USPS OIG Audit Report City Delivery Office Efficiency-Sierra Coastal District (California) is third in the nation
City delivery office operations cover all duties a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier performs in the office.
These duties include casing mail (placing mail in delivery order), preparing parcels for delivery, and retrieving accountable items. City carriers are delivering more packages and fewer letters to more addresses each year. To accommodate these changes, the Postal Service must deliver the increased package volume while maintaining efficiency.
In 2014, Sierra Coastal District city carriers delivered over 2.1 billion mailpieces on 2,711 routes to more than 1.8 million delivery points. City delivery office workhours totaled 1,104,368 for this period.
Our objective was to assess the office efficiency of city delivery operations in the Sierra Coastal District
The Sierra Coastal District has opportunities to enhance efficiency in city delivery office operations. We found the Sierra Coastal District’s percent to standard, a measurement used to assess office efficiency, was 117.85 percent, 12.76 percentage points above the national average of 105.09 percent. A percent to standard score greater than 100 percent indicates performance is less than the desired standard. In 2014, 46 of the Sierra Coastal District’s 99 delivery units (46 percent) used 172,601 more office workhours or about 16 more minutes of office time per day per city carrier route than necessary. We estimate these additional workhours cost over $7.4 million in 2014.
In 2014, Sierra Coastal District city carriers delivered over 2.1 billion mailpieces on 2,711 routes to more than 1.8 million delivery points. City delivery office workhours for this period totaled 1,104,368. The Sierra Coastal District’s percent to standard was the third highest in the nation, at 117.85 percent.
This variance means delivery units in the Sierra Coastal District used more office time on average than the national average
The Sierra Coastal District could increase office efficiency and eliminate 172,601 workhours annually, saving 16 minutes on each route per day. It could do this by adjusting mail arrival times, correcting inefficient office practices, completing IOPs, and enforcing policies and procedures at delivery units. We visited 30 randomly selected city delivery units (see Appendix B) and identified instances of:
■■ Late mail arrival at 10 units and improper mail mix at 13 units.
■■ Time wasting practices by carriers at 21 units.
■■ Nonexistent or unsigned IOPs at 30 units.
■■ Managers not enforcing policies and procedures at 14 units.
Inefficient Office Practices
We observed city carriers at 21 of the 30 delivery units loading mail into vehicles on office time rather than clocking to street time, talking excessively, making multiple trips away from their case and filling out Postal Service Form 3849, Delivery Notice/Reminder/Receipt in its entirety in the office. This resulted in unnecessary office time at these units. Postal Service policy states carriers should proceed directly to their vehicles and load the mail in an orderly fashion after clocking onto street time. Postal Service policy10 also states that carriers are to be prompt, courteous, and obliging in the performance of duties, attend quietly and diligently to work, and refrain from loud talk. In addition, Postal Service policy states that carriers are supposed to fill out only the address on form 3849 in the office.
Additionally, in 11 of the 30 delivery units we observed, we found supervisors need to better monitor carriers’ afternoon office time.We saw some carriers spending more than the allotted time in the office after returning from their routes. Further, review of the Route/Carrier Daily Performance/Analysis Report showed 203 routes with zero minutes for p.m. office time. This indicates carriers were not clocking back to office time when returning to the unit in the afternoon, resulting in office operations being recorded as street time.
We recommend the district manager, Sierra Coastal District:
1.Eliminate 172,601 workhours at delivery units.
2.Eliminate inefficient office practices such as loading vehicles on office time and excessive p.m. office time.
3.Increase mail arrival efficiency by preparing up-to-date integrated operating plans or mail arrival profiles with facility processing managers.
4.Ensure adherence to Postal Service policies and procedures for supervising city delivery operations at delivery units.
In response to recommendation 2, management agreed to eliminate inefficient office practices such as loading on office time. However they disagreed that moving load time from office to a street function, although appropriate, would not result in any net reduction to total workhours. Management stated that on August 14, 2015, they provided instructions to city delivery supervisors to review vehicle load operations to ensure loading is recorded on the appropriate operation number. Management also stated that as of August 10, 2015, Manager Post Office Operations are being sent push reports on high variance afternoon office time units. In addition, management stated that training for observing and correcting inefficient office work practices in the morning and afternoon will be completed through the Pacific Area’s Delivery Symposium by September 30, 2015.
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and the senior dot head MDO at Mid-Island PD & C, NY 117/119 has caused two stupidvisors to have strokes (heart attacks of the brain) and she still has a job. God do we need Donald Trump 2016 to fix this bastardized PO. deport this wench back to bombay before she gives out a 3rd stroke……..as they say the 3rd time is a charm! PO OIG should investigate this winner!
More like being way over worked and for less pay! There’s only a few that milk the clock and do wrong no matter what but more are getting killed by volume of work!
These clowns have never been to a plant and they would flip out. Custodians report to work only to sit on there butt’s for hour before attempting to do anything, they break all day. The bosses sleep on the job, BEM hasn’t a thing to do in eight hours but sleep & smoke sits around entainiont then custodians. They got to be kidding….who in the hell is working around here, not many.
X MAIL MAN SAYS SO GLAD TOOK EARLY OUT IN 09 SAME OLD HARASSMENT GOING ON MAKING MORE MONEY NOW WORKING PART TIME TAKE CARE GOD BLESS
JUST HIRE SOME FREAKIN ROBOTS ALREADY……………………. NO MORE “TIME WASTING PRACTICES”. NO MORE MISTAKES, ETC.
So the carriers waste time? What about the time spent scanning every thing in sight? Scanning bar codes doesn’t take time, does it. What about the time it takes wasted while being disciplined over some junior high school piddle shit? What about the time wasted hearing the stand up talks? Postal management is funnier than Rodney Dangerfield.
OIG didnt mention managers 3 hour lunches. Or Poopoogeorge being stoned at work all year.
so………..sitting behind all american berger for 2 hours each day is a no no?
Dumb and incompetent or barely competent humankinds, waste endless time, efforts and resources and always have. It’s called the bottom 90 percent of the human race. And about 99.9 percent of USPS people. Let’s be honest about this matter.
is there anywhere this golden rule is in writing? I need to start using it
OMG…..THEY JUST DONT GET IT, We are waiting for DPS or FFS to arrive, so while we are waiting, instead of doing nothing, we complete the entire 3849 to save us some time on the street. It’s easier to fill out the 3849 on a desk than to try and fill it out at a door where there’s nothing to write on. So if it takes 1 minute in the office but saves you two minutes on the street, they could care less. These inspectors have to find something wrong and report it to show THEY have an important job. I’ve seen them make up stuff just because they feel if they can’t find anything wrong, upper management might think their position isn’t needed anymore. So they make mountains out of mole hills. Once I had one of those guys stand behind me watching. I turned and showed him a letter where the address inside an envelope had shifted so far up, you couldn’t read it through the front plastic window. I said there’s a carrier trick, if you tap the letter onthe case ledge, it will cause the letter inside to drop back down so you can see the address through the plastic window. So I demonstrated it. And sure enough, the address fell back into the window so I could see it. I told the inspector the reason I pointed this out to him was so he didn’t think I was tapping mail as a bad habit. I did it for just the one piece so I could read the address. The next day, I was called into the office by my supervisor who said he had to review the inspectors findings with me. He said the inspector claims I have excessive tapping habits. Two months later, I was reevaluated but the same guy. I was casing a newspaper. Now they shrunk my case from a three wing – four shelf case to a two wing- five shelf case. I’ve been telling them I need my wing back and extra space….but they claim no…..automation is going to sort most of the mail. I’m sticking mail in a sardine can size case. So the same inspector watches me take one hand to pull mail over so I can stick this newspaper. The inspector said….your not suppose to case with two hands….your not making standards. Well, I surprised his sorry ass…..I took the newspaper and slapped it into his chest causing him to jump and grab the newspaper. I pointed to the slot where it was suppose to go and said…..YOU SHOW ME. IT GOES RIGHT THERE. Well he tried to stick it with one hand……and tried…and tried until I said….sir your taking two long. Your not making standards. Don’t use two hands…..come on now…show me. He dropped the newspaper on my ledge and walking away. I then said….you can write my standards up again but I would like to point out to you….I’m over 50 years old with 25 years in the service. According to the “golden rule”. I have no standard as long as I’m making an honest effort….but I’ll be happy to sit in another meeting for thirty minutes of overtime while my supervisor explains your findings. Most newer carriers don’t know about the “golden Rule” once you reach 50 or you work at the post office for 25 years, one or the other….you have no standards. It’s there because as we get older, the stress on our bodies from years of working cause us to move slower. Postal employees bodies have more problems… Arthritis, knee replacement, hip replacement fallen arches than any other occupation. ANY ! So the Golden Rule is there. That’s why you see carriers in their 80s still working . They have no speed standards. As,long as they are putting forth an honest effort, they can still work.
It’s always blame the low man on the totem pole. Upper management thrives on the numbers game…they always have and they always will. They attempt to cover up foolishness by trying to simplify the mess they have created and using terms such as “adhere to” “eliminate”, “office practices’ (that they made up in the first place),
“mail arrival efficiency” (as if individual pieces of mail can control their arrival time), and on and on and on It is so predicable as to what their robotic reports will say time after time. They have to justify their own wasteful practices by playing the numbers and blame game. They hold very high salaried jobs in a political environment
and it is to their advantage to escape the limelight by adjusting the focus of wasteful spending on those in the lower echelon who have no control over the ridiculous ever changing rules and regulations that the Postal Service must abide by. Each time a new Postmaster General assumes his/her position then things change all the way down…it’s all a joke.
so,its not the closing of plants after all.maybe if we all stopped talking mail would get there on time…very interesting
Say if we got rid of OIG we would save HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars.
If OIG ceased from making frivolous reports like this one, we would save TEN of BILLIONS of dollars.
OIG is a big joke and a pain in the ass. Blame everything on carriers. Yes, supervisors weren’t cracking the whip as they supposedly are supposed to, but why so much emphasis on office time vs. street time when it pays the same, and better prep in the office makes street delivery quicker?
Of course, you can’t expect OIG or management to understand this stuff, nor can you make them acknowledge that their DOIS projections are full of mistakes and do not figure in weather, traffic, road construction, being near a school when it lets out, etc. They want a perfect mathematical world, and it doesn’t work like that, but they couldn’t care less because all they use DOIS for is harassment anyway.
After carriers leave, supervisors sit around, dicking around a little with a computer and answering the phone if they don’t have anything better to do, play with their smartphones and wander all over the floor showing a selfie or some other stupid picture to everybody. Mostly they just sit on their asses and bullshit until carriers come back and harass them because they’re not exactly five minutes from clock out time when they arrive. Tell me, you OIG imbeciles: how do you do that? We are not machines and the rest of the world doesn’t operate on your precious fucking schedule.
And how about management not doing their work? We ask for supplies, they say they’ll order whatever it is and it never shows up. You can tell them 10 times and they still ignore you. They let some pet carriers and clerks act with impunity and oversupervise and harass those who are too afraid to stand up to them. And they can be positively cruel when it comes to running their employees down when they think we’re out of earshot.
Not every manager, PM or supervisor is like this, and I emphasize this is a generalization that I’ve heard from all over the country and on various web sites. My supervisor is a pretty good Joe, and while he’s on OIC duty his replacement 204-B, who is from our office and a carrier, does a good job of getting us what we need.
However, so much nitpicking goes on that it’s ridiculous. Management claims carriers waste time talking, but they bullshit as much or more than anybody, and hence set lousy examples.
Management focuses on the pointless trivial crap because anything of real importance or skill for too many of them is far beyond their capabilities. How can one describe deliberately trying to erode service and shut down plants that mean long delays in critical medical supplies and medications among other stuff like paychecks the customer depends on? That is either total disregard for the people we serve, or incompetence and stupidity on a grand scale, or both. OIG needs to go OIG themselves.
Boston leads the list……… the Braintree annex is a perfect example of
a total lack of supervision, clerks, carriers, and the two mail handlers
basically call the shots. One mail handler comes in 3 hours early in the
morning and sleeps until the mail arrives for the carriers then he stays
on his own with nothing to do another 3 hours…every day! Morning
callers is a disaster, never on time and the BMEU clerk does it because
nobody else wants to and he gets overtime too…lol! Management is
pathetic there and must be in many other area’s. Don’t put any of it on
the craft when management is non existent!
Close more processing centers and put more under qualified people in positions of authority yeah that’s the ticket.
In the Western Area we are constantly persecuted by Management types as being inefficient and we aren’t even close to being on this list. All while delivering mail in some of the harshest conditions. Unbelieveable.
what does the OIG know about doing ones job efficiently? the office of the inspector general or OIG
was simply put in place, in my humble opinion, to fool the american public into thinking there was a watchdog in place looking out for waste and fraud within gov’t agencies. the truth of the matter is the OIG is one big fraud that simply colludes with postal management to sweep the waste, fraud, and unethical behavior of postal management under the carpet and keep the public from finding out the honest truth about problems within government. that is what my experience tells me about the OIG.
Work done in the office means it’s not done on the street. That’s a zero sum equation. Yes some carriers and cheating the system but how many dumb ideas made by higher ups are time wasters? How about eliminating one case per route? Good luck stuffing all the Christmas catalogs in there now.
Please share all the language in the Safety and Health Collective Agreement with the Carriers. Teach them the right way to do their job, the real Mail carriers way. Walking across the grass.
This is what should be printed under ‘ Inefficient Office Practices’. We observed city carriers at 21 of the 30 delivery units being human and remarked to ourselves -how dare they! Don’t they know we need our numbers to get bonuses? 16 minutes! Because the numbers matter, not the people.
Wait, … These percent to standard numbers are being erroneously calculated on fabricated “standards” maliciously plugged in to DOIS, Any real, manual count of mail will quickly show that DOIS no longer uses “18 and 8”, which is our actual standard, as it’s standard. It’s blatant false manipulation, and the wool was pulled over OIG’s eyes… Again.
Sooo, managers aren’t doing their jobs?
You can bet your last dollar their plan is coming to the forefront. Please remember where the pay is coming from and to whom the same is going. The OIG must keep themselves employed. Geaux figure!
You surprised? just give my f’n PFP raise I deserve!
OIG FOOLS ! Failure to look at the Big picture is the reason for the Waste. P+DC`s delay Mail EVERY Day , Carriers wait for their late mail . DonnaDummyHoe`s plan sure is working , Ain`t it ? …
And who’s responsible for delaying the mail upsteam at the plants? Donahoe/Brennan,that’s who!