Post Office Clerks - Take all the time in the world!

The BBQ Pit
1

Who knew that the two middle-aged women who work at the one-room post office in my small town get a <I>three hour</I> lunch break?
I went to my the post office in my small town (under 1,000 people) to pick up a package. Upon arriving, I noticed that the service window was closed and there was a large sign posted to it that read, “Closed from 12-3 for lunch”. The worst part is the clerks were not five feet away from me, talking away behind that window (and definitely not eating lunch), and I was the only one in the whole place. Is it really necessary to give such a long lunch break to post office desk clerks, who are likely not doing much but sitting and sorting mail all day? I can understand if they want to eat while they work, but do they really need to close down the whole establishment for three prime working hours?

Apologies to any post office clerks reading this - I have only known one, and the extent of his duties truly was sitting and sorting mail. And he never took more than an hour’s lunch break.

2

It’s possible that these two ladies aren’t “official” Post Office employees. Sometimes very small towns simply have someone who has a contract arrangement with the Post Office for handling the mail.

If so, then basically they’re working for themselves, not the Post Office, and they can keep whatever office hours they choose.

3

Is it a really tiny, not very busy PO? It might be they are really on split shifts. Maybe they work something like 8-12 and 3-7, and calling it a ‘lunch break’ is just a quick way of explaining the hours.

This would allow just two people to cover the Post Office during the morning and after school/work hours, which are probably the busiest.

(They used to do something similar at one of the small ‘sub-libraries’ in my old town. It’s actually nasty for the workers, too – that three hour gap isn’t long enough to bother going home in many cases. I paged there for a while, and most of us just brought in lunches and napped/read/studied through the break – which of course POed the would-be library users who could see we were inside ‘goofing off.’)

4

Stupid post office. My dad actually once got banned from the local post office in my hometown for complaining about the poor service.

The story: there was a long, long line at the post office and my dad needed to get back home quickly, and one of the three postal workers was chatting with the customer instead of working (he was close enough to hear their conversation and it wasn’t mail-related). Frustrated, he asked them loudly to hurry it up, and the postal worker said, “I feel threatened by this man. I’m calling the police.” And she did! A policewoman showed up a little bit later and summarily told my dad he was banned from the post office. Like you can stop someone from using a government service like the post office! My dad argued with her for a while, but like I said, he had to get home quickly so he cut it short (probably to the policewoman’s relief, because my dad is a lawyer and probably would have won the argument).

The funny thing is, it worked. That was a few years ago and I’m not sure if my dad has ever returned to that post office, although it’s by far the closest one to his house.

The moral of the story is: if you live in a small town with bored police, don’t piss off the postal workers.

5

Well, speaking as the wife of a 20-year veteran letter carrier, I’m here to tell you that pissed-off customers do sometimes go home and get their gun. I don’t blame the clerk for hitting the panic button. She doesn’t get paid enough to have to deal with psychotic customers–that’s the police’s job. So I’m sorry about your dad’s incident, but to me, the moral of the story is: be very, very calm and polite when you’re waiting in line at the post office, lest nervous clerks call the cops on you.

And keep your hands in view at all times.

Seriously.

6

Gee, DDG, you know what I think the moral of the story is?

I think the moral is that postal clerks should not engage in unrelated jibber-jabber while customers are waiting because it might make them justifiably discontent, not to mention that it is rude and unprofessional. But, hey, that’s just me.

~ stuyguy, who was housed, clothed and fed for the first twenty-odd years of his life courtesy of a postal worker’s salary. (Thanks dad!)

7

Yep. DDG, I’m a postal worker, but you’ve lost me on that one. You’re seriously saying that it’s okay for people in any sort of service industry to respond to a complaining customer by CALLING THE COPS???.

Keep your hands in view at all times? Woah.

8

The postal worker had been chatting for several minutes with the customer about chiropractors while ten or twelve people waited in line. And my dad isn’t allowed to complain about this service without being threatened with police action? Sheesh.

9

Wow. Maybe I’m just lucky, but I’ve never had that problem at the post office – either the little semi-rural one in the next town over, or the suburban-size one in the center of Exurbia, or the downtown Boston one I sometimes use. Yeh, the lines can be long sometimes, but all the window clerks I’ve dealt with or seen in action with other customers have been prompt, cheerful, and helpful.

[hijack]

While I’m wandering around the subject, I’d like to say that I think our postal service is wonderful. Yes, occasionally things go wrong, but it’s incredibly uncommon when you consider how many millions of pieces of mail go through the system every day. For pocket change you can send a letter across the continent and rest easy that it will get there in a couple of days. Think about it!

[/hijack]

10

I must commend my local post office, which is a store-front in a strip-mall, for being quite professional and courteous at all times. Once something got fucked up and they couldn’t find a package that I was supposed to pick up, so I gave them my cell phone number and the dude actually called me when they found it a couple hours later. (It was accidentally put on the wrong truck, or something.) I went back down there and I didn’t even have to wait on line, he came right out and handed me my box.

11

As a small business owner a few years back, I relied on dependable delivery service. Most of my suppliers used courier services which I could rely on, but two of them only delivered to me via Canada Post.

Routinely over a period of several months, my wife, who ran the office, would find the nice little ‘door-knocker’ notices in the mailbox claiming that they had come by and no one was available to accept delivery. I would then need to wait two days to pick up my parcel as it floated around in the van before being dropped off at the central post office outlet. (note - home based business with only one vehicle. There is ALWAYS someone in the office (located at the entrance to our house).

So, being customer service oriented, I went to the central post office outlet to let them know that they were not meeting my needs as a customer. I was rudely told to leave as they didn’t take complaints from anyone. I was told I could mail Ottawa with my complaints.

Instead, I went home and called my two suppliers and told them that I would never again accept any parcels that came via Canada Post and that if they had a problem with that, there were other suppliers of the goods they sold that would be more understanding. They changed delivery services immediately. I also stopped using Canada Post wherever I could. Cost me a little bit more in some cases, but it was money well spent.

I then phoned the 1-800 number for Canada Post and told my story to the customer service rep who answered. I was slowly passed up the food chain until I was speaking to some East Coast higher up representative (I went through at least 5 levels of people to get there). Needless to say, this person was very interested to hear my story and took down all the info including my name and phone number.

The next morning, I got a call from the head of postal services for my region who apologized to me at great length (he also sent a letter which I received the day after). I found out through some mutual acquaintenances that Canada Post had been trying to focus on their small business relationships and that my complaint had resonated well enough to get me passed up quickly. My complaint also cost the local guy a raise and a promotion.

I still avoid Canada Post whenever I can.

12

[exasperated sigh]

No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. You’re putting words in my mouth, which is irritating.

You’re also missing a ton of cultural context here.

Question: You don’t have people “going postal” Down Under, do you? Folks aren’t even allowed to own guns or something there, right? You don’t constantly hear news stories about someone who walked into his workplace and opened fire?

Happens a LOT here.

Here, one is wise to bear in mind that the person you cut off in traffic may pull up to you at the next stoplight and take the artillery out of the glovebox and ventilate your soccer mom vehicle.

People like this also patronize the Post Office. The clerks all know this. So they’re all alert for the next “man dies in standoff with police” incident-waiting-to-happen to walk into their Post Office […out of all the post offices, he had to walk into mine…]

Plus, there’s Al Qaeda to keep the pot bubbling–the Post Office is an Official Target, it being a large public facility. If we ever went all the way to a Red Alert, the post office would be closed. (In October 2001, someone spilled a half-teaspoon of powdered coffee creamer on the counter at the downtown Decatur Post Office, and they called out the entire HazMat team.)

We have a government that keeps telling us that Osama Bin Laden and his gang are Still Out There, still gunning for Evil Yankees. “Keep your eyes peeled, folks! They might bomb the mall!” We just finished an Orange Alert, during which time two malls in Iowa stopped opening early so that retirees could walk, citing the risk of terrorists mingling with the old folks trudging around the mall in their Reeboks and planting a bomb in the food court (there’s a Pit thread about it around here somewhere).

Thus, paranoia reigns supreme here, TLG. “Keep your hands in plain sight at all time.” I’m not kidding.

So what I was saying was, not that it was all right for the clerk to call the cops when someone complained about the slow service, but that I wasn’t surprised. And that I didn’t blame her. She lives in a society where she’s bombarded with news stories about people going postal with guns and bombs, whether they’re official “terrorists” or not.

Like I said, it’s not her job to deal with someone who may possibly be armed and just spoiling to go out in style a la David Koresh (do you need a link or do you recognize the name?) It’s the cops’ job to deal with him.

So. From the clerk’s standpoint, then, where she’s considering the very real possibility that if she doesn’t act in a timely fashion, her family may get to see her being featured on the evening news as “woman dies during standoff with police”, it’s much better to hit the Panic button fast.

So, sorry for the embarrassment, Daddy-O, but the rules for polite society have changed–they’ve gotten much stricter.

Were you there? How did he “complain”? What did he say, exactly, and how did he say it? Were you a witness to the precise sort of fit he pitched?

If he used any kind of cuss words–even if his demeanor was fairly mild–that’s a no-brainer “push the panic button” for the clerk right there. Sorry for him, but that’s how it works nowadays. One publicly voiced “god damn” while standing in line at the Post Office will bring you the immediate attention of the clerk, and if you follow up with, “…this line”, you’ll get the boys in blue, PDQ.

Kyla, I’m not saying it’s all right–I’m saying it’s understandable. It’s the way it works, anymore.

Note: The Better Half has read this, and his only comment was, “You know, clerks don’t call the cops because they don’t have anything better to do.” He also found her actions completely understandable. That’s not saying it was all right–just that he knows where she’s coming from. He’s a target, too, every day, in his natty postal uniform.

13

DDG, if the customer had just started yelling for no apparent reason, the clerk’s action would have been understandable- he then would have been acting psychotic. But if there was a long line, and the clerk was chatting, then the customer’s complaint was understandable, even if he used a cuss word or two. And the clerk’s wasn’t. She felt threatened? By what? Because she didn’t like his language? Perhaps your husband and his coworkers wouldn’t call the police for no reason, but that doesn’t mean that the post office doesn’t have some problem employees- you do remember that “going postal” refers to post office employees shooting up their workplaces, right?

14

So what if they were discussing something like chiropractic or baseball or the new kittens or whatever? Did you (or dad the impatient lawyer) ever stop to think that the postal clerk could be chatting while simultaneously processing that customer’s requests for service? Some transactions are quite a bit more complex than buying a book of stamps, and can take several minutes, as I know from experience. You may find this hard to believe, but most postal clerks I’ve encountered are capable of doing their jobs and holding an unrelated conversation at the same time. Oddly enough, they actually seem to appreciate being treated as human beings, not robots.

15

Of course there was the white supremisist a few years back (while i was still working for the USPS) that was using non-caucasian postal workers for target practice, or the several postal employees who died from anthrax. When we still delivered welfare checks it was possible to be followed for blocks by some scary looking, and pathetic looking individuals. Right now government employees have to be feeling a wee bit vunerable, and postal employees are wearing uniforms and therefore are marked as part of the government.

As far as the clerks in the op go however, I am guessing the split shift thing is the answer. Quite frankly your idea of “they are just sorting mail not really doing anything” is BS. Mostly you are not alowed to sit, or only get to sit on sort of a high stool that isnt really sitting sort of perching. Clerks are supposed to sort up to 20 letters a minute and up to 4 feet of mail in an hour. It involves standing in one place on cement floors for hours. As a carrier i only had to do it 2-4 hours at a time and I could go walk it off. By the time I hit the streets I was sore. my back and wrists hurt badly. A lot of clerks wind up with surgery for carpel tunnel before they retire. Add to that the reward system for poor management, and I have to tell you no one does a bit more than they are absolutely obligated to because it will come back to bite them in the ass. Therefore there was not a chance in hell your ladies were going to get up and help you while they were not being payed to do so.

16

I can certainly understand a postal worker being wary of angry/unstable customers. Following up on ETF’s thought - I have often found myself irritated at the little old lady in the front of line, taking 10 minutes to shuffle through her purse for the checkbook, or the grocery clerk making small talk with the person directly ahead of me in line. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to embrace PATIENCE and KINDNESS. Wish me luck!
Strange days have found us
Strange days have tracked us down
They’re going to destroy
Our casual joys

— The Doors

17

I don’t think that it is at all kind to stand silent in the face of customer service workers failing to do their jobs. It is not kind to presume that because an unnecessarily long wait does not surpass your level of patience so goes for the rest of the people waiting in line behind you. It is kind to make people aware that they are not living up to the expectations of those who pay their salary. It is kind to do what is within your reasonable power to assist those who cannot assist themselves – namely, everyone who waits while you listen and realize that a postal clerk is talking about Aunt Fern’s subluxation problems.

No one likes having it pointed out that they’re being a slackass. But you do no one any favor by failing to do so when you can in a reasonable and polite fashion.