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It's March Madness 12 Months of the Year

It’s March Madness 12 Months of the Year
By Dee Perez
NAPS New York Area Vice President

In early October, Chief Retail and Delivery Office (CRDO) leadership informed all of us about our FY24 Pay-for-Performance objectives and goals. I have no issue with this; the best way to be successful is to announce this information early (hint, hint).

Currently, five months have passed without knowing where anyone is in their NPA goals for FY24. However, the crowning moment of this conversation was when we were told that, even if everyone achieved green status according to the triangulation report and achieved every single budgetary goal, we still would lose $4 billion this year!

Can you imagine a so-called business (by USPS Headquarters’ claim only) meeting every goal and still losing $4 billion? If the USPS was a business, we would be rated at junk bond status and out of business in the real and financial world. This is why we are a service in name and practice.

These are just some of the ways CRDO leadership continues March Madness throughout the entire year:

• Hold multiple Zoom meetings every, single day for hours. This eats into postmasters’ and supervisors’ valuable time daily.
• Have daily drill-downs on every indicator when an office fails, even if the office isn’t an outlier.
• Have drill-downs with peers watching instead of one-on-one conversations and being civil.
• Inform your postmasters, managers and supervisors they basically stink if they don’t achieve specific goals in service, as well as in NPA.
• Start each day, first thing in the morning with 30-40 emails.
• Read leadership emails sent out at 5:45 p.m.
• Constantly be condescending to your postmasters, issue them orders, then threaten them like a drill sergeant.
• Inform your subordinate’s leaders there never is any mail; carriers must be out of the building in 60 minutes, regardless whether the local MOU gives the carriers office breaks, vehicle inspections or bathroom breaks totaling 20 minutes combined daily without considering a safety and service talk.
• Email your MPOO the triangulation report daily on the service failures even in yellow; if you are in green, but short of 100%, email them anyway with an action plan to achieve 100%.
• Do a 1838c daily, even though you may only have 10, 20 routes. If you’re at Level-18 or -20, you’re more than likely performing an 1838c on the same carrier approximately 15 to 30 times a year, depending on how many routes are in an office. Naturally, in a higher-level office with many more routes, the frequency will be less.
• Conduct office and street observations every, single day concerning everything. Where’s the government car parked that can be used for street ops?

This daily madness has made many EAS employees confidentially call and email me. They mention the CRDO’s hypocritical leadership that has promoted many leaders with little to no leadership skills tested over a significant period.

I was told they read the newly promoted EAS employee’s bio and wonder, “How the heck was this person promoted?” Meanwhile, they are aware of the employee in question, knowing they might have had a cup of coffee in an area as a leader, but never has led or run an operation for what would be considered a significant period or was successful during that period of time.

The current work environment is not just March Madness, but Madness 12 months of the year! Hang in there, EAS employees, and continue to do the best you can every day by holding your employees accountable for doing their jobs every day!