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Trials and Tribulations of a Postal Team in Peak Season

Trials and Tribulations of a Postal Team in Peak Season
By Dee Perez
NAPS New York Area Vice President

I’d like to wish everyone a successful peak season, a very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year! Most importantly, take care of your significant other and your family; respect everyone’s religion. Also, have compassion for your elderly parents if you still are fortunate to have them by your side.

Treat your co-workers with respect and exhibit good manners to all. These are the most important things that matter during the season and throughout the year.

As I look at the USPS today after 34 years of service—I’m currently an active employee—I see a service that is splintered and fractured, functioning with a lack of dignity and respect toward each other. People are being promoted to higher levels who have very little experience as leaders; they haven’t proven they have the skills to lead people. Just because you can talk the talk, but haven’t walked the walk for a significant period of time, doesn’t make you a capable leader.

The USPS speaks in terms of us being a team. The fact of the matter is there are too many different teams vying for the same turf; others have a different agenda. This leads to a fight for survival, despite the concept of a team.

USPS Headquarters adopted the stovetop management style concept. In theory, this provides better communication from USPS executives to the frontline supervisors, reduces middle management and creates leaner and better management to be a successful team and company.

However, what has been created are different goals to be achieved by each team member; it’s now become a turf war. The USPS theorizes that it all comes together in the end to make the so-called team and company successful.

Uh, not so fast. With everyone chasing their specific goals, we are not pulling in the same direction to becoming a successful team. The overall, individual NPA scores show this to be true. You have offices being measured in a goal that’s a six-day SPLY goal, yet they operate in a seven-day environment. How in the world can this be achieved?

Yet, no USPS Headquarters leader gets involved to fix this. Team members are told to mitigate it. In the meantime, your peak season gift is no raise. To me, this sounds as if the team leader doesn’t care about their players.

News flash: We are a service—not a company. And there are too many examples to mention here as to why. Perhaps this is why we have such conflict on this team. USPS leaders say company; we say service. You think it over and decide what we are.

Current staffing has been a problem that HR hasn’t figured out since COVID-19 ran amok for four years. Some EAS employees are delivering mail; this must stop right now. It’s the only way to force USPS Headquarters to fix this problem.

Chief Retail and Delivery Office leadership is micromanaging us to death every day. These people are making everyone feel inadequate. As far as respect is concerned, that’s a seven-letter word; it means nothing to them. The way they speak down to our district leadership—which, in some cases, is not all—is passed down by our MPOOs.

These same leaders continue to fly themselves around the nation, holding three-day training meetings and spending millions of dollars to try and force a KoolAid message on their subordinates and district leadership. What they don’t realize is nobody likes the taste of the drink they are being served. Yet everyone is too afraid to tell these vindictive leaders the drink tastes awful and they don’t like the way it’s being served!

Here’s your peak season gift from the CRDO team leadership. As these same leaders continue to visit districts in the Zoom era, bringing the gift of not-good holiday cheer or a pat on the back for an excellent job throughout the year, the Christmas/peak message gift they bring is to continue to “hammer them.” That means those of us on the front lines.

Let’s begin signing every non-member EAS employee and postmaster; NAPS represents them all! This way, our association will continue to grow and become stronger so our team is the strongest.

Always, with respect!