Lynn is a rock star in Almont. I realize, populationwise, that may not be saying so much (although in square miles we’re covering fair territory), but she is a carp in a sea of minnows nonetheless. On and off for the last 11-ish years she has been the lone postal clerk at the Almont Post Office, 10 miles up the road from Gunnison. And her postal patrons love her.
I mean, love her. We were eating dinner one evening on the deck of the Almont Resort when a woman stopped by the table and said to Lynn, “I’m Box 279!” She was so excited to see Lynn she was gushing. Several of her patrons, whenever she gets reassigned to Gunnison, want to know if they should start a petition to get her back. One man was convinced he would have no trouble getting 300 signatures.
I drive Lynn’s distinctive yellow Jeep Renegade on my weekly trip up Taylor Canyon to deliver mail out of the Almont P.O. Now she has a very indistinct white car, same as the rest of the world, but people still assume it’s her in the yellow car. I can’t begin to tell you how I disappointed two fellows in a truck who stopped to say hi to their “favorite postal lady,” although I recovered some cachet when I said I was married to her.
Almont loves Lynn and Lynn loves Almont, so in the way of the US Postal Service, she has once again been assigned to Gunnison, where for the past 2.5 days she has been the entirety of the clerical staff. The temporary supervisor just walked off the job Wednesday afternoon and the only other clerk who’s of use is on vacation. The other clerks, and I use that term in the loosest possible sense, are beyond useless and have stopped even pretending to phone their “performance” in.
When Lynn started at the Post Office, she was hired as a PSE, which is Postalese for “person we can abuse without shame.” PSE’s at the time got very few benefits, and the position is still one that gets “terminated” every year for five days in order for the Post Office to claim them as new employees every year, thus avoiding the cost of benefits. Belatedly, the union that really has never done a damn thing for Lynn while going out of its way to protect malcontents and incompetents finally went to bat for PSE’s, and you can now only do that to people for two years before you have to give them a permanent position. But they didn’t bother to make that retroactive, so Lynn’s first seven years of service to the Postal “Service” don’t count for anything at all.
To qualify for retirement benefits, one has to have worked for the USPS for at least five years. In their eyes, even though Lynn is the most famous person in all of Almont and appreciated by more than a few in Gunnison, she has a year to go before she can qualify for benefits. While she is eligible for Medicare now, I have another year to go, and although many people seem to think I can just get on the health care exchange in the interim, I’ve done the math and it’s not pretty: I would pay at least $25,000 more next year with premiums and deductibles, plus the cost of Lynn’s Medicare premiums, which are substantially larger than our current premium contribution.
So Lynn is stuck for another full year. We keep hoping something might at least change for the better, but there she is, working at the Gunnison office by herself and hoping that yet another temporary supervisor might show up Monday and that Marc, the vacationing clerk, will actually return.
When Lynn got hired, all those meaningless years ago, there were three full-time clerks and one-part-time, all of whom had decades of experience, plus Lynn’s “part time,” which was often 50 or more hours per week. And the clerk from Almont would come in to help. Now, now that the Amazon drizzle has turned into a daily deluge, the USPS seems to think the office can be staffed by one less supervisor and, in theory, one less “part-time” clerk. Except that it’s not one less clerk.
The experienced part-time clerk departed a few years ago. Last year, the three regular clerks totalling 90 or more years of experience if not always warm fuzziness all retired within a few months of each other. The experienced postmaster was gone, and — as it turns out, Gunnison is apparently now a steppingstone for those with no management experience to gain just enough to be able to move on — the guy in charge grabbed the first four bodies he found.
Big mistake. Huge. Gigantic. Megalosaurus.
Only one of them had any experience, and that was as a carrier. That’s Marc, the lone one of the hiring class who has proved worth his salt.
The postmaster left before he had to reap what he had sown, and the subsequent postmaster failed to understand the concept of “management.” For the past year, everyone has set their own schedule and done exactly what they do — and more important, don’t — want to do. Three “clerks” come late, or not at all, leave early, call out sick for literal months on end, tell the Post Office which days they aren’t going to work and then miss half the others with “illness” — every one of them is a useless waste of space. And, when they do show up, they put little effort into their work, sitting down instead of looking for things to do, making mistakes, giving customers bad information and telling customers it’s their fault packages got lost. Then they gripe that they aren’t getting paid enough.
The postmaster who allowed all this to happen on her watch suddenly decided she needed her own time off, so without warning she went on leave this summer — a leave that has extended and extended and now the scuttlebutt says she won’t be returning. A temporary supervisor didn’t manage any better, but managed to find herself a job in Wyoming that is so urgent she decided to leave Lynn on her own for half of this week without so much as an apology or even “I’m going now and never coming back.”
Maybe yet another temporary supervisor shows up next week, maybe one doesn’t . . . the promised clerical assistance for the rest of this month has not materialized. In the meantime, it all comes down to Marc, who understandably would like to transfer, and Lynn, who just wants to get through one more year that so far seems destined to be the longest year in the history of forever.
While Almont sees a rock star, Gunnison — particularly these days when the office is closed 10 a.m.-3 p.m. because it’s just Lynn, who is working a split shift and trying to cover the work of four or five by herself — probably is grumbling. I have heard several people talk about how Lynn remains calm and friendly no matter how long the line, but I don’t think even they realize how little support there is for her in this dysfunction of an office.
I’m quite sure the USPS doesn’t want this made public, but I am Over It, and think everyone ought to know that some people still care about doing a good job, even when there’s little reward in it while the slackers get constant union protection. Lynn IS a rock star, and I hope the people of Gunnison appreciate that even if her employer does not.
Garbanzo Beans for Breakfast 