 2018 to date is 7.70 street, 1.14 office.  This was actually much lower prior to the fall, but has been boosted by holiday advertising and a corresponding uptick in parcel volume.

In contrast, the June primary average was 7.73 street, 1.34 office.  The political mail volume barely made a difference on the street, and resulted in 20 extra clicks in the office.  Altogether this added up to 23 additional hundredths, or about 15 minutes for those of you who can't do postal math.  At the time it seemed like it sure did suck and we were all glad it was over, but in light of the barrage to follow, to quote the poet Morrissey, William it was really nothing.

Okay kiddies, buckle in because the ride gets bumpy now.  The fall numbers were a staggering exponential leap, a dwarf sun going supernova.  The street time for this tree killing orgy was 8.29, while the office total for the shore to shore river raft of felled trunks was 1.82.  Altogether this surge from the drain pipes of our lovely rotund candidates mouths added up to 56 clicks street, 48 clicks office, 1.04 total, above the June primary.  Add 23 clicks to that and you get 1.23 over non-political average, roughly an hour and fifteen minutes.

It was so bad that our oft ostrich emulating supervisors couldn't even bury their heads in the sand and pretend it wasn't happening. They were throwing around blank check overtime slips like ticker tape at a Super Bowl victory parade. All of the sudden management remembered what full tour OT was, and I was working all my scheduled days off plus several hours double time during this period. The Postal Elves were busy after normal closing time, way into the wee hours, casing up those knife-edged fliers, so sharp you can shave with them. On the street I was sometimes juggling 5 to 7 bundles at my CBUs, a very curious circus act, throwing all opposing parties into the same boxes and watching ruefully as customers, in one swift motion, without prejudice or party affiliation, tossed every candidate and proposition into nearby trash receptacles.

The circle of life thus rolls on, from tree to paper, which then goes directly into the compost pile to fuel the growth of new seedlings, eventually to be chopped down and ground into pulp to display the pulpy faces of future electoral participants, most of whom will, of course, decry the evils of deforestation.

Mel doesn't question, Mel just delivers the mail.  Then, being a postal soldier of Fortune, he cashes the overtime check. 

Please share how your political mail season went in the comments section.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons, by Tony Hisgett

Postal Tsunami Musical Guest

The Smiths - William It Was Really Nothing

Bored Journalists Crucify Big Apple Letter Carrier

By Mel Carriere

A deadly hurricane is about to body slam the Carolina coast.

Gas leaks cause multiple explosions in Massachusetts.

A sadistic drug addict Mom selfishly downs her dying daughter's pain medication.

All shocking news nuggets, but the story that led my Google news feed on Thursday, September 13, was a CBS article supposedly depicting a letter carrier throwing packages out of the back of his vehicle.

Can you say "slow news day?" Has the contempt people feel for the American letter carrier reached such heights that this mundane occurrence trumps a storm that has led to the evacuation of millions, and even trumps Trump, who was refreshingly absent from my Chrome home page for a change.

The article headline blared out "A POSTAL DELIVERY WORKER CAUGHT ON VIDEO MISHANDLING THE MAIL." A blurb below the banner then added "Exclusive: US Postal Worker Caught on Video Tossing Packages Into The Street."

Exclusive? Really?  This is the best the Big Apple journalists at this CBS affiliate could come up with?  New York is supposedly the Pinnacle of journalism, but here they are trying to sell us something that goes on thousands of times a day as "exclusive?" Were there no shootings or muggings or robberies to cover?  Maybe there were, but they didn't want to get off of their pampered Ivy League journalism school asses to get some real news, in places that might be dangerous. 

So instead, news reporters looked out the window to pick some low hanging fruit.  Fruit hanging so low that had it been attached to the tree in Sir Isaac Newton's yard it wouldn't have fallen far enough to wake him from his nap and give him the idea for the theory of gravitation.  Then we would really be screwed, because 60s rockers Blood, Sweat and Tears would have never written the famous Spinning Wheel song that tells us what goes up must come down.  What kind of deprived childhood would I have then had, without listening to that tune on my Dad's 8 track tape player?

All complicated principles of cause and effect aside, I went ahead and watched the video.  I did so because I am always skeptical of such claims, believing most of them to be exaggerated or misinterpreted.  In a revealing moment of full disclosure, I confess quite frankly that I, an American letter carrier, have done worse than what appears on the video, but never for malicious reasons or out of laziness.

Here's another shocking revelation:  If the public knew what happens to their packages on airport ramps and while being sorted in postal facilities, the supposed outrages in the video would be tame by comparison, like sitting down for a marathon of My Little Pony after binge watching slasher flicks Halloween Eve.

When I say I have done worse, I don't mean once like ten years ago, I mean two or three times a week and as recently as, maybe yesterday.  I think it was yesterday that I heaved a package over a fence.  The gate through the fence was locked and my shouts produced no response.  So I chucked it and ran, but not before first getting a feel for the parcel and calculating whether anything inside was fragile or if the parcel was so heavy it would be crushed by its own mass at the end of its Newtonian plunge to Earth.  Had it been either of these things I would have brought it back to the Post Office because of A) Customer Service, but mostly B) I don't want to hurt myself because my purple Hulk shorts are in the laundry and I won't be playing super hero without them.

These are the type of calculated assessments letter carriers have to make every day to get the job done, because there ain't enough room at the old PO to warehouse all the parcels that have to be dropped behind locked gates. 99.99 percent of the time they turn out to be good decisions, but we always run the risk of winding up as some lazy a'hole journalist's "Exclusive.". This is because on video, the probing postal Peeping Tom eye can't tell how heavy or how fragile the packages are.  On video they all look alike.

Now let me tell you a little about what kind of atrocities are visited upon America's packages before letter carriers even touch them, desecrations that will never end up as "Exclusives" or viral You Tube flicks because they occur in places the prying public eye does not have access to.

A friend of mine used to be an airport baggage handler. Part of his job was loading mail on planes.  Sometimes he and his fellow handlers would chuck mail sacks out of airplane baggage compartments, using the same spinning windup as Olympic hammer throwers.  If they were not too rushed they might compete for distance and accuracy, but occasionally they were not too accurate and the mail sacks would crash onto the ramp from high up. Talk about aviation disasters!  The baggage handlers had absolutely no idea if anything fragile was in those mail sacks and, for the kind of wages they were getting, I don't think they cared.

Then we have our merry band of sleep deprived Postal Clerks taking three pointers with grandma's care packages, consumer electronics and beauty supply products at 4 AM, the latter which they could really use themselves, because at that wee witching hour they look a mess.  

The disheveled, insomniac clerks toss all of these packages into APCs and lobster cages, where the first ones in get pancaked by those landing on top.  Just like carriers, our ever fastidious parcel sorters size up parcels that may break or break them on the downward arc and wheel these bulky behemoths over to the carrier's cases.  They do this because A) Customer Service, and B) they are going to be the ones to deal with the irate recipients of squished laundry detergent and pulverised dogfood at the window later.

Some of these clerks have as keen a three point aim as Steve Kerr, the all time NBA percentage leader from the arc.  Some of them shoot clanking bricks like Shaq did at the free throw line, meaning that later there is a lot of parcel redistribution among carriers.  If the public had video access to this wild orgy of flying cardboard, there would be a Congressional Investigation.  After that, the thousands of packages that move through the post office daily would never be sorted on time, without tripling the clerk work force.

Back to the video in question.  After watching it a few times, I believe the evidence of this candid camera carrier's culpability is inconclusive.  Is he really an uncaring, unprofessional douchebag, as the deskbound media moguls behind the film suggest, or is he the innocent victim of a bloodthirsty postal Inquisition panel who doesn't understand what it is looking at?  Here's a link:

Letter Carrier Throws Packages

I saw exactly one package fly out of the back of his vehicle. The same flying package is repeated for emphasis via sneaky photo shop techniques taught at Ivy League journalism schools, but it is the same package.  The box in question appears to be a light one, because it definitely bounces a little.  Perhaps the carrier thought it was safe to throw it.  We don't know, because we are not given samples of other packages being tossed.

After this, there is a sort of comedy relief moment when a package falls over on the carrier's hand truck, and he nudges it back into place with his foot, not kicking it by any means but just moving it with his foot.  Then we encounter a big gap in the footage sequence, which returns with a fully loaded dolly. What happened in the interim? Was there more parcel throwing? I'm guessing that if there had been, it would not have been edited out.  I'm thinking that the rest of the dolly loading process was pretty uneventful.  But conspiracy theorists will claim that parcels being thrown from the grassy knoll were edited out here.

Now follows what I suppose is the most egregious thing in the whole affair, when the carrier abandons the stacked dolly to walk a couple parcels inside that won't fit.  In so doing, he allegedly leaves the loaded hand truck unattended for a full minute and a half.  Or does he? In light of the other edits visited upon the video in the CBS cutting room, how do we know for sure it was a minute and a half?  And how do we know there wasn't some trusted acquaintance of the carrier off camera, maybe standing on the sidewalk taking his smoke break?  "Hey homey keep an eye on my stuff here for a minute here will ya?" "Yeah no probs man." Stuff like that happens.

I am not absolving this letter carrier of all negligence, I am only suggesting that, in light of the scanty evidence available in the video, all of you Postal Pontius Pilates should refrain from crucifying him, unless ye be completely without sin along the same lines.  Bearing the Cain's mark of a parcel thrower on my own brow, I will not judge.

One or two more things and then I'll stop.  First of all, if postal employees handled the mail as delicately as the public and underworked Ivy League journalists expect, postage prices would quadruple overnight.  So in lieu of such an outrageous rate hike, I'll give these parties the same advice for secure mailing that my Daddy gave me before handing over the car keys, along with other sundry items, for possible use on my first date. 

"You better wrap that rascal son," Daddy said with a wink.

Postal Tsunami Musical Guest - Blood, Sweat and Tears "Spinning Wheel"

Image a screenshot from Mel's phone of New York CBS local

Light Summer Mail?

By Mel Carriere

There is really no appropriate adjective to describe the evaluation process letter carriers put new managers through when they assume control of a new office.  The new bosses typically come in fanning their tail feathers like peacocks, pounding their chests like territorial apes, marking boundaries YOU SHALL NOT PASS with verbal territorial pissings that form steaming, stinking puddles at morning service talks. Don't eat that yellow snow as you watch newbie boss make his debut.

Is interesting a good word for these opening dramatics?  Not unless you're the type who thinks train derailments, with dozens of casualties plummeting from a railroad bridge into a river below, are interesting.

How about entertaining? Some people back in the early 70s thought the Watergate hearings were entertaining - scores of monotone senators and lawyers saying the same thing in a multitude of equally mind-numbing ways when all this nine year old really wanted to do was watch I Dream of Jeannie, which had been preempted by the witch hunt.

Curios would seem to be the operative word, though this would be a very jaded curiosity, nudged along reluctantly by a lack of hope that things will change for the better as the new alpha dog takes over.  When scrutinizing new managers, letter carriers are indeed curious, but in the same way as biologists hiding in a blind in the deep forest to observe a heretofore little studied species.  BS meters and other sensors are deployed at the ready, but there is really no expectation that the behaviors of this new knuckle dragger will be radically different from the last one.

For a regrettably brief time period our station had a manager who did not ambulate upon his knuckles, one who actually acknowledged there is a reality that cannot be quantified by the computerized abstractions of DOIS, someone who was surprisingly willing to listen to our suggestions.  Naturally this could not continue.  When upper management caught wind that carriers liked their boss they had no choice but to replace him with someone made in their image, another thick headed brute who blindly accepted the pipe dream projections of isolated, air conditioned cubicle jockeys somewhere out there in the kingdom of far far away.  Their gospel turned out to be his mantra, his rosary, his deliverance from the evil of having to think for himself.

As usual, the new boss tried to soften up our formidable anti-bs defense system by magnanimously declaring he was not there to discipline, but to teach, coach, and mentor.  This triumvirate of untrustworthy tripe, this truckload of trivial treacle made me wonder how effective the teaching, coaching and mentoring could be from someone who had jumped straight from 204b to station manager, without any intervening layovers in the supervisor trenches.

The neophyte slathered on his syrup rather thickly, but the pancake underneath was as dry and insipid as before.  Apparently, our manager's game plan was to use cute and cuddly catch phrases to get us to pole vault through his impossibly high mail hoops.  His favorite verse in his Bible of bewitching BS turned out to be light summer mail.  Over the course of the next couple of weeks, he bandied the term about like an exorcist sprinkling holy water to cast out overtime demons.  He was a cult leader convincing his flock to drink the kool-aid that will transport them to the magic mother ship in the sky.  Light summer mail was a real thing, he assured us, sanctioned by some official postal Dead Sea Scrolls seen only by a privileged cabal.  Therefore, in spite of our misgivings, we were expected to turn our eyes from the mountains of mail before us toward the calendar, then go out into the world and perform mail miracles, empowered now as we were by the voodoo incantation of light summer mail.

The problem with the doctrine of light summer mail is that the postal scribes cloistered away in wilderness caves hundreds of years ago, copying down the sacred revelations for posterity, had never heard of the Internet.  They knew nothing of e-commerce.  The Amazon apocalypse had not been prophesied.  These soothsayers could not foresee a future where 100 plus packages had to be wedged into the tiny LLV cargo compartment with a shoehorn.  Heck, at the time the postal sages were writing down their dreams and visions about light summer mail we were still delivering out of Pintos.  When I was a PTF, a few short centuries ago when light summer mail still applied, one day due to a vehicle crisis I delivered an entire route from the back seat of my Chevy Cavalier.

In the here and now, the mail no longer respects the seasons.  Admittedly, the letters and flats are lighter during the days when the sun loiters long in the loft and the mercury makes mailmen melt, but parcels know no pause, they carry no calendar.  Postal packages don't disappear to some time share in Florida during the dog days. They take no vacations.

What our hypnotist manager also neglected to tell us, surely a simple oversight on his part, was that Amazon Prime Sunday fell on July 16th.  The light in light summer mail  I experienced after that was the light headedness I suffered lugging a fifty pound baby carriage up a flight of stairs, tossing a hefty box of dogfood over a fence, and wearing off the fingerprints on my scanning finger pressing that damn button 146 times.  I can now commit crimes with impunity, because there are no more identifying marks on my digits.

Like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, light summer mail is a nice fable to make the kiddies behave themselves, but my new boss is blinded by the light if he thinks he can light a fire under my old, sagging, dragging ass to get this mountain of light summer mail to move any faster.

Postal Tsunami Musical Guest Bruce Springsteen

Another Boss blinded by the light summer mail

Begin your precarious journey into The Gasden Purchase, a novel by Mel Carriere

In Memory of Letter Carrier Peggy Frank - Could the Scanner Have Saved Her?

By Mel Carriere

By now, everybody within the Postal Tsunami's destructive swale, which sounds swell but is sometimes not, has heard the story of Peggy Frank, a letter carrier who was found dead in her truck on Friday, July 6th, in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles.  Then again, maybe you haven't gotten the message.  Here in southern California we have been inundated with heat related safety talks since the incident, which occurred on a heatwave day when the temperature hit a record breaking 117 in that area. Perhaps, however, in the flyover hotbox/icebox where you live, such weather related fatalities are commonplace and the event did not cause much of a stir.

I am certainly not expecting those of you letter carriers who bundle up like Eskimos in winter and strip to the skivvies in summer to do much crying for us out here in Socal, just because our mercury hit triple digits for one week.  What I would like to do, rather, is use this incident to rant over the question of why the technology the Postal Service uses to inflict evil upon carriers, through the dark magic of that little blue talisman called your scanner, cannot also be used to do good, especially when a climatic crisis requires it.

First a few facts. Peggy Frank was pronounced dead at 3:35 PM on that fatal Fry-day after a "bystander or co-worker" found her unresponsive in her postal vehicle.  Attempts by emergency personnel to revive her failed.  Several reports state Ms. Frank had just returned from medical leave, one article saying she had been out with a broken ankle.  Although Frank had suffered heat related incidents in the past, the severe heat has not yet been identified as the cause of death, pending "additional tests." Hmm... Methinks if I were wagering on that horse race, with the temperature the day of her tragic demise approaching infinity and beyond, that old nag Heat Stroke would be safe money.

I suppose we will learn the grim details soon enough. In the meantime, the woeful, premature passing of a grandmother who was nearing retirement prompts me to wonder why, if the Postal Service is equipped with technology that can monitor every step you take, snap a surreptitious scanner photo of you picking your nose or send the alarms in the scanner-snoop war room howling when you exceed your lunch by so much as a second,  why can't they do the same thing to find out if you are safe during a massive heat wave? If safety is, indeed, the mother of all priorities management pays lip service to every day at service talks, this would be a cool thing to do when it's warm.

Even before this incident, I had been pondering other benevolent uses for our postal scanners. For instance, could we not use their GPS data to verify that letter carriers are taking their 30 minute lunches, as required by contract and by law?  I'm sure managers as well as carriers are dedicated to the proposition of following state law, right? So in addition to a stationary report, our favorite sunglass-clad Agent Smith, monitoring the sanctity of the Postal Matrix up there in the warped consciousness where there is no red pill to return to reality, could also run a "non-stationary" report, to pinpoint those carriers' scanners that do not have a half hour pause in activity, meaning  they skipped their lunches. Certainly the Postal Service recognizes the importance of adequate rest and nutrition to safety.  Seeing as how my manager swears on a daily basis that seeing us all go home safe is his number one priority, I'm surprised he never thought of this.

But the burning question in the here and now is whether that  little blue leash tethering us to Postal Big Brother could have saved letter carrier Peggy Frank. The staff of the Postal Damage Control Department did not weigh in on this issue, even though they were in a higher state of readiness than whoever was supposed to be manning Spy Central that sizzling San Fernando day. In contrast to the sluggards at the Postal peep show, the ensuing response from corporate communications was quickly forthcoming, though poorly fumigated, reeking mightily of "Pass the Buck," to me.

As the crisis unveiled, Postal spokeswoman Evelyn Ramirez was quoted in the  LA Daily news as saying that USPS employees deliver mail in “...all kinds of weather, including high temperatures... The Postal Service strives to ensure that they have the tools and training to do so safely."

I wonder what sort of tools and training Ms. Ramirez is talking about.  As a letter carrier, my only training for heat related incidents is being reminded to hydrate and call the supervisor in an emergency.  These seem to be instinctive, no-brainer, no training required actions imbued within us before we pop out of the womb. The reptile brain stem says drink when you are thirsty and cry for Mommy when you need help, although we know how appeals to stressed out postal mommies wind up.  Can you rest a few minutes and give me another swing?  One teeny-weeny swingy?  Okay, how about an hour? I'll tell you what.  I'll give you overtime so you can cool down and finish the route.

Here's an anecdotal example of how our postal parents are trained to handle heat related incidents.  A few summers ago a new CCA at our station suffered heat exhaustion and was unable to continue.  She called the hot line repeatedly but, surprise surprise, no one answered.  Finally she called another letter carrier who swung by, scraped her off the sidewalk and got her help. 

This anecdote is not an isolated occurrence. The Los Angeles Daily news reported that in 2016 "...OSHA cited the Postal Service after two Des Moines, Iowa, workers suffered heat-related illness while delivering mail that past summer. The agency found that the two mail carriers, one of whom was told to continue walking her route despite feeling ill, were exposed to excessive heat." Thus we see that this cool response to heat-related complaints is pervasive, sweeping across the breadth of the organization, and that our so called beat the heat training is mostly a lot of hot air.

So much for training, but let's get back to these so-called tools Ms. Ramirez claims are in place to protect us against heat incidents. Could the postal spin doctors be  speaking of the scanner messages we get each morning that remind us to drink water, like anyone needs to be reminded when one's sweat and body heat are so thick they create a miniature weather front inside the pith helmet?   There are tools potentially more effective than these inspirational morning eye openers, but they are not being used.  For instance, a simple call from whoever is on watch in that converted broom closet at the stationary report command center, warning that such and such carrier has been in one place over half an hour, could be used to save someone from blue lining in postal blue.  No carrier likes to be spied on, but if the spies in the sky are already on post, couldn't they use their powers for good on occasion?

Instead, my eyes burn with the fumes from the smokescreen being fanned up to cover complicity in this heartbreaking development in Woodland Hills. I suspect that, in reality, Ms. Ramirez' quip about "tools and training" may be the Postal Service's preemptive strike to shift blame from USPS management onto poor Ms. Frank. Accidents happen, death is inevitable for all, but I ask the question why the same resources used to monitor our every move couldn't have been used to rescue poor Peggy - may the postal angels transport her to glory in that sweet, air-conditioned LLV in the sky.

Photo from fox5dc.com