PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — One day recently, Al Gameos got mail in Wilkinsburg, but none of it was his.
“I got three different pieces of mail from three different streets,” he said.
On the Northside, Paul Pongrace says mixed up mail has forced people to become carriers themselves.
People in the area are walking from one street to another street basically delivering their own mail,” he said.
But perhaps most shocking is Kevin Whalen’s experience: his wife saw their mail carrier putting something in their garbage can.
“So I came outside lifted up the lid and all this mail was in here,” he said.
SHEEHAN: “You do acknowledge that you’ve hired a lot of part-time employees. There is sort of a learning curve.”
KELLEY: “There’s no question about it, there’s no question about it. We’ve had a lot of retirees.”
With less demand and greater competition, the postal service nationwide has shrunk from 800,000 to 500,000 workers. The postal service has replaced longtime mail carriers with new employees who are part-time and paid less. And many of the complaints involve the part-timers.
KD Investigates: Mail Problems Persist, Some Ends Up In Garbage
When I started in the Post Office I was paid approx. TWO DOLLARS AND FORTY FIVE CENTS AN HR! We worked a second job to support and put food on the table~! We are going in the wrong direction~! BACKWARDS IS THE WRONG WAY, FORDWARDS IS THE CORRECT WAY!!!! BOOMER!
Pitt NDC to carrier craft:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Don’t be late.
If that carrier is 204B kiss ass,he or she will be promoted.
Experienced carriers are leaving the city in droves. Many have transferred to the Pgh NDC as Mail Handlers and they say it’s like they’ve died and gone to heaven . Management kept pushing more and more work on each carrier and speed was the only goal. The reason for the poor service is that most carriers are casuals and PSEs and they’re not being trained properly or kept in one place long enough to learn it. Carrying in a city like Pgh (city of hills) is a physically demanding job. Management should have tried to hang on to the good carriers they had rather than making their work life a living hell.
I agree 100% with what Scott said.
Boy Scott, you nailed it right on the head. Lets just get everything in the trucks and out of the office and the hell with what happens out on the street. Quantity over quality all the time. I swear the place is being run into the ground on purpose. Such a shame….
We old timers warned the USPS over and over that focusing on speed and nothing on accuracy or dependability would lead to sloppy delivery and eventually hurt us all by convincing customers that service is so bad they won’t use us for anything.
You can’t tell management a goddamn thing. They think they all know better even though the majority never stayed in craft for any length of time, and those were ass kissers and snitches who were the worst carriers in the offices. One plant manager, a punk ass kid, at least mentally, was my T-6 for a while, and the five of us who had to put up with him agreed he was the worst, sloppiest and rudest T-6 any of us had ever seen. He didn’t like a customer on my route, and one day got one of those Olan Mills photos for them. Unfortunately their box was in an NDCBU and even though the envelope said not to fold or bend, he bent it up every which way and bragged about it to other carriers. When the customer rightfully complained, he blamed it on me. Management knew I’d never do something like that, but he was never reprimanded for anything he did, including racing through a route and watching full basketball games in a local restaurant on the clock before returning to the office, and he bragged about that, too.
These are the people in charge. Service means jack shit to them. We have some terrible CCA’s who’ve been here long enough to know better, yet local management, including a 204-B who delivers mail like she was in an F-5 tornado but not as accurate do nothing. It’s all run, run, run and just get that mail out the door. Customers suffering from this horrible service should complain to their legislators and blame local management for doing nothing about it because that’s what the newbies are being told. If you have a decent carrier, be glad. Five years from now it’ll be a disaster if we don’t get a PMG and BOG that doesn’t have their heads up each other’s asses.
Surprise! Surprise!