US Postal Service reviews

No days off. Unrealistic expectations for overwhelming workload. Given a heap of stinky garbage and asked to make gold plated wristwatches out of it. Whiny career employees get preferential treatment and non-career employees get to pick up the pieces. Amount of work increases as soon as you get too fast or too good at the job. Management doesn't provide help in an extremely understaffed environment. Required to deliver large, overstuffed standard rate newspaper advertisements weekly to every house, even if they aren't receiving any DPS, flats, or parcels. Most customers never shovel path to their small, outdated, poorly maintained boxes during winter months. Some even expected you to lay their mail in pre-designated locations because they were too lazy/cheap to purchase a mailbox. Others thought it was acceptable to sit their mailbox on the ground after it had fallen off the mount and expect you to crouch down and wedge it open with twenty pounds of mail on your back just to deliver their standard rate junk. Most never addressed the issues even after repeated requests to do so. Some streets notorious for untethered dogs (a fineable city ordinance violation). Pepper sprayed multiple dogs in several months time, some multiple times. Owners then wonder why their mail wasn't delivered and call post office to complain. Businesses expect you to walk into their establishment every single day to deliver their mail, on the off-chance basis that they may have a piece of outgoing mail that they are too lazy to walk across the street to deposit in a collection box, or drive 3 blocks to the post office to drop off. Some businesses even called post office to complain and blatantly lie about not receiving mail, when the reason they did not was because they were not open during their own posted hours, and expect to somehow receive it with no mailbox. Poor management, led by under qualified individuals who have never voluntarily been given an ounce of respect in their life. No one is open to innovation or modern day solutions. Company as a whole is run by stubborn, grouchy old people still operating in a pre-21st century world. Everyone waiting around long enough to collect their pension and get out ASAP. Sinking rapidly. Breaking point for me was being told that I had to drive 20 miles to work, across 2 counties that were under a strict state of emergency after over 12" of snowfall and -40 degree temperatures. Good luck to anyone who bravely accepts the in humane challenge of carrying mail.

Where do you begin? The biggest problem with being a substitute carrier is that your always on-call. You can forget about trying to make plans far in advance. Your office will call you in at the last possible minute for you to run a route, but to add for a little levity it always seems to happen when you commit to something. By the way, management almost never calls you to let you know that the schedule has changed and what route that you're on. You have to call them find out at the beginning, the middle, AND at the end of every week to cover yourself to avoid an "Investigative Interview", also known as an interrogation. There's almost no way to get a second job to support yourself without either burning out or the second job conflicting with the Post Office. Management has no sympathy on this matter. They want you working for them well into the evening and into your second job. If your job presents a problem to them, they will make you choose to either work for USPS or resign, regardless of how long you worked for them and your dedication to the job. As mentioned before, not all offices have vehicles that you can use. Which means you will be required to use your personal vehicle to deliver the mail. You will tear up your vehicle delivering mail. You will spend more money regardless of what compensation you get from USPS on maintenance, insurance, and fuel for your car delivering mail. Plus, the only time you start getting benefits is when you make it to career level, which would be regular carriers and above. No life or health insurance for you. And then there's the concern about management. Probably, the poorest and soulless collection of snollygosters, popinjays, and ninnyhammers I have ever had the displeasure of serving under. I have seen them spend more time at my station standing around talking about their vacations and their social life, than actually doing there job. Rather than call in additional help from another office, an RCA would appreciate that, they would prefer to over burden all the substitutes by splitting routes. Rules constantly change here in the Odessa Post Office depending on the time of the month. You'll find yourself already in breech of another rule that was added to your office within 24 hours after you left for the day without even trying. It does not matter how long you worked at the post office, management will treat you like you've been working there for a couple of weeks and berate you as such. No such thing as praise for your hard work in this office. Plenty of criticism to spread around and none of which are constructive. It seems the only time management is interested in talking to you is if you've done something wrong, which I guess is a good heads up especially when you see a union representative waiting to take a statement as your called to the carpet.