Friday, January 13, 2012
Randomly Noted Post office offers weekly reminders why it's failing
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 1:12 PM
It would, however, be much easier to muster sympathy for the post office if it weren't for asshole postal workers.
Take my experience this morning at the West Peachtree Street post office. When I finally made it up to the counter — the single employee helping people rang a bell for assistance when the line of customers stretched to eight or nine people — I took part in the following exchange. (I should preface it by revealing that, as a weekly post office customer, I'm familiar with all the standard questions and upselling tactics.):
Me: I'd like to send this package First Class. And, no, it doesn't contain anything liquid, perishable, or potentially hazardous.Lady postal worker: Does the package contain anything liquid, perishable, or potentially hazardous?
Me: I just told you it didn't.
LPW: No, you don't tell me — it's me who asks you!
OK, maybe I was a bit of a dick as well. But when you're standing in line watching postal workers leisurely going about their duties as if none of their customers had anywhere else to be, it gives you plenty of time to formulate theories as to why the USPS is going down the tubes.
Believe me, I don't think all postal workers are jerks who move in slow motion. The other day, I was waited on by an exceedingly pleasant, patient, and efficient woman — and I'm not holding her out as the rare exception. Also, I've never had a bad experience with a letter carrier; those people earn their paychecks. But I visit the post office often enough to have become convinced that lousy customer service is an enduring problem that, unfortunately, seems deeply ingrained within its culture.
That's why I'm saddened by nagging doubts about whether any amount of cost-cutting can save the post office from oblivion. I'm just glad I picked the right dying industry for my career.
Comments (27)
Showing 1-27 of 27
I've had the same experience myself at the USPS retail locations, and I too have a letter carrier who I think is great. So its difficult for me to reconcile that both sides of this service are under one roof. My only conclusion is that the 'go getters' are out in the trucks delivering the mail whereas the workers less inclined to work are in the shops. Also, let's not forget that it's virtually impossible to get fired from the post office. All that said, I'd like to see the post office continue, there's nothing quite like getting a hand written letter in the mail..
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In 2006, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act (PAEA). This Act mandated that within ten years the United States Postal Service would have to fully fund retirement healthcare benefits for the next 75 years. So basically, the Postal Service had a decade to fully fund the retirement healthcare benefits for future employees that will not even be born until 2057 at the earliest. It's just the Republicans way of destroying this government service. And imagine what they would say if President Obama and the Democrats proposed legislation that required businesses and corporations to fully fund healthcare benefits for all of their current workers and workers who haven not even been born yet. It's so obvious it hurts.
The fact that it only cost $.44 to mail a letter anywhere in the country is astonishing. On top of that it gets there in a matter of days. They should be charging double what they charge.
Ok lets break this down further. I can have a letter to my sister in San Francisco hand delivered to her address from my home in Atlanta in 4 days for $.44. That is fucking mindnumbing. There is not one service or good that comes even close to that for lest than fifty cents.
I've read about what Midtowner said, haven't looked into it much but unless I'm missing something that does seem like an amazing dagger to stick into the back of the postal service. Yet most people, including myself until recently, never heard of this legislation.
As to West Peachtree, in the middle of midtown, yet it is the worst post office I've ever visited. Though I work 3 blocks from it I now refuse to go there. What EINSTEIN decided to not put in those great new postal machines they have where you can even mail boxes? They seem to now have them in all the other post offices. Heck they don't even have a drop off box for packages you buy postage for on the internet. HECK OMG F*ING S*ht they don't even have a plain old stamp machine! They used to have one of those but they took it out. That makes me think there is a management issue.
Now that I think about it, maybe the West Peachtree Post Office is really a cruel social experiment into just how much shit people will put up with.
The postal workers at the Howell Mill office are awesome. One of the guys is so cheerful, he brightens everything up no matter how bad the day. Taking everything into consideration, I wouldn't pick the post office for an article about bad service. Try calling AT&T for a simple outage. There's a story.
I moved from Buckhead to Midtown in June. I have put in 3 requests to have my mail forwarded. I have not seen even one piece of forwarded mail. I also can't get an answer as to why it doesn't work from anyone. I really hope I am not missing anything important.
I agree with you on the West Peachtree location. On the other hand, the Pryor St crew are aces. I actually enjoy going there.
Really Scott, using the loaf as your personal soapbox seems beneath you.
it must be incredibly difficult to fire post office employees. i bet the good ones (who are definitely in the majority) are pissed that they have so much dead weight taking the place of productive employees.
Scott Henry: You're an honest liberal, so you must be in favor of unions, including public sector unions, right? Why do you think the person who was rude to you is still employed there? Would she still have a job if she were rude to customers at a non-union shop, like at a UPS Store? You know the answer. She cannot be fired or even reassigned due to union work rules.
So how can you square your support for unions with your disdain for bad service?
On the same token the union is making it possible for the better employees to make far more than someone who drops mail in a bin everyday should theoreticly be paid. That can breed a better employee. People always complain about the death of customer service in this country. Ever thought that the reason is we dont pay people shit in low skill jobs like that. Unions prevent that and allow good hard working people to make a living. I can see the other side of the argument though.
I frequented the West Peachtree location for a few years, and it is terrible. Beyond terrible. I'm now mostly to be found at the one above Peachtree Center, it is staffed well and by nice workers.
What Midtowner posted is true and mind-blowing. Those are the facts I always point to whenever someone uses the USPS as an example of failing government service.
Dancamp691 somehow Ford Motor Company is able to layoff or reassign and overall run a profitable company with Unions.
The DeKalb Union employees who pick up my garbage are great workers and even Dunwoody "our Sh*t don't smell" thinks DeKalb's sanitation services are the great. The MARTA union employees who get me to and from work are great and MARTA runs well.
I don't think the fact the midtown W Peachtree office sucks is a reason to get rid of Unions. As I stated I think the fact they don't even have the old fashioned stamp machines (let alone the newer automated box and postage machines) indicates its more a local management issue.
I wish people would stop bashing postal workers. The window clerks have to ask all those "stupid" questions.If they dont,they get in trouble for failure to follow an order or failure to perform their duties.The postal service has made so many cuts that the few employees left on the window,have a tough time handling all the customers,not because they are "lazy". I could go on and on,but probably wont do any good since so many people have these pre conceived ideas about postal workers. I wish for just one day some of the these bashers have to come to work and see what it is like.Come in at 3 or 4am and hurry to get the job done.
My biggest complaint about that post office: it has a dropbox located right on busy West Peachtree, causing drivers in the far left lane to stop traffic when they drop off their mail. It boggles my mind.
I frankly don't understand why West Peachtree has 5 lanes.
One of the lanes is usually shut down for something anyway and the street still functions fine, just backs up where only 2 lanes go on the Buford highway connector and 2 lanes go North on Peachtree (how many really use the lane 5th lane to go south on peachtree).
They should restripe it for some sort of bike facility that could also include some pull offs for things like the P.O. drop box.
The USPS is probably the most hands-tied government institution there is, owing mostly to the fact that it isn't truly a government institution: Congress hasn't funded it in years and what budget it has comes from its products and services. But Congress still requires it to serve every address in the United States (something no private carrier does). Yet, as other posters have pointed out, a letter can be delivered for less than half a dollar in often less than half a week-- this is one of the best delivery standards in the world. Its use of technology to improve service and core functions has also been among the best of any government-based agency, and continues to provide reliable service in spite of the major competitive disadvantages with which it is set up.
The Economist gave a fairly blistering account of these disadvantages in its World in 2012 edition and prognosticated the USPS's dissolution, or at least as we know it today, by Congress during this year. I think that article overestimates Americans' use of email and electronic communication as a complete substitute for paper mail and I personally don't think the end of the USPS will happen-- as much as people gripe about desk service at the offices, the neighborhood letter carrier is a traditional American hallmark for many, many people. Nonetheless, there are far greater structural problems causing the slow death of the USPS that an article like this should explore, and those go well beyond the author's apparent distaste for poor customer service.
Finally a story about the missing element in the debate about whither-the-future-of-the-USPS... the customer service!
Although private enterprise customer service isn't always better, the USPS needs to realize their public support is tightly linked to the customer perception. The sorters and the mail center folks can't do much, but the mail carriers and the retail folks could.
Our office got mail one day a week for a while. After some wild and crazy excuses too long to chronicle here their only solution was that we should get a box at the post office and then we could get our mail every day. wow! Drive 3 miles because the letter carrier wants to fly right past our the door. Sorry to the other posters who marvel at what 44 cents buys, it doesn't quite get the mail delivered.
The queue at the local post office can be 20+ and out to the street but only one person working at the counter. A retired USPS friend told me that part of the problem is that many vacant positions are not being filled at the local post offices so when the downsizing occurs they can keep their jobs.
Easy way to deal with difficult postal employees: just say you're going to complain to a postal inspector. They're all scared of them. An employee might talk sass to their local postmaster but your average postal inspector takes no trash from the rank and file. If you've ever seen the episode of Seinfeld with Joe Bookman the library cop, you've got a feel for what postal inspectors are like... except they carry guns.
The entitlement here is breathtaking. All of you who are complaining about the W Peachtree post office (yes, also my local) should experience what it's like to go to a really bad post office some time.
@Scott: the ridiculous upselling questions aside, asking the (equally ridiculous) questions about "liquid, perishable, fragile, or potentially hazardous" isn't upselling: it's asinine security theatre foolishness very much in the vein of TSA. And yeah, by your own admission, you were we being a dick, and picking a fight. C'mon: you think that person needs to deal with your setup to write a column for CL? You really can't just listen to one (admittedly ridiculous) queston for two seconds, and respond "no"?
Those of you bitching about the W Peachtree post office: go to Civic Center. Or Peachtree Center. Or, try this: vote with your wallet, and open it up big for UPS or FedEx. It's like people bitching about congestion on the GA 400: don't take it. (Or even better, don't live in the suburbs.)
And while we're at it, MANY of the folks who stand in line at the post office are like the morons who stand in line at the airport to get their boarding pass, when the kiosks are either (a) much faster, (b) required, and you'll be sent back to them, or (c) both.
If you don't already know, you can do a LOT of what you're backing up the line at the post office for, online, and never see a living human being. And since you don't seem to like many of the people you deal with in person there, you can also order your sticker paper to print your Priority Mail labels online. And when it arrives UPS ground in 5-7 days, since you're using the cheapest shipping option, wonder why the USPS (who could have delivered it in 3 via first class mail) is struggling.
any conversation about the USPS that doesn't include the massive pension liabilities imposed by congress is completely misinformed
really scott? you think the postal service is failing because of poor customer service?
i happen to think the postal service is failing because congress told them to put five billion with a b dollars per year into a pension fund for twenty years
right now USPS is something like $20 billion in the hole. they've also been forced to sock away around $21 billion into this goofy fucking pension scheme gee what are the odds
UPS and FedEx's combined net profits for 2010 weren't five billion dollars. and they're not legally obligated to deliver a letter from puerto rico to alaska for half a dollar. this is all just starve the beast nonsense and it's certainly not helped by your anecdotal unfortunate experience with a rude person
by twenty years i mean ten years. the post office - largest employer in the nation - is legally required to pre-fund 75 years of pension obligations in ten years
here's the bill
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d1…
title VIII is the part about pensions
the sole intent of this bill is to kill the post office in order to make the american public think that government is failing, in order to garner support to reduce the size of government. it's so transparent
ok third largest employer. geez i shouldn't try to post while playing minecraft i can't factcheck worth a damn
They are REQUIRED to ask all of those questions and try to upsell. USPS has "secret shoppers" that come into offices to test employees. Smart clerks just go ahead and do it to cover their own asses.
As a former Postal Clerk, I can definitely state that the number of asshole customers to asshole clerks is easily 10 to 1. Customers who think that they personally pay your wages, customers who try and butt ahead of the line, how about the people who come in with a flat box, and a bag of dishes and EXPECT the postal clerk to tape the box, pack the contents, tape the top of the box and wait till they fill out all of the paperwork to send it to Germany, meanwhile the line behind them is getting longer and longer, and the people in line blame ME for the wait.. How would you like to have a job where everyday you have to look out upon a lobby full of unhappy faces..............ALL DAY. I have had carriers, who see what we go through will belligerent rude customers, say that they wouldn't do my job for DOUBLE the pay...................
warmstorage you've never been to W Peachtree. They don't have the parcel/box drop off, no stamp machine, none of the new postage parcel machines.
That's what's odd, its understaffed and they don't have the equipment to be able to avoid waiting on line.
I love my local post office. I don't go in person often, as I don't need to, but the customer service has been good to excellent. We have one employee who is downright hilarious. Unfortunately, it is closing. But they aren't all bad, and the employees put up with the public, a thankless task.
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