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Trust the Data—But What About the People Behind the Data?

Trust the Data—But What About the People Behind the Data?
By Dee Perez
New York Area Vice President

Every EAS employee across this country has experienced the madness of all the data given to us by USPS leadership from each area. I’ve been emailed and called by many different members about the horror stories concerning a lack of dignity and respect and hypocrisy shown by these area leaders to district leaders. This makes a scary Halloween movie seem tame in comparison.

A question came up in a conversation I had with a USPS leader recently who was concerned about piercing and disrespectful Zoom conversations taking place by analysts who are on a much lower pay scale than those they address. I responded that the Zoom host shoulders the blame regarding any lack of dignity and respect.

It’s their “people” who conduct the pace and tempo and shoulder all the responsibility because they set the tone from the beginning; one example would be by calling everyone “FAM” as in family. In my opinion, by addressing everyone as a family member, the message is clear: This allows them to call you out in front of your peers because in a real family there often are vocal disagreements among members.

As a result, the questions are asked quickly with little time to respond fully. The interrogator appears to want to trip you up, then continues to ask additional questions that show your peers watching that you seem unaware of your operations. This embarrasses, intimidates and, in a perverse way, motivates you until the next meeting.

I mentioned hypocrisy in the first paragraph. The triangulation report informs each area of every office’s performance; nothing wrong with that. Every responsible leader, be it a district manager, MPOO, postmaster, manager or supervisor, likes to know the results of their efforts on a daily and weekly basis. I don’t think anyone has any qualms about this.

This same triangulation report identifies offices that have routes that do not go out for delivery. We now are finding out (hard to believe these concerns only sprang up in peak season) about non-deliveries and parcels backed up by the thousands in certain areas—to no fault of the EAS employees in these offices.

Where’s the HR hiring presence in all this? Moreover, these interrogators pick on areas where the DUT was late when the office’s historical data indicates this is not the norm. I guess nobody is allowed to have a bad day or week according to the standards of these interrogators.

More importantly, the stunning part of this hypocrisy is how non-deliveries of routes and parcels affect PFP and NPA. We now know all offices can be identified through the triangulation reports found in RADAR. Or is there a blind eye being turned by the area leaders who can identify these offices, but don’t, because of their own personal gain with PFP and NPA? I imagine the “Functional Effectiveness” aspect of the scorecard must be affected in a positive way financially if routes are not being delivered, no?

Whose integrity really should be questioned? We are constantly schooled about integrity in scanning and reporting delayed mail. Perhaps the continuing education should include PFP and NPA integrity by USPS leaders who benefit from these offices not delivering routes and are instructed to use a scan 76 option. This allows parcels not to be scanned as a failure when, in fact, they all are failures if routes do not go out for delivery.

In fairness, this scan must receive approval from the area vice president and USPS Headquarters so it can be used at the unit level because, without their show up on the scanners. However, this scan is only for extraordinary circumstances such as blizzard conditions and parcels backed up for days and weeks when an office doesn’t have employees to deliver them.

I need everyone to sign a postmaster, manager and supervisor. Come on, people! Challenge yourself this year and see if you can sign five nonmembers for the health of NAPS! approval, scan 76 will not