WILLIAMSBRIDGE, The Bronx — The email we received from Tony Williams in the Bronx complained that his local post office lost two of his packages in a month.
Even worse, when he went to the Williamsbridge Station on Gun Hill Road to look for his packages, he said it took him an hour of standing on line to get to the customer service window. That was followed by another 45 minutes of them searching for his packages, only to be told they could not find them.
In his email, Tony Williams included pages of complaints from the Internet about the Williamsbridge Station. According to one review, the station “could easily be the slowest, dirtiest, and worst managed post office in the entire country.” Others said “it’s disgusting” and this post office “gets an F–.”
Bronx residents complain about ‘slow, dirty’ post office in Williamsbridge
More satisfied customers! This looks like a situation where craft and management are at each other’s throats, and craft could be retaliating against abuse, stupid decisions, chronic understaffing and other crap management is famous for.
Then it could be that this office has more than its share of very lousy lazy employees who are interested in the paycheck and little else. We know there are carriers and clerks who are huge goof offs, have terrible attendance records, are always causing trouble amongst their fellow workers and managers and wouldn’t know an honest day’s work if it bit ’em on the ass.
So the likely reason for this office to get the terrible marks it gets, and no doubt tons of other offices with similar problems is both. The management over disciplines, shows extreme favoritism to many pet craft employees and often selects them to be 204-B’s and eventual full time managers themselves.
I know for a fact that a large proportion of people elevated to management where I work and the surrounding area are related and otherwise connected. I’ve seen craft people come in related to management in other nearby offices who already have their hearts set on being supervisors and the like. They have no problem snitching, hang out with their management, and alienate themselves from fellow craft workers. One I know as a city carrier pulled an unbelievable amount of crap that anybody else would have been fired for, but he had his connections and now is high up the management ladder. It is no surprise he was absolutely terrible as a carrier – rude as hell, misdelivered mail all over the place, bad mouthed other carriers and tried to get them in trouble whenever possible, especially those he didn’t like, which were almost all of us. Prime management material.
I want to be fair too, however. There are good decent people in management, and my supervisor and the person who pretty much works as a full time 204-B are good to us, and we do appreciate not being harassed and bullied. If yours is one of those offices, you’re lucky. I’ve also had the situation where management was tyrannical and psychotic both. It affected the work attitudes negatively and service suffered.
There has to be a way for the two sides to work alongside each other with respect but it’s a problem not likely to be solved any time soon.