POSTALMAG.COM

Route Check Nightmare - There Has To Be A Better Way
By a Concerned Letter Carrier

 
May 2002 (Scroll down for 2003 updates)

Hello. I am a letter carrier in a major Texas city. Recently, my station underwent route checks by a route check team. The check, and the results, have been an exercise in futility. Now, things are even worse than they were, for both management and the carriers. It didn’t have to be this way. I am writing the following in the hope that someone can learn something from this experience. Actually, there are lessons to be learned (in what I have to say) for both labor and management. 

A little background about the situation. My station services an established, mostly upper-class neighborhood in a major city in Texas. For the most part, mail volume is back to normal (9/11), since this wealthier area has not been as affected as some other areas. Because this is a wealthier area, mail volume has always been higher than in some other parts of the city. The station, before the checks, had 37 routes. There are only two supervisors and one station manager for this station. One supervisor opens, one closes. 

For me, the route check process started when the route check team leader had a meeting with all of the carriers. He stated that he was a carrier once and that all he wanted was a “fair and honest” check. He stated that this was not Houston, Texas, where route checkers deducted time for deadheads and bragged about deducting time for carriers wiping the sweat off their brow. Actually, he seemed sincere. We all wanted to believe him. That was the first mistake. 

When the first day of the route check came, lo and behold, there was markedly less mail. I know, it’s almost become a cliché, that carriers always complain that mail volumes drop during checks. But there were no Standard letter mailings and few Standard flats.

Where did the mail go? Well, for one, some mail (Standard flats) must have been cut back at the plant, but that’s just speculation without proof. I do know that some of the Standard letters were processed in the DPS mail. This wouldn’t be such a scandal except that we have to case this mail during the other 51 weeks of the year.  DPS candidate mail was sent down to be processed during the week of the route check only. Furthermore, the week after the check, we had two or three sets of letters each day. During route check week we had none.

Naturally, most of the carriers left for the street earlier than they normally did, mostly because they didn’t have hundreds of thin, flimsy letters to case. The station manager gloated. It’s true, some of the underperforming carriers were exposed, but believe it or not, most of the carriers at my station are pretty honest and did their job in an honest manner as they always do.

As it turned out, many routes still averaged around eight hours for the week. Many showed more than eight hours. Even the few routes that were short of eight hours were not short by much. The carriers thought that, based on the check, the routes would stay pretty much the same and that some overburdened routes would be cut. However, there was also an uneasy feeling that postal management would use “creative math”, based on future supposed delivery savings, etc., to drastically add to the routes.

(Creative Math: One seemingly underhanded tactic that management used to add to the routes is combining street block deliveries on park and loop routes to save on vehicle moving time. The two or three minutes saved on each vehicle move is now being used by the carrier to deliver to more delivery points. Now, in many cases, carriers must carry two block's worth of mail at a time, instead of one. In this wealthier area where mail volumes are already excessive, this tactic will only cost more time, and more wear and tear on the carriers. This tactic, more than any other, has angered many carriers at the station.)

This uneasy feeling was confirmed when the results of the route adjustments were released. The end result: One route was eliminated (from 37 routes to 36), and the remaining routes were all adjusted to an average of about 8 hours and 15 minutes. First of all, the M39 states that all routes are to be adjusted to as close to eight hours as possible. That didn’t happen. Secondly, this just didn’t make sense. The station manager is already under fire from the Area Manager for the station using too much overtime, however, now all the routes have built in overtime! Consider that 15 minutes (average overage) times 36 routes = 9 hours. In effect, all this route check did was eliminate one route by adding 15 minutes overtime to the remaining 36 routes. This additional 15 minutes per route (of the eliminated route) will now be carried on overtime, instead of straight time.

Moreover, the above times are based on the volume of perhaps the lightest week of the year. Come September, when Standard volumes drastically increase in this wealthier area, there will be substantial, perhaps unmanageable overtime. Furthermore, management will not be able to document and deal with suspected unjustified overtime with street supervision because there are only two supervisors that are already overworked due to their many duties and reports – DOIS, Advance, POMS, LATTS, CSDRS, CMRS, TACS, checking Delivery Confirmation, stamp stock, etc. to name a few. Plus, now the a.m. supervisor will have 36 3996s (request for overtime slips from carriers) to deal with each day. That is a time-consuming process in itself.

Throughout the check, from pre-check standup talks, to post-check talks, management has attempted to justify the route checks by stating that they will lead to more timely delivery for postal customers. It didn’t turn out that way though – longer routes mean (on average) later delivery times. And come September, we’ll all be out delivering until 9:00 p.m., just like this year and last. Oddly, many of the routes will now be reporting 15 to 30 minutes later – from 7:30 a.m. to 7:45 or 8:00 a.m.

Now, a note about the actual street adjustments. The acting station manager, with the help of a junior carrier, made the adjustments. The station manager was instructed by Operations Support to “square off” routes, meaning to make the route territory appear “square” on a map. Well, what’s square on a map isn’t always what’s right on the street. One route, that naturally snaked around a lake, has been dissected. Another route, that delivered all the businesses on one street, has been split among four other routes. Now, four carriers will have to deal with the transposed numbers and inter-business moves, instead of one carrier that would be familiar with all of the businesses. (There are three carriers that deliver one intersection - all three pass by the the doors of delivery points delivered by the other carriers.) In addition to carrier (and customer) confusion, it will take the clerks months to figure out the new scheme.

In the squaring off process, many routes were changed and many others became other routes with different numbers. For example, the old route 29 is now numbered 41. The old route 9 is now numbered 21. Tell that to the clerks? Tell that to the mailer’s database that will take at least three months to update. Minor adjustments to the routes were all that was needed, yet, management came in and tore the old routes down, only to replace them with new routes, territories, numbers, and schemes. The carriers will have a costly learning period, and so will the clerks. (The clerks were given only four hours of on-the-job studying to learn the new scheme.) I asked one of the clerks (after he was finished studying) four questions (addresses) about the new scheme. He didn’t get one of them right. The first day of the changeover there were over 30 feet of hot case mail. Clerks were looking up each letter in the new route scheme. The hot case was not cleared until 5:00 PM!

All in all, the situation will be worse than it was for some time to come. And even after all the carriers and all the clerks and all the supervisors learn the new territory, the end result will be that there were no savings, just increased costs, as the result of this check. I guarantee (barring a drastic downturn in volume) that workhours, overtime, and penalty overtime will be substantially higher for this coming year than last year.

What can be learned from this mess? Actually, there are lessons to be learned for both labor and management.

Labor:

Even though there was a labor union representative present during the week of the inspection, it wasn’t enough, for all he did was basically watch and help carriers complete their 3999 (route exam form). To adequately deal with the curtailment of mail, the union representative must be present (at least) the week prior to the check, the week of the check, and the week after the check. During these weeks, photos should be taken of mail and mail volumes. Letter coverages in the DPS should be documented. Time-dated mailings should be documented when they were received and delivered versus when they were requested delivered. The percent of First Class and Secondary mail versus Standard Mail received during route check week should be compared with all other weeks.

Management:

First and foremost, management should determine if a station "qualifies" for route checks before the entire, expensive project begins. A checklist could be developed that analyzes volumes, workhours, delivery points, route growth, etc. Several months before our route checks, the delivery supervisor was tasked with analyzing current volumes, etc. to determine if "minor route adjustments" were justified. The supervisor found that only one route was out of adjustment, and that was only by fifteen minutes. Yet, several months later a route check team was hard at work turning the station upside down and inside out. The Postal Service, already short on cash, needs to allocate resources wisely. A checklist could help identify where route check team resources could best be utilized.

There has to be a better way to maximize the efficiencies of letter carriers. EDS, IBM, Dell Computer, UPS – companies known for their efficiencies, would have no part of such convoluted, confrontational and costly route examinations. (It took nine route examiners, each working a week, to examine the routes at my station. After our examination, they were off to another station. In addition, it took the station manager six weeks to effect the changes and it took many others at OPS Support and elsewhere to document and substantiate the changes.)

Underlying the entire problem is the utilization of incentives and controls - rewards and punishments in how letter carriers are compensated and controlled. As it stands now, carriers are paid more the longer they work, since they are paid by the hour. As such, punishments are the only viable control against such an incentive system. A caustic culture based on confrontation, revenge, and dishonesty (both carriers and management) naturally develops.

Evaluated routes would be a good alternative, if only a fair and honest method that both labor and management could agree upon, could be developed. However, the National Association of Letter Carriers will fight tooth and nail against evaluated routes in light of what happened to the rural carriers in their last mail counts.

Another alternative would be to adjust routes based on route data such as average volume over an extended time, distance in feet walked or driven on a route, average distance between delivery points, etc. This would negate factors such as carriers slowing down to a snail’s pace and managers (allegedly) curtailing mail during the route check week, skewing route data.

Another lesson that management can learn is that it should try to find a “balance” in the workplace. When routes are unnecessarily out of balance (over 8 hours), so are injuries (real and not so real), sick leave, overtime, penalty overtime, grievances etc, all of which are very costly to the postal service.

For example, when routes are in balance and carriers have a reasonable expectation to finish their routes in 8 hours, they have a reasonable goal to work towards - one they know, and management knows, can be accomplished. But when routes are not reasonable, carriers slow down and wait for help from their fellow carriers.

As for the adjustments to the routes, I have some additional suggestions.

1. The adjustments for my station were hurriedly made by an acting station manager that had a limited knowledge of the territory. There should be more time given for the adjusting of the routes. Furthermore, the acting station manager had to input a large amount of data into DOIS in preparation for the new routes. This process took days, and only added to the time burden faced by the manager. Assistance from Operations Support or other qualified personnel would have been nice.
2. Letter Carriers, who are most intimately familiar with the routes, should be able to give some feedback. The way it transpired at my station is that the station manager showed up one day with a huge map and said this is the way it’s going to be. Several letter carriers noticed improvements that could have been made. (I pointed out that some of the new routes – which are really the bulk of old routes - should be renumbered back to their original numbers so that the route scheme wouldn’t  be changed so drastically and so that we wouldn’t have as many misthrows and missorts for the next several months.) Unfortunately, the adjustments had already been “set in stone” by the time the carriers first learned of the adjustments.
3. A route changeover checklist should be developed to aid in the transition from old routes to new routes. The checklist could include such items as: #1) One week before changeover - Delivery Supervisor determines what routes will need Arrow keys and what routes will no longer need Arrow keys...  #43) Two days before changeover - Carriers are to make a list of all vacant addresses, hold mail notices, and Saturday only deliveries so that the information can be transferred to the new routes.

One last suggestion for both labor and management: Developing a better process depends on honesty and fairness from both labor and management. We need to start working together, instead of against each other, for the postal service to survive. Hopefully, that may be possible someday.

Unfortunately, we’ve already made our mistakes here at my station. Hopefully things will go better at your station when the route check team comes knocking on your door. - End of Article
 

What's everyone excited about? It's the new routes. Every one of them, even the previously overburdened (out-of-adjustment) routes, have been added to. Every route now has about from 25 to 80 new deliveries. If last year is any indication, overtime and penalty overtime will be going through the roof just like last year.

We will be bidding on the new routes in the next week or two so that we can begin our new routes on July 5th. (That's right, the day after a holiday. How smart is that?) Normally, one would expect carriers to bid on what they believe are the easiest routes. Not in our case.  A lot of the carriers are wanting to bid on the perceived longer routes so that they will be ensured of even more overtime. You see, these routes are all way out of adjustment now. They were adjusted to either the lowest mail volume of the year (route check week), or the carrier's best performance of the year. One route, which is now 24 blocks (loops) long, is expected to go quickly in the bidding process.

Before I go on, I just want to say that it's not that the carriers are being paid too much, or that the USPS is stupid. The carriers will work long and hard for their money. Their base salaries of around $40,000 will be supplanted with 16 hours or more per week in time-and-a-half pay and double-time pay. Moreover, it's not that the USPS is stupid in setting up routes with built-in overtime. The station lost two routes and one T-6 position. That's three carriers that can be used to fill other positions with an off-the-top savings of over $150,000 annually (3 x $40,000 average pay plus $15,000 in benefits costs each.) This figure doesn't count any PTFs we may lose and it doesn't take into account that a greater percentage of wages will be at overtime rates, negating some of these savings.

The bottom line question is this: "Is this a fair way to conduct route checks?" Like I've said before, most of the carriers at my station are pretty honest and all they wanted was a fair route check. Management and the union stewards were talking about a joint task force where they would work together to craft fair and manageable routes. That did not happen, not even in the least.

Here's exactly what happened. During the route check week one of the carriers asked one of the examiners what they were really going to do. That examiner flat-out stated that the station would lose two routes. This was said before the route-check data had even been formulated or analyzed. We actually lost two routes just as he said. It's obvious what management wanted to do. When it came time to adjust the routes, our morning supervisor and a 204B PTF went out to an office and adjusted the routes without any other employee or union input. The routes that had showed short on these light mail volume days were kept intact and added to. The routes that showed over during the checks (some by as much as an hour - on light days) were broken down and made into new routes so that they could add territory to these routes (the data was obfuscated and mingled, thereby negating a direct challenge by a grievance.)

As it turns out, most everyone will have new routes once again. We'll be going through the same thing as last year (see below), only this time with even longer routes.

As stupid as things sound, this route check nightmare promises to get even worse. One of the carriers is out of the country on three weeks vacation, but management is pushing the July 5th start date. They've come up with a solution where we won't bid until after that carrier returns from overseas. We would all keep the route number of our old routes (for about two weeks). (Some of these routes have totally changed and don't contain any territory from the old-numbered routes.) This would create three unassigned regulars who wouldn't have a route for approximately two weeks. All-in-all it promises to be a frustrating experience and a nasty July the 4th weekend. I'll keep you posted.
 

Wednesday the day before I noticed that the clerks had already advanced most of the Standard Mail (what little there was) in our office. This mail was delivered on M/T/W. By the time Thursday came around, there was hardly any mail. When I reported to my case on Thursday, there was ONE FOOT OF FLATS and ONE FOOT OF LETTERS. Normally, I would have about three feet of each to start with. Well, on to Plan B.

I had planned on giving an honest and accurate route check, walking at a normal pace of over 100 paces per minute, if volumes were about what they were the REST OF THE YEAR. That was Plan A. But with just a comical two feet I resorted to Plan B. Plan B, though, is also honest and accurate. Plan B is an honest and accurate assessment of how long it would take me to carry TWO FEET - which isn't long. TWO FEET takes about 30 minutes to case. I later received about another half foot. I reported at 7:00 AM. By 8:15 AM I had already loaded my truck.

You see, TWO AND A HALF FEET OF MAIL, spread out over a 600+ stop route, isn't much per loop. In my postal career I can only remember one other time that I had such a light load. (A severe ice storm prevented mail from being delivered to our Post Office many years ago.) Anyway, with such a light load, I was able to literally run from house to house. I was finished by noon! I didn't even have to take a lunch (the route on this day was actually shorter than six hours) and I didn't even have to take any breaks. With about TWO FEET OF MAIL you don't need any breaks or lunches anyway.

Upon returning to the station the route examiner went to the back office and smugly informed the THREE in-office route examination team members that I was already finished. They had the mixed smug looks of both victory and "I told you so." "We finally caught us one of these carriers," they looked to be thinking.

As far as any reasonable person is concerned, the route inspection was another exercise in futility. The numbers they have now are even worse than the old numbers. (Apparently, the area office wasn't happy with the numbers from a year ago, and wanted "valid" numbers to make new routes.) By running the route (literally) the numbers management now have are useless. And if they use these numbers, they will only be creating the "perfect storm" for a letter carrier on the OTDL to bid on the route and get all the overtime they want.

If they had wanted valid numbers for real situations, then they wouldn't have apparently manipulated the mail to reduce mail volumes during the week of the route checks. It sounds like an urban legend almost - a conspiracy worthy of the X-Files - that USPS managers would hold mail back during the checks. It's still hard for me to believe. I'm still not sure if I believe it. But I've only had TWO FEET OF MAIL only one other time in my career, and that was during an ice storm.

Next week they will start working on adjusting the routes. When it comes to my neck of the woods, someone is going to get screwed (or get rich), and it's not going to be me! I'm bidding on another route and will let management deal with the mess they have made. There's a couple of things that can be done for/to my route. They can add three hours to my route! That would be funny, especially this fall when mail volumes are at their heaviest. (Just a year ago my route was evaluated at over 8 hours, based on almost equally low mail volumes. See last year's updates below) Or, if they split up my route, someone is going to get a section of territory that normally takes (for example one section of my route) two hours to carry, and it is only going to be rated at about one hour. If carriers didn't agree with the numbers from the computer before, they sure won't agree with the new numbers.

My route isn't the only one that will have misleading numbers. The other carriers that were checked on Thursday also had absurdly low volumes of mail. Another carrier, that left about the same time I did, had been angrily walking around the station in disbelief asking the clerks "are you SURE this is all the mail?"

The station manager could only shake his head at the low volume of mail. Though he's probably one that would like to see the routes adjusted a little long to increase productivity, he knows, like the rest of the carriers, what is coming: Conflict, overtime, penalty overtime, bad attitudes, and plenty of bellyaching.

The Route Inspection Team will leave at the end of the week. They will probably think they have been very successful. I don't mean to be mean, but I hope some day that one of these smug individuals will have to supervise or manage a station that they've turned upside down - which brings me to a point: Route checks should be done by local supervisors and managers, not by roving examiners who have nothing at stake in the process. I believe that local managers, who have a stake in their operating environment, would be more conscientious about the routes they make.
   

Anyway, if you remember, the routes were all adjusted to 8 hours and 15 minutes based on the lightest week of the year. Now that it's October, traditionally the heaviest time of the year, AND election season, the situation (just as expected) has become unworkable. You get the most out of people when their job is reasonable - meaning that a person has a reasonable opportunity to complete his or her tasks for the day. That is not the case anymore. Now with twice the volume, many carriers have just given up and now do only the bare minimum - which isn't much! As a result, mail is just piling up.

Here's what happened last week - the week before Columbus Day. The mail was extremely heavy - forget about what you are hearing. Yeah, First Class letters are somewhat down, but advertising mail is WAY UP! Anyway, it is also political mailing season. Each day we received up to four mostly full coverage mailings of election mail. Each day the delivery supervisor said to cut back mail. Each day the carriers cut back the thinnest mail, including full coverage ad mailings such as those on postcards. After a few days the station was woefully cutting back mail that should have been delivered days ago. Many time-sensitive mailings were not delivered on time - in fact they were not even delivered that week at all. You see, by the time Saturday rolled around the carrier's cutback cases were stuffed full of thin, full coverage mailings. There were tens of thousands of pieces of mail that had not been delivered. On Saturday, October 12th, the Saturday before Columbus Day, all post offices in the city were tasked to deliver all accumulated mail (since Tuesday, October 15th, the day after Columbus Day, would be extremely,  - most of the rest of the non-postal nation worked on Columbus Day). The delivery supervisor called up the area manager and told him that we would have to pay some carriers double time to get the station cleaned up. The area manager, of course, didn't know the true circumstances and told the supervisor to cut back the mail once again. So the station went into Tuesday, the day after a holiday, with thousands of pieces of cut back mail only to face a multitude of new mail in a shortened work week.

Who is to blame? You can't blame the carriers - they argued against the route checks from the beginning. You can't blame the supervisors. They didn't want the route checks either, and they also didn't ask for 300 pound carriers and carriers who couldn't even speak English. You can't blame the area manager. He's caught between this bad situation and a postmaster who doesn't want any excuses, nor carriers working on double time. You can however, blame the entire system. Until someone transforms the functional-level system that breeds contempt, revenge, and dishonesty, then I don't want to hear about a supposed Transformation Plan that means nothing about how the mail actually gets delivered. I say these things, not because I want to expose the Postal Service for what is happening, but so that hopefully someone at USPS HQ can see that REAL organization change is needed! Obviously, this information is not going up the chain of command. It's not even getting to the area manager!
   

The Area Manager was concerned about the Penalty Time, so he instructed the station to cut mail so that carriers can hold it to ten hours. However, that has led to the station missing the time dates on many time-dated mailings, as well as being several days late with color-coded mail.

Unfortunately, it won't be getting better any time soon, especially with Summer leave periods approaching. The only thing that can save the station from total bedlam is the traditional declining of mail volumes in the Summer months. Moreover, the rate increase may help alleviate volumes.

In a perfect world I would be for higher mail volumes (job security). Unfortunately, the station was checked on what has turned out to be the lightest week of the year and the routes were all adjusted to more than 8 hours. Now that we are getting 17% more volume, and with the routes at more than 8 hours (USPS figures), the situation is almost unworkable. Combine this with full coverage mailings and carrier routed mail that are now split between numerously numbered and sequenced new routes, and you can see where this is leading.

Sadly, there will only be increased costs for the USPS and diminished service for customers due to this route check. In the end, the best the USPS and the station can hope for in this situation is to get back to the workhours that were being used prior to the checks. Here's what happened: Prior to the check the station's base carrier hours were 296 hours. That's 37 routes times 8 hours = 296. (Some routes were under 8 hours, so the true base was lower than 296). Now, all routes are, on average, about 8 hours and 15 minutes). One route was cut, so that's 36 routes times 8 hours and 15 minutes = 297 hours. Somehow, even though there is very little growth in this inner-city area, the USPS managed to add an hour to base hours, when it was really trying to reduce hours. In the final analysis, and in this situation, the USPS should have left this station alone.