* Update – Yes, the glass in the picture frame was shattered in transit. Possibly, despite my efforts, it was not wrapped properly. Or maybe it was? PGB
The U.S. Postal Service was never known to be a fun place to work but morale appears to be reaching a new low as the organization executes a plan to cut about a quarter of its workforce by 2016.
How do I know this?
I brought a package to my local post office this afternoon – a framed print meant for my son’s college dormitory room. The frame contains a plate of glass so I fastidiously wrapped it in bubble wrap.
Just to be safe, I wrote, “Fragile” in bold letters on the outside.
When the postal clerk saw that I had written “fragile” on the brown paper wrapping, he frowned and shook his head.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “When they see fragile on it they try to break it. We tell people not to write fragile on their packages anymore.”
When did that happen?
At one time, postal carriers were celebrated because they could be counted on to deliver packages in rain, snow, sleet and the dead of night. Then again, at one time workers could expect to work for an employer for their entire working life all the while receiving health benefits and the guarantee of a pension in their old age.
Another distressing sign of the times?
Ms. Barnes,
You could write an entire new book just on my experiences, alone, suffered at the hands of these workplace bullies…..the things I could tell you. People usually ask why I don’t move on, if it is so bad. And I always tell them it is because I have never given “them” permission to treat me like that, and when /if I choose to leave, it will be on my own time/terms–AND NOT THEIR’S. The more they keep pestering me, the more I will hunker down and refuse to quit.
It’s not just the bad working conditions, with the usual top-heavy, incompetent and unfairly overly-compensated management, while we get the shaft. Instead, it has always been my experience that when these lowly worker-bee peons transition from peon to management, they get that ‘Hitler complex,’ and the urge to torture…Remember the classic psychiatric study from the 60′s where people were told to administer electric shock to people?? The Milgram experiment proved that even though people were sometimes nervous about doing it, nonetheless they obeyed authority and chose to override their own moral compass.
Well nothing has changed. I live what I type and I know of what I speak. It’s the truth, and it’s repulsive and it’s extremely sad. We, who are bullied by the postal service, know all too well why the shootings in Edmond, Oklahoma took place, years ago, and why we continually fear a re-occurrence. I feel it’s just a matter of time until there is another incident. I won’t be the initiator, but I could be a victim and that is a HORRIBLE, defeating feeling.
If I survive my workplace, I have this premonition that I will be one of the oldest living Americans, and will be interviewed about this, someday. I see myself as being mentally sharp, even then, so no one could accuse me of possessing dementia–plus I will still have the proof, ten-fold, to back me up!!! The interviewer will be told that I tried to tell people about what I went through, but that no one would help. Not USPS upper management; not the media; not my Senators; not the Congressional people who serve on oversight committees dedicated to our troubled legal system and of whom state on their congressional web sites that they want to be told of these legal abuses and then disingenuously ignore you when provided with the proof.
Sigh……