Pros
Pay and benefits are good if you stay hourly. Some locations and offices have a good team. There are some good people throughout the organization.
Cons
I spent over 10 years working for the Postal Service and well over half in management. The job and expectations have completely changed and they can’t keep employees. I have seen employees just short of retirement walk because of the chaos. Locations are short staffed. If your salary in delivery, you could only clock 60 hours and only when you’re delivering over 8 hours of your auto clockings. But, when you’re short on other positions like clerks or supervisors and you’re exempt, you need to “do what it takes. You can’t leave your office unmanned”. Myself and plenty others have been out delivering mail and packages as the head of the office many times after 12am and at least half the days a week after 10pm. Some of us had to be back to work by 4am to cover package sort. There were multiple days in a week I was about to “sleep” 3-4 hours and back to another 18-20 hour shift that only myself and my manager knew about because I was told I couldn’t punch it or I would be falsifying my time. I had to beg for more than 1 day off a month but if I wasn’t delivering on a Sunday but had to be there at 4am to sort packages because I didn’t have any Clerks and had to close out the office when finished, nobody would ever know because I didn’t deliver, so I don’t get paid. Sometimes that was the only time I had to get caught up on paperwork and do trainings and plan for my office. This organization, like I said in the pros, has some amazing people that work in these terrible environments, but they also have some of the most gossipy people as well that talk about you behind your back and when they are in positions of power, literally have the ability to chastise you to leadership because they don’t like you or you got the promotion they didn’t. It is a sad situation. It is so hard to keep new employees because they run them to the ground and the paycheck isn’t worth missing your kids birthday parties or can’t take time off that you’ve earned because there isn’t enough people to fill in for you. I was actually medical issues for exhaustion and being the only management in my office, they had 3 other management come to fill my office while I was away and couldn’t do the minimum and I was expected to do it all myself with no support or a nearby office running a report or two. If you can’t get everything delivered because staff to workload is just unachievable, you get to sit on 2 or more telecoms a day telling you how horrible you’re doing but giving you no tools to resolve the problem after being talked to like you just committed a crime. That is 2 hours of your day that you could’ve been out helping with the workload on off at 10pm instead of midnight. You are spread so thin because the office they has excess staffing are giving their employees breaks and vacation and approved leave and getting done before 5 while the struggling ones have employees walking out at 60 hours in a week and you have routes sitting on the floor. They don’t send help or make the other offices be team players and the employee morale- think my morale is bad sharing this information, let them talk anonymously not having to fear retribution… they could vouch for this and more. I had colleagues reach out to me after i left and beg for me to share the way I was treated by them and share what is happening to management in the district and how mistreated we (well, them now) are and were and share the story of a federal agency completely heartless and breaking every labor law and fair treatment standard you can imagine. So I went to my congress to share. I was told the postal service is rare that they need to have an investigation by OIG first before any whistleblower action takes place. Any USPS management employee I know reading this in one of these toxic situations is laughing as they read this because it doesn’t matter then. Your concerns will go unheard and your manager will then list off every reason why you are terrible, every report you missed and the retaliation will have you fighting for your career and future careers. That needs to change. And management is unique that they are not covered by a union. There is no management “contract” like craft employees stating the laws of the land and what you can and can’t do. There are organizations to negotiate on your behalf. When I told my manager I had to look for something else and talk to this team of negotiators, she told me, “you know what will happen? They will call me, I will tell them I can’t give you help because there is none and that is the best I can do and you will still be in the same situation”. When the union called and I explained to them my reasons for leaving, they told me to take 3 months FMLA to get refreshed and come back. I laughed and said so what happens after 3 months? I come back, nothing has changed and I’m back to the same crap and they agreed that I was right. Except this is the treatment I got without a target on my back.. can you imagine if I was a vital office or really got my manager upset?