February 22, 2014
Saturday PM

When exactly did you take Darrell Issa’s kool-aid, Mr. Haberman?   I am sure most folks see clearly your kamikaze flame-out in attempting to justify a policy you put in place that even as you wrote was being ripped apart by your superiors, i.e. Senator Begich, et al.  How many have gone further in their analysis of what you have written, I cannot say, but what you have written convinces me you should be fired because you are obviously not the person for this job.   

When you put words in my mouth that never were there, I just call you a liar, but that in itself is not reason to fire you.  (I would normally simply say you are mistaken or are in error, but in this instance your specific intent was to derogate, so you are a liar, and a very intentional one at that.)  It is suggestive of attitudinal concerns which may be justification for termination.  There is no place in my article where I even inferred that USPS operates with taxpayer dollars.  That does not mean you do not work for us, or that we do not pay your salaries, nor does it mean in any sense that you are not a government employee.  

What does justify your immediate termination is your attitude toward what your job is.  You are a destroyer, not a builder.  You are not interested in providing us with better service; you want to provide us with less service at a much higher cost.  In point of fact your justification for your conduct is basically hook, line, and sinker you are towing Darrell Issa’s line, and are enthusiastically enacting his policy.  His policy is to destroy USPS, and you seem particularly proud of your efforts at dismantling it.  We do not need a postal manager for the state who is advocating the extreme right wing position of wiping out the post office, and, Mr.  Haberman, your policy and/or your politics simply oozes through your presentation.

Cutting the USPS budget by $16 billion and laying off or otherwise terminating 200,000 postal employees since 2006 is not something necessarily to be proud of, particularly when you are losing $5 billion a year.  Much of that loss is the consequence of Darrell Issa’s machinations in forcing USPS to finance 75 years of retirements in advance, something no other entity is compelled to do, or does; so rather than underfunding this bullying effort by a car thief (as so many other government retirement funds are underfunded), what you seek to do first, foremost, and only is to de-fund operations.  Then you sit there for several paragraphs trying to justify this crap.  Manage for your customers rather than your damned retirement plan.  Once a thief, always a thief, most people understand, so going against Issa most people will understand, too.  Crawling into bed with a thief and justifying his policies is not an indication of good judgment. 

Perhaps your most startling and contradictory statement is this one:  “USPS suffered a net loss of five billion dollars last fiscal year, our seventh consecutive year for net losses.  This harsh reality only highlights the need for us to continue to seek new growth opportunities--……………..”.   “To continue to seek new growth opportunities.”  So you shut down the downtown post office, try to sort Ketchikan mail in Juneau, and otherwise shortchange us with poor service, and this you call “continuing to seek new growth opportunities.”  You are in fact doing the exact opposite to us, so please, Mr. Haberman, tell me why anyone should believe anything that you say.  Your first words out of your mouth in responding to me were a lie, and I do not see that you are doing any better along the way.

Furthermore, whoever is conducting your so-called “secret shopping experiences” is also in desperate need of new employment.  When do they show up, 3 a.m.?  I use post offices all over this country, Mr. Haberman, and one thing that is consistent is that the waiting lines are way too long.  This particularly demonstrates the Postal Service’s disconnect with reality:  They have the arrogance and the indolence of government employees, yet as Mr. Haberman notes they want to be perceived as a private sector operation, working and operating with its own capital.  In the private sector, Mr. Haberman, waiting is not acceptable.  We do not have time; we need to make money.  Whoever is addressing your issues with queuing theory quite frankly has their head up their ass.  I would suggest you study the grocery chain Raley’s in California, or Tatsudas and Alaska & Proud here in Ketchikan.  They exemplify what good management of queuing theory is all about.  When the lines at the front develop, there is no dinking around with it: the employees converge at the cash registers and move the customers out the door.  That concept is completely foreign to the U.S. Postal Service, so I don’t care what kind of grade you give yourselves.  The reality is you treat your customers as an inconvenience.

Your awareness of stock out issues is regrettably severely limited because at no time in the last four years when I have requested a couple hundred stamped envelopes did you have them in stock.  I don’t ask that often, but the lipstick you are trying to put on that particular pig is comprised of a very thin gloss.

One “new growth opportunity” is to re-open the downtown Ketchikan post office.  In the summer because of the cruise ships that post office was routinely slammed, so I cannot begin to account for how much business is being lost; but even with the other arrangements that have been made by many of the downtown merchants, business is being lost.  It was busy enough, in my experience, during the winter.  Exactly, therefore, what do you mean by “exploring opportunities” for a contracted postal unit downtown, when in the same sentence you write that you are hoping that some private business cometh hence and offer you their services.  I do not see in that exploring any opportunities at all; that is wishful thinking, and complete inaction otherwise. 

According to numerous reports last year, as many as 13 people or companies applied for this contract, and you rejected all applicants.  With your “contracted postal unit” nonsense you are trying to go on the cheap to the max in the first place by offering a low-end contract that includes no benefits, no provisions for insurance, and requires the applicant to pay all of the employee salaries and taxes.  Either you are not getting applicants worth a damn because what you are offering is not worth a damn, or your expectations exceed the dollars you are offering.  A branch post office downtown with a couple of real postal clerks getting paid real postal clerk salaries sounds quite reasonable to me.

This is a town that is 50 miles long and six blocks high, and it cannot operate efficiently with all its post offices located at the north end.  Likewise with the bush; this is a rural state that relies far more on the post office because of its isolation.  Yes, email and tweets, etc. have affected the amount of mail that you move, but in this state the post office in many places is one of the few outlets to the real world.  Your employees are decent folks; I think they are overly stressed; but I think you have enough staff to man these booths, if properly managed.  If not, hire more staff. 

 What I don’t think you have is the right managerial attitude.  We need someone who swings for Alaska, not cave in, and I do not see you as that guy.  The post office would be far better served shutting down as much as 20% of your fancy branch offices in the cities.  In the city people are concerned about minutes, not miles, so properly addressing queuing theory will buy the minutes back that quickly; and the USPS can do with less real estate.  In Alaska the post office is far more a life line, and I don’t think you understand that, Mr. Haberman.

Received February 19, 2014 - Published February 22, 2014

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Ketchikan Postal Services By Ron Haberman

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