Brooklyn Post Offices: Endless Bummer?
Is every single post office in Brooklyn a nightmare? Seems like it. There’s consistent bitching (that we hear, anyway) about three in particular. Here’s the latest on the most-loathed po’s: Kensington: Councilmember Bill De Blasio continues to work toward building a new post office for the neighborhood, which gained Internet fame via a You Tube…
Is every single post office in Brooklyn a nightmare? Seems like it. There’s consistent bitching (that we hear, anyway) about three in particular. Here’s the latest on the most-loathed po’s:
Kensington: Councilmember Bill De Blasio continues to work toward building a new post office for the neighborhood, which gained Internet fame via a You Tube vid last year. “We have been working closely with the Brooklyn Postmaster, Community Board 12 and the community,” says De Blasio. “There are still complaints regarding postal service in 11218 but I have also heard some positive feedback.We would love to see a new post office in the neighborhood or a commercial postal unit in one of the local retail stores. This community is growing at a rapid pace and business owners and residents at the very least deserve a functioning postal facility.”
Park Slope, 9th Street: The Brooklynian folks have a thread devoted to this place’s suckitude. Comments range from this observation, “The line to pick up a package that you missed because they can’t ring the correct bell is miles long. Usually 50 people waiting in the pick up line every weekend. Then it takes an average of 5-15 minutes for them to locate the package at the post office. How hard is it to have two people or more working the pick up line on Saturday’s.” to this one, “What do you expect from people who smoke too much crack (as i learned when i went to a party held by people who worked for the Brooklyn Post Office)?”
Boerum Hill, Atlantic near 4th Ave.: This is another neighborhood where there’s noise about replacing the post office. GL reported the latest complaints about the facility yesterday, with one person saying they “had a horrendous, Third World experience at the Times Plaza” and another writing, “I have never had a package or letter that needed to be signed for delivered by them!”
So. Are there any halfway decent post offices in this borough?
A Drive to Replace the Post Office [Brownstoner]
Return to the Times Plaza Post Office: Not Fixed [Gowanus Lounge]
9th St Post Office [Brooklynian]
It’s nearly impossible to fire any postal worker. In addition, veterans (who get a preference for postal jobs) get additional protections.
As a result, it is impossible to fire them. I knew a vet who just stopped going to work for a year. Eventually, they stopped paying him so he protested his “firing.”
Because they did not “fire” him in an appropriate manner, e got his job back and back pay.
Adelphi post office sends us our neighbors’ mail every day and our neighbors receive ours. Mail stopped online for a vacation was delivered anyway and piled up, announcing our absence to all and sundry. Forwarded mail was never forwarded – just lost. Packages that don’t fit in our mailbox are regularly thrown in the dirt, including my tax returns last year. Talking of mailboxes, our mailman refuses to put mail through our door, insisting our mail slot is too low, though I regularly see him using others’. Adelphi PO ‘closes’ on Saturdays for no apparent reason despite there being staff on duty. You can pick up a package but you can’t mail one during this time. Calls to complain about our mail carrier have never been returned.
Because you haven’t funded your 401K from day one and didn’t max your contribution every year (Idiot) doesn’t mean a pension is better than a 401K. It just means you are sheep and will either find someone to blame or believe someone else should fund your old wrinkled ass.
1:27 said:
“As for your “It’s a requirement” and “every postal worker I’ve ever encountered anywhere I have ever lived” facts, you are impressing the hell out me with your knowledge of governmental requirements and confirmation relating to their full compliance.”
Dude, try looking at their website. All the exams required of applicants are in ENGLISH. Took oh, about 10 seconds research to see that.
The USPS has tons of problems but non-English speaking employees isn’t one of them. People don’t have to be recently emigrated to be dumb. Plenty white English speaking Americans are really really really stupid with no communication skills whatsoever.
Hey 1:56,
The bulletproof shields are for the customer’s protection, not the employees!
If it’s any comfort at all, the abysmal PO service we get here in Brooklyn is not unique to this geographical area. In my youth I worked my high school holidays over the pre-Christmas period as a temporary mail sorter and deliverer at the post office in the market town local to where I grew up in England. The regular employees used to constantly harangue and intimidate we temps, telling us to go slower because we were highlighting their pathetic production rates.
I put the majority of the blame for our plight here in Brooklyn on the post office managers. There is clearly no impetus from the top for efficiency. A few years ago, at the Park Slope post office, I was standing in an enormous line, gazing at totally unmanned counters, while from the back you could hear there was a meeting going on where the manager was appraising the performance of the staff who were gathered there. The best-performing delivery guy had an unreturned delivery rate of something like 60%, for which he receive effusive praise from the manager and loud applause from his co-workers.
Most private sector employers do not contribute to employees 401k and those that do it is a relatively nominal amount. Additionally 401k’s have a contribution limit and do not come with extras – like health care that many municipal pensions do.
Make any claim you want but absent what is given to a few CEO types, no private employers provide retirement benefits even close to those given to the municipal workforce and the unionized workforce are even better taken care of.
The horrible attitude and bad performance has ZERO to do with pay or working conditions and everything to do with who is hired and the resulting culture within the organization. 90% of postal employees could not work in ANY legitimate private sector (or even a decent municipal) workforce.
Wow, Bob, really — the Post Office on Empire Blvd. has improved? I wouldn’t know, really, as I haven’t been back there in over a year, when I waited in line for thirty minutes before walking out, as there was a manager at the head of the line who seemed to be making up rules as she went along. She actually went up to one man and told him he couldn’t send a registered letter there that day because the federal govenrment was changing the rates for registered mail and he’d have to come back when they’d been told the new prices! As each person got to he head of the line she came up with a new and inventive reason they couldn’t do what they’d come there for. Truly surreal.
For a few years this PO was knocked over repreatedly, and alsways apparently an inside job — theives entered through an unlocked gate. I don’t think they did it in 2007, but they sure did in the previous two years (and maybe more).
I buy stamps from a machine and use the internet, FedEx, UPS, whatever whenever possible.
2:28 look up the definition of a pension.
I worked at the post office during summers in college. This consisted of sitting in restaurants for 3 to 4 hours of an 8 hour shift with all the lifers or finding some place to park the truck and sleep after finishing the work in the ridiculous amount of time allotted.