Our USPS Post Office At Work

A news flash just encountered.

A New York post office branch unable sell some stamps because of poor management practices.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/16/busi...iness_ribbon



3:51pm:
Edited to conform to political correctness

A mistitled article (link) and parroted here in the thread to also mislead.

They can sell stamps.

The issue is the clerks do not have access to the salable stamps.

Now the questions not addressed is why were the keys not collected when the employee retired and if they were, why they were not returned to the office for which one was required.

As to the "on leave" why not either pick up the keys or at least the needed key, from the employee or ask that the employee return the keys or at minimum the needed key.

Honestly, is anyone surprised? The post office has been a joke for decades and it just keeps getting worse. It's no wonder nobody wants to collect stamps anymore. They're wholly politically motivated, they have horrible service, they can hardly manage to deliver your mail, although the junk gets through just fine, and they treat people like crap when you go up to the counter to ask for stamps or philatelic supplies. Then they complain that nobody sends letters. Of course not because you suck!

They used to actually cater to stamp collectors. Now, they don't care at all. It's no wonder so many people have stopped collecting modern stamps.

Why did they let the employee leave with the key in the first place? This is just managerial incompetence.

The same can be said about many governmental and quasi-governmental organizations. The National Weather Service is another one. After they blew Hurricane Sandy Congress huffed and puffed and ended up increasing their budget. They suck even worse now. The answer always seems to be increase fees or the budget, but things only get worse or remain the same. So much to complain about and so little time.

My local Post Office is filled with kind competent workers. I'm not sure where the hate comes from for the USPS, they do the best with what they are allowed to have, which is heavily legislated. I'm guessing just vanilla anti-government yelling at clouds.

Could you expand upon that? What are they allowed or not allowed to have?

Is the post office supervisor "not allowed" to do what she needs to do to retrieve the key? What nonsense. As a supervisor in my company, if an employee of mine had retired or gone on leave with a critical item, whether it be a report, a key, or whatever, I would call them up immediately and arrange for them to come back to the office to return it, or arrange a meet if necessary to pick it up, even if I had to drive to their house to do it. Here we apparently have two employees with the critical item, but the supervisor/office manager doesn't know how or is "not allowed" to rectify the situation? Just pitiful.

Agreed but there aren't a lot of weather junkies and they aren't relying on collectors to keep them afloat like the USPS is. They've been effectively saying "go away, but keep spending money on our crappy service" for years and now, most people just don't care anymore.

I'd never just let two random employees have the only key to an important facility. What kind of stupidity is that?

Keys? They do not have keyless security systems in USPS buildings and vaults? Doh. Welcome to 1950.
Don

The following is a key statement within the article showing how wrapped up in itself the government is:




First of all, the contractor does not submit an RFP, the USPS issues an RFP and contractors respond to it. The person in charge is clueless.

The truth is that there are mechanisms to award a low value contract for an emergency service. It takes knowledge however as well as a bit of actual work to get it done. Generally, there is discretion for work valued under $5000 as well as other limits for other work such as construction. If the roof of the PO suddenly had a large hole in it and rain was pouring in it could be fixed without going through the process of issuing an RFP, evaluating the responses based upon cost and performance, awarding the contract after insurance/bonds etc. were found to be in order. You know how many people have to sign a Change Order for construction work? Nine people sign the seven copies, three of which must have a "green sheet" and five without. Are all nine people sitting in the same cubicle? Of course not. It may take months. That is if no bureaucrat has an issue and sends it back to start all over again.

Often the safe is the only safe in an office. Thus the one safe may store accountable paper, it is also used to store registered matter. If this safe is also storing registered matter, the addressee for the registered has to wait as well. That is actually a more serious inconvenience than the lack of stamps which can be address with a postage meter.

They store the Registered mail in the minifridge now.

Poor management practices are not something exclusive to the USPS and governmental organization.

Possible factors: management promotions based more seniority rather than competence, strict rule structure where deviating for any reason can result in punitive action, contentious work environment (workers, management).

I have no major complaints with the mail service but others have a lot more issues. It has not returned to pre-COVID days. I believe many of the USPS issues are local (Postmaster),

Of course not, but when a private business has bad management, it goes under. The Post Office goes on because it has to. It's guaranteed in the Constitution. It's not something that can go under an that means they don't have to care much if they're efficient. Any regular business that's been running in the red for as long as the post office has been, they wouldn't be in business any longer.