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I'm job hunting. I'm in the National Guard. I had friends tell me that the United States Postal Service is a great employer for veterans.
So, several months ago I took the Postal Exam. I got a pretty good score, which was really good when combined with Veterans Preference (i.e. 5 extra percentage points on the exam due to my veteran status).
Well, a little over a month ago I got a job offer to deliver the mail in my city.
According to the job interview, the conditions of the job were: Part-time, only guaranteed 4 hours per week, but can often/usually work a full-time schedule with overtime usually available if desired, and OT may be mandatory during peak Christmas delivery season. You're probationary for 90 days, but don't get access to retirement benefits and health benefits for a year or so.
Well, when I actually start work for them, what I find instead is:
It's "part time", but expect to never work less than 50 hours per week, with 60 hour workweeks being common, and 70 or 80 hour workweeks not being unheard of. The ONLY restriction on working hours is they can't work you more than 12 hours per day. 6 and 7 day workweeks are mandatory (thanks to Amazon deliveries on Sunday now), and to expect only one or two Sundays off per month as your only days off. . .and they have had employees go over 40 days without a single day off before. Also, as my co-workers said "be prepared to sell your soul to get a day off for any reason."
No vacation or sick leave time (or retirement/medical benefits) until you get "career" status. . .which is based entirely on seniority as career status employees retire/transfer and "casual" status employees are moved up, on a strictly seniority basis, to fill those positions. Once you make "career" status (which takes anywhere from a year to 3 or 4 years), then you get a 40 hour/5 day work-week, health/retirement benefits, sick & annual leave, and so on. Also, while you're on a sort of probation for your first 90 days and can be fired at any time, in this "casual" status you're also automatically fired after 360 days, and then re-hired for your old job if your supervisor wants you back. . .so you're never really free from that sword of Damocles until you get "career" status.
Supervisors love to tell you, if you try to complain about the hours, one of two things. One is "think of all the money you'll be making from all that overtime!". My rebuttal is a Han Solo quote: "What good is a reward if you're not around to spend it." and the other is to tell you "It sounds like you're not serious about a Postal career, if you aren't satisfied here we can replace you with someone more motivated to succeed."
So. I'm basically told, only half jokingly, that I'm Postal property and to enjoy my last day off with my family for a very long time before I go from training to my regular work assignment. When I report in at the Post Office to begin my field training, my various co-workers are all telling me things like "Quit now, while you can!" or "Get out now, before it's too hard to escape!". Morale was somewhere between low and nonexistent. I was warned in training that morale in many post offices was low, now I see why.
After my 3 field training days, I realized I couldn't do this. I'm a part-time graduate student, I have a wife and son, and I need to have time to work on my physical training for the military. I realized after just my 3 field training days that I would come home and just want to drink to deal with the stress, I couldn't bring myself to crack open my books for class, and I hadn't done any of the running I need to do for the Army.
I went in the next day and tendered my resignation. The station manager of that post office was remarkably sympathetic about it all, and told me that they have a huge attrition rate with new hires, she said that over 50% of new hires in that city didn't make it past the first 90 days, about a quarter of them do what I do and quit right out of training. . .and maybe only 10% of new hires make it through to career status.
Apparently she didn't know just how misleading the job interviews were about working conditions, and she said they aren't allowed by their higher-ups to hire enough new letter carriers to bring the workload down to a sane amount, so she understands completely when people quit, and she told me that if she had to start over now, with how they have to treat new hires, she didn't think she could have stuck with it either (she started many years ago, when they were much more sensible about how they treated newly hired letter carriers). I told her I didn't have a problem with the work itself, but with a family, and school as well, an above-40-hour workweek every week was completely untenable.
. . .and that was my short, unpleasant experience at the postal service.
So, several months ago I took the Postal Exam. I got a pretty good score, which was really good when combined with Veterans Preference (i.e. 5 extra percentage points on the exam due to my veteran status).
Well, a little over a month ago I got a job offer to deliver the mail in my city.
According to the job interview, the conditions of the job were: Part-time, only guaranteed 4 hours per week, but can often/usually work a full-time schedule with overtime usually available if desired, and OT may be mandatory during peak Christmas delivery season. You're probationary for 90 days, but don't get access to retirement benefits and health benefits for a year or so.
Well, when I actually start work for them, what I find instead is:
It's "part time", but expect to never work less than 50 hours per week, with 60 hour workweeks being common, and 70 or 80 hour workweeks not being unheard of. The ONLY restriction on working hours is they can't work you more than 12 hours per day. 6 and 7 day workweeks are mandatory (thanks to Amazon deliveries on Sunday now), and to expect only one or two Sundays off per month as your only days off. . .and they have had employees go over 40 days without a single day off before. Also, as my co-workers said "be prepared to sell your soul to get a day off for any reason."
No vacation or sick leave time (or retirement/medical benefits) until you get "career" status. . .which is based entirely on seniority as career status employees retire/transfer and "casual" status employees are moved up, on a strictly seniority basis, to fill those positions. Once you make "career" status (which takes anywhere from a year to 3 or 4 years), then you get a 40 hour/5 day work-week, health/retirement benefits, sick & annual leave, and so on. Also, while you're on a sort of probation for your first 90 days and can be fired at any time, in this "casual" status you're also automatically fired after 360 days, and then re-hired for your old job if your supervisor wants you back. . .so you're never really free from that sword of Damocles until you get "career" status.
Supervisors love to tell you, if you try to complain about the hours, one of two things. One is "think of all the money you'll be making from all that overtime!". My rebuttal is a Han Solo quote: "What good is a reward if you're not around to spend it." and the other is to tell you "It sounds like you're not serious about a Postal career, if you aren't satisfied here we can replace you with someone more motivated to succeed."
So. I'm basically told, only half jokingly, that I'm Postal property and to enjoy my last day off with my family for a very long time before I go from training to my regular work assignment. When I report in at the Post Office to begin my field training, my various co-workers are all telling me things like "Quit now, while you can!" or "Get out now, before it's too hard to escape!". Morale was somewhere between low and nonexistent. I was warned in training that morale in many post offices was low, now I see why.
After my 3 field training days, I realized I couldn't do this. I'm a part-time graduate student, I have a wife and son, and I need to have time to work on my physical training for the military. I realized after just my 3 field training days that I would come home and just want to drink to deal with the stress, I couldn't bring myself to crack open my books for class, and I hadn't done any of the running I need to do for the Army.
I went in the next day and tendered my resignation. The station manager of that post office was remarkably sympathetic about it all, and told me that they have a huge attrition rate with new hires, she said that over 50% of new hires in that city didn't make it past the first 90 days, about a quarter of them do what I do and quit right out of training. . .and maybe only 10% of new hires make it through to career status.
Apparently she didn't know just how misleading the job interviews were about working conditions, and she said they aren't allowed by their higher-ups to hire enough new letter carriers to bring the workload down to a sane amount, so she understands completely when people quit, and she told me that if she had to start over now, with how they have to treat new hires, she didn't think she could have stuck with it either (she started many years ago, when they were much more sensible about how they treated newly hired letter carriers). I told her I didn't have a problem with the work itself, but with a family, and school as well, an above-40-hour workweek every week was completely untenable.
. . .and that was my short, unpleasant experience at the postal service.
That really sucks. I was hoping to get a job at the Post Office myself, but if it's that bad, forget it.
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