Grievances of Postal Workers

After 25 years on the receiving end of bonehead operations by the Hollywood Wilcox Post Office, your gruesome report on the Postal Service impels me to comment.

I’ve never met a front-line agency worker (letter carriers, counter people) who didn’t impress me as motivated, patient, and courteous. I’ve never met any management, but “by their works ye shall know them.” Never, in 25 years, has my postal box contained a notice such as: “If by chance something is put in your box by mistake, please drop it in the mail slot.” Box holders getting misdirected mail don’t necessarily know what to do with it. Witness a check correctly addressed to me I fortuitously found a month ago on the customer mail-sorting counter. I wonder where my other misdirected pieces go. I get 1 to 5 wrongly delivered pieces a week in my box. In the past five years I’ve received my weekly news magazine on time twice; usually it’s four days late; often it’s 10 days late or never arrives at all. A sign in the post office states: “Box mail delivered by 10 a.m.” Noon would be closer for first class mail; afternoon for magazines. From your article, I think I can assume this all happens because of insane time assumptions.

How can management allow 25-50 people to stand in line waiting to get to two counter clerks? If Federal Express or United Parcel Service had this problem once, I’ll bet it would be solved in a trice, even if it took every manager on hand to man the counters. No wonder the Postal Service loses business to them.

Let’s all vote to turn over the whole Postal Service shebang to private enterprise, asking Federal Express and UPS to bid.

DON McKENZIE

Hollywood