The Economic Downturn..

[RVR II]

Strange postal situation....was sent a certified letter several weeks ago that was returned to sender after 3 alledged failed delivery attempts. Never got notice from PO that one delivery was attempted, much less three. Certifed letter sent to me a second time. Had the sender send me a tracking number this time. Tracking number showed letter received by PO but no movement. A week and a half after it was mailed, I went to the PO and they found it. Had alledgedly attempted to deliver once, but again, I never received any notification about this attempt (usually get a pink post card sized notification left in the mailbox after a failed delivery attempt). Interesting thing now is that right after I picked it up I finally started to get email notifications about where the letter alledgedly is. Per postal system, it left Milwaukee early this morning.

Sounds to me that either the carrier is not doing their job or the system that updates the tracking info is not working properly, or both..
You may need to talk to a supervisor or postmaster about this so they can look into what's going on.

[wihogfan]

Figured out part of the issue w/ the tracking. PO system didn't track anything on it's way to me outside of the initial mailing. What system starting tracking after I picked up the certified letter was the outbound return receipt that is going back to the sender. Called and left a message with the PO regarding why I never received any notification at home. Will see how long it takes them to call me back/how many times I have to call before I get to talk to anyone.

[RVR II]

Been a looong week working the counter at the main post office in downtown..
Started first thing Monday morning when the dipshit manager Dilbert jumped on me for talking to the local union shop steward about said dipshit manager saying I don't need to be holding him up from working (which I wasn't) and I wasn't even on the clock yet so he says I need to remain on the doc or I needed to clock into union time but not when he's working and some other nonsense I drowned out I caught up with him later in the day and finished discussing what I needed to with him out of sight from the idiot manager.
I'm taking a half sick day this Monday and the following Monday to get blood work done and for my upcoming annual checkup at the VA medical center. Dumbass Dilbert actually asked me if I would be coming back to work that afternoon after my Dr. appointment and I said "Uh... NO!" I would be available to work 4 hours in the morning and that was it and I'm off Tuesday so that gives me a day and a half off which I could really use after working 6 days straight already..
Pretty much ignored him all week and just concentrated on my job working the counter. Then the assistant manager came over yesterday and actually chewed out Dilbert wondering when I would be returning back to my assigned office on the other side of town? Apparently everybody there wants me back which is really cool because they know I get things done When I am not there that office is critically understaffed and everyone there wants me back ASAP. He also wanted to know when I would get time to do some required training as I am now on a delinquency list because of this.. Since I am assigned to the post office across town, the assistant manager there is the one that gets dinged when his employees do not get their required postal training completed in a timely manor.. No idea when I'll get this training done and I'm not coming in on my day off to get it done so I'll just wait and see what they figure out next week.

[RVR II]

Been quiet the last couple of weeks with regards to interactions with the doofis manager..
Haven't seen much of him lately and when I do see him I just walk on by him without any acknowledgement. He stopped by the office where I'm currently working and didn't say one word to me which was great. The entire hour or so he was there he just talked to various coworkers about non-work related stuff basically holding them up from doing their jobs almost as if he was trying to make or keep friends around him that he thinks supposedly like him or something Pretty pathetic to see honestly...
I stopped by the main post office downtown after work yesterday to drop of a package I sold on ebay and talked to the carrier that has filed a 'hostile work environment' grievance against him and she's collecting statements from as many people as possible that have been verbally abused/harassed by him and she wanted my 5 and a half pages I have on him to add to the collection.. She's got a total of 16 statements (including mine) so far from current and former employees that will be turned in as part of the investigation. When it's all said and done, it will more than likely lead to manager Dilbert's eventual removal/dismissal.

Today is my last day before I take my working vacation to start Phase 2 of my window project which will include termite damage removal. Despite it not being a 'real' vacation, it will be nice to get away from work for a week

[RVR II]

An update on manager Dilbert:
He's back at work after a 'hiatus' which he claims was a vacation but we know better
The assistant manager whom I get along with has now been promoted to acting postmaster and Dilbert has been demoted to assistant manager
We're all still wondering why Dilbert hasn't been removed altogether but this shift in managers is a step in the right direction.

So Dilbert shows up back at my regular post office today and has to find something to nitpick with me about how I'm bypassing the Hazmat question at the counter because customers want quotes on postage but we can't do that unless the customer answers the hazmat question: "Does this mail piece contain anything liquid fragile, perishable or anything hazardous such as lithium batteries, perfume, or mercury?" and the clerks get flagged if we bypass the question on the postal computer system so I'm apparently at the top of this list so he just had to call me out on it
The clerks that work the window are under enormous pressure to be quick and efficient and have customers waited on no longer than 2 minutes at the counter and standing in line no longer than 5 minutes as well as us having to count large sums of cash for money order transactions, deal with customer complaints due to carriers mis-deliveries, etc. so something this petty is not a big deal for someone like me just starting out in the clerk ranks but Dipshit Dilbert still has to try and pull his power trip with me..
I just ignored it but I can see he hasn't learned a damn thing and with Christmas coming up, he won't make things any easier there.

[RVR II]

And despite dipshit Dilbert's demotion and return to my local post office, he pulls another power trip with me IN FRONT OF CUSTOMERS!!
I bought a money counter machine like the banks use to count large sums of bills that also detects counterfeit bills to show that it's needed for our line of work counting large sums of money and everybody seemed to like it and agreed that it could be useful when it comes to sorting large sums of cash for creating money orders but then along comes dumbass while I'm working the counter and asks me "What's that?" and I told him and then he says "Who gave you authorization to bring that in?" and I said no one I brought it in to demonstrate that a money counter would be very useful to help the clerks do our job more quickly, accurately, & efficiently. Then he says that I continue to not follow the chain of command by continuing to do things without asking and I snap back that 2 days ago I had 160 $20 bills come across my counter for money orders that I had to recount 3 times because the total amount kept coming up differently each time and that something like this would have saved me time, not to mention I didn't have the time to check each bill to make sure there wasn't any that were counterfeit! And despite my convincing response he told me that I need to get it out here because I didn't get his permission and it's not 'USPS authorized'.. All this was said in front of customers that were waiting to be helped! So I boxed it up and it's currently sitting in my van.
I'm thinking I should contact the union rep about this and see if he thinks there's a grievance that can be filed with this happening in front of customers which was definitely embarrassing and unprofessional I would say..

[RVR II]

And then yesterday while working the counter he comes up to me and wanted to 'talk about yesterday' and I told him I wasn't interested and had nothing to say. The coworkers seemed a bit surprised and I told them after he left that talking is a waste of time that it just smooth things over for a few days at most then he'll just go right back to his normal shitty self.
I went on to say to them that I make it a priority to avoid toxic people as much as possible and being forced to work in the same building with him is stressful enough because I can't avoid his stupid ass so the less I interact with him the better my day is.

At the end of the day it was just him and I left in the building for a good 30-40 minutes while I'm working dispatch of the days mail and parcels and then asks me if I could close up and I said yes so he bolts out leaving the safe wide open I of course close it turn the lights off and set the alarm and go home.