[Monsoon65]

I work for the USPS. At times, it's as bad as it seems.

When I started there in 1996, Marvin Runyon started as the Postmaster General after leaving Coca Cola. Before he arrived, any profit that was made by the PO was put back into the PO for modernization, etc.

Once he started, tho, he decided that the profit should be divided amongst the corporate wheeler-dealers and supervisors. So much for modernization.

In my opinion, the PO was not doing well before he arrived, but that sure didn't help things. They are starting to close smaller offices, planning on cutting back delivery days (and I don't think anyone I asked their opinion about this seemed to mind), etc, but we are still bleeding money. I work in what's called Maintenance Control (think supply and Job Control combined). Our inventory went from about a million dollars to something like $30,000. Parts aren't being used, why spend the money on stocking them? If needed, we'll order them when needed.

Of course, the supervisors, etc, sure are giving up their bonuses.

Here's a good example of one of the recent screwups that's costing money. We had to have our employee parking lot repainted. The lines were faded. OK, no problem, it needs to be done. So, they repainted all the lines over two weekends.

About a week or so after, they blocked off 1/4 of the parking lot. They decided to make it a drivers test area for the PO. Yep, you guessed it; the freshly painted lines in that area were painted over in black paint.

Now, don't tell me that the redesignation of that part of the lot was something that was just thought up that day. They knew about it, but it was just a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.

The supervisors and management in the PO are the "worse case" examples that any one of us read about while going thru PME at one time or another.

I don't know about going private; as someone said, who would buy the Post Office?? And we really aren't under complete government control. I think the Government only claims the PO when it's in their best interest.