Postal Worker failed to deliver nearly 1,000 pieces of mail
1.21.2015 EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — A former U.S. Postal Service worker who failed to deliver nearly 1,000 pieces of mail has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor mail obstruction and been sentenced to a year of probation.
The Register-Guard reports that 27-year-old Alex Douma was also ordered Wednesday to pay a $500 fine. He entered his plea in federal court in Eugene, Oregon.
While most of the mail found last summer in two bins on his front porch was junk mail, there were also 27 voter ballots from last May’s primary election and more than 200 items of first-class and standard mail.
Douma worked at a post office in Eugene. Court documents say he told investigators that he “just got lazy” and had failed to make his rounds on multiple occasions between late April and early July. He apologized in court and said he set aside the mail because he had “felt pressured for time” while working in a job that required him to sort, scan and deliver mail.
We’ll be hearing more of these kind of stories, I guarantee you. While it’s wrong to do what this carrier did, and he deserves removal and probation, management will only be able to expect more of the same attitude as CCA’s get more numerous, and they find out quickly the demands on them are not worth the pay. We older carriers all know how in many cases far too many CCA’s are scattering mail all over creation, don’t have the slightest understanding of handling non-deliverable mail (ANK, UTF, IA, NSN, etc. or forward able), ignore vacation holds, fill up boxes with vacant cards in them and make a mess out of our routes as management pushes them to run, run, run. To date, in my office, despite the alarming amount of misdeliveries and mishandling of the mail that has happened since the CCA program was initiated, no discipline has been given out or even considered. But how could management discipline anybody when they refuse to train them properly?
But consider this: when I started way back in 1984, the only training I got was to be taken out on two short fifteen minute swings. No carrier for a day, no “academy”, nothing. The next workday they pointed a tub of mail at me, called the 800+ delivery route an auxiliary route, and told me to follow the mail around. Good thing I was good with maps and addresses. But I trained myself to be as accurate and efficient as possible, didn’t run although I certainly didn’t crawl, took my breaks and lunch every day and gave it my best effort.
Now, too many young workers think the employer “owes” them something just for showing up, show little regard for attendance or promptness and seem very adverse to having to exert any effort that doesn’t involve playing around with a smartphone text messaging all day. I feel sorry for postal customers in the near future.
Lazy butt, Rush Limbaugh listener.