Have you ever wanted to share your fun photos, offbeat stories, and positive postal news and experiences? Rules of the road? Keep it upbeat, be considerate, and keep it clean.
Storm clouds are gathering over the Postal Service. What kind of suggestions do you have to help? Comment here.
Photo, Bethany, MO, Post Office, courtesy Chase Davis ,
8 comments:
Anonymous
said...
In a small post office level 13, I can see savings made by having the postmaster work 6 days instead of five days. This would eliminate overtime that the postmaster would have by working on Saturday. I am currently without a PMR [and probably be without a PMR for a long time], and being non-exempt, I am paid overtime working Saturday, my scheduled day off. Adjustments in window service would be minimal and would still be providing service to the community. Another option, provide retirement eligible employees and postmasters with a severance package of additional 3 to 5 "years of service". This would bring in new employees at the lowerer end of the pay scale.
Eliminate all unnessary spending where delivery operations are not impacted. Eliminate Headquarters,area and district offices would be good plase to start. Eliminate all theses logs and programs such as VOE Surveys, Mystery Shopper, EXFC Measurements. Just Deliver the mail.
Cut down on the amount of kind of stamps that we sell. You don't see very many people collecting them now anyway. Get rid of the loafers that the Postal Service has. Managment on down. There are way too many people that do more loafing than anything. I can get my frustrations out writing this but UPPER MANAGMENT won't listen to us anyway. Make all these postmasters that have been on details forever go back to their offices IF they don't want to go back then they have to retire. NO IF'S ANDS or BUTS. Get rid of the good old boy network it hasn't worked and never will. Do I need to stop there is alot more. I really don't feel that there will be a POSTAL SERVICE for me to retire from. Pretty sad when I have put in my whole life for it.
We don't live in the horse and buggy days. If people live within a mile of the post office, no mail should be delivered- (Serve only the handicapped). They could get their mail at the post office. Maybe have rural delivery boxes placed along main highways or roads. This would save$$
HQ needs to take control and bring the Areas and Districts into line. Right now, HQ puts out rules, the Areas put out rules and the Districts put out rules, sometimes contradicting other rules because no one can keep up with all the rules and regulations.
A search on the blue page is hopeless. Anything that is out-dated, obsolete, superseded or other useless needs to be marked clearly "ARCHIVED" in the search results so that we don't waste time trying to find out if it's the current information we're seeking.
Instead of coming up with new rules, handbooks, forms and the like, these people that are in charge need to take a hard look at the content that is out there. We simply don't have time to flip through every Postal Bulletin looking for the updates for something we need to reference once a year.
And don't fix any more things! You'll just unfix them later. Like this new thing with the Claims. Used to be we sent all claims in to be adjudicated, then they changed it and now they're changing it back. Pick a plan and stick with it. No more teddy bears, no more frames, nobody can afford it and you'll just toss them all away. (Looney toons, anyone?)
USPS is not Walmart. And I agree, tone down on the amount of stamps for now. Put out the basics until we get back on our feet. Or make them all Forever stamps. That way we don't have to destroy so much stock.
Philatelic society might disagree about the variety of stamps. We need to stop selling the teddy bears etc. but the stamp varieties are still, I think, profitable. We could check that out. We do need to go to 5 day delivery and reduce the number of mounted routes. Create or extend park and loops. A few years back we were told if you didn't touch the mail your job was gone. We should stick to that plan. We could eliminate a LOT of support positions, especially since they do more auditing that supporting. We should not be raising the cost of postage right now. The increase in cost is already hurting a lot of small business periodicals. We can close some of our processing facilities and small contract stations. Some of these offices remain open for the sole purpose of satisfying politicians who want to keep their personal voters happy by giving them a post office. We could offer free post office boxes. It is the easiest delivery we make - putting mail into a P.O. box at one of our own stations versus having to drive out to someone's doorstep and we could reduce carrier staffing, equipment costs and transportation costs on routes.
In some other countries the post offices are like a small stationery and gift store and are very profitable. Have a TV hanging in the lobbies with a loop showing what damage can happen if they send breakable items or how to mail heavy parcels mail, etc. Ex: glass jars of B-B-Que sauce and rolls of coins. This may alleviate having someone in the rewrap/hazmat room for hours. Also and most importantly, listen to the folks on the floor. We do have ideas for saving money; not firing people but real, doable ideas.
8 comments:
In a small post office level 13, I can see savings made by having the postmaster work 6 days instead of five days. This would eliminate overtime that the postmaster would have by working on Saturday. I am currently without a PMR [and probably be without a PMR for a long time], and being non-exempt, I am paid overtime working Saturday, my scheduled day off. Adjustments in window service would be minimal and would still be providing service to the community.
Another option, provide retirement eligible employees and postmasters with a severance package of additional 3 to 5 "years of service". This would bring in new employees at the lowerer end of the pay scale.
Stop delivery on Saturday, change mode of delivery to mounted delivery, and eliminate the Postal Operations Manager positions to start.
Eliminate all unnessary spending where delivery operations are not impacted. Eliminate Headquarters,area and district offices would be good plase to start. Eliminate all theses logs and programs such as VOE Surveys, Mystery Shopper, EXFC Measurements. Just Deliver the mail.
Cut down on the amount of kind of stamps that we sell. You don't see very many people collecting them now anyway. Get rid of the loafers that the Postal Service has. Managment on down. There are way too many people that do more loafing than anything. I can get my frustrations out writing this but UPPER MANAGMENT won't listen to us anyway. Make all these postmasters that have been on details forever go back to their offices IF they don't want to go back then they have to retire. NO IF'S ANDS or BUTS. Get rid of the good old boy network it hasn't worked and never will. Do I need to stop there is alot more. I really don't feel that there will be a POSTAL SERVICE for me to retire from. Pretty sad when I have put in my whole life for it.
We don't live in the horse and buggy days. If people live within a mile of the post office, no mail should be delivered- (Serve only the handicapped). They could get their mail at the post office. Maybe have rural delivery boxes placed along main highways or roads. This would save$$
HQ needs to take control and bring the Areas and Districts into line. Right now, HQ puts out rules, the Areas put out rules and the Districts put out rules, sometimes contradicting other rules because no one can keep up with all the rules and regulations.
A search on the blue page is hopeless. Anything that is out-dated, obsolete, superseded or other useless needs to be marked clearly "ARCHIVED" in the search results so that we don't waste time trying to find out if it's the current information we're seeking.
Instead of coming up with new rules, handbooks, forms and the like, these people that are in charge need to take a hard look at the content that is out there. We simply don't have time to flip through every Postal Bulletin looking for the updates for something we need to reference once a year.
And don't fix any more things! You'll just unfix them later. Like this new thing with the Claims. Used to be we sent all claims in to be adjudicated, then they changed it and now they're changing it back. Pick a plan and stick with it. No more teddy bears, no more frames, nobody can afford it and you'll just toss them all away. (Looney toons, anyone?)
USPS is not Walmart. And I agree, tone down on the amount of stamps for now. Put out the basics until we get back on our feet. Or make them all Forever stamps. That way we don't have to destroy so much stock.
Okay, I'm done. Have a nice day.
Philatelic society might disagree about the variety of stamps. We need to stop selling the teddy bears etc. but the stamp varieties are still, I think, profitable. We could check that out. We do need to go to 5 day delivery and reduce the number of mounted routes. Create or extend park and loops.
A few years back we were told if you didn't touch the mail your job was gone. We should stick to that plan. We could eliminate a LOT of support positions, especially since they do more auditing that supporting.
We should not be raising the cost of postage right now. The increase in cost is already hurting a lot of small business periodicals.
We can close some of our processing facilities and small contract stations. Some of these offices remain open for the sole purpose of satisfying politicians who want to keep their personal voters happy by giving them a post office.
We could offer free post office boxes. It is the easiest delivery we make - putting mail into a P.O. box at one of our own stations versus having to drive out to someone's doorstep and we could reduce carrier staffing, equipment costs and transportation costs on routes.
In some other countries the post offices are like a small stationery and gift store and are very profitable. Have a TV hanging in the lobbies with a loop showing what damage can happen if they send breakable items or how to mail heavy parcels mail, etc. Ex: glass jars of B-B-Que sauce and rolls of coins. This may alleviate having someone in the rewrap/hazmat room for hours. Also and most importantly, listen to the folks on the floor. We do have ideas for saving money; not firing people but real, doable ideas.
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