The Promise of a New Year During a Pandemic

The Promise of a New Year During a Pandemic
By Dioenis D. Perez
Long Island, NY, Branch 202 Vice president and Postmaster of Syosset NY


I want to wish everyone a prosperous and happy New Year. May 2021 bring us all back to the normalcy of lives lived and celebrated before COVID-19.

I’m not a pessimist by nature, but what we all went through this past year was an exasperating experience that continues into 2021. How much longer will it continue? Are we seeing the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel yet?

On New Year’s eve, I like to reflect on the past year and look forward to the new year. I reflect mostly about my personal and work life. I can’t exclude one without the other because they are very much intertwined; work takes up a major part of our lives. Every year, I think about fixing mistakes I made in the previous year concerning both scenarios.

This year, I’ll be thinking about the COVID-19 vaccine and the pre-pandemic life I enjoyed. I’m looking forward to jetting off on a plane again. Regardless of how one feels about the Postal Service, the agency provides us with the life we all choose to live; never forget this. We should give thanks for the good things the USPS provides. To be fair, though, the Postal Service needs to fix the bad things.

Good things:

  • Being allowed to roll over an additional 80 hours’ annual leave into 2021.
  • USPS Headquarters acknowledging and adjusting NPA for COVID-19, providing well-deserved raises.
  • Providing us with the proper PPE to be safe and social distancing to begin tours.
  • Providing CDC COVID-19 service talks and information.
  • Providing proper leave options during the pandemic.
  • Allowing Zoom meetings—a good way to communicate with district leadership.
  • Providing new scanners.
  • USPS Headquarters providing work to occupy our lives as opposed to staying home and being idle.
  • USPS Headquarters providing us with salaries.

Bad things:

  • SWCs leading to EAS reductions during a pandemic.
  • Becoming politicized.
  • Being the talk of the nation during congressional hearings.
  • Some USPS Headquarters leaders claiming delayed mail was local management’s fault.
  • Mandatory USPS Headquarters Zoom meetings with the field that showed leadership really doesn’t understand our everyday challenges.
  • Being back to normal with everyday business, when it is not.
  • Performing mandatory 3999s in the fall during excessive parcels volume.
  • Getting a new organization managerial flow chart reverting back to the early ’90s; it didn’t work then.
  • Taking away nearly all district managers’ previous responsibilities.
  • The C-360 process has given the administrative offices an overwhelming amount of enormous issues to deal with, every day, which is unrealistic.

With dignity and respect, always.