Flyer points to US Postal Service plague
The United States Postal Service announced that postage on a first-class letter will rise to 60 cents this summer to keep up with inflation. It also reported losing money again in 2021, for the 14th consecutive year. President Biden signed the U.S. Postal Service Reform bill into law last week, which will overhaul its finances.
It’s easy to accept the premise that modernizing its equipment and systems will cure what ails the Post Office. I’m afraid the systems that need reform most are not technological but social. Machines are easier to update than people.
I was at my local post office in mid-January to pick up a package that had supposedly been delivered. I had the tracking number and an email notice from the vendor. It took them a while, but they figured out the tracking number was for a different package that was delivered to a different address. It wasn’t my package. It wasn’t even my tracking number.
I stood at the service window for half an hour as three or four people tried to sort out the confusion. At one point, the shift supervisor and manager for the office got involved. I waited for long spells with no available reading material. I couldn’t help perusing the bulletin board adjacent to the window.
At eyeball height was this flyer, printed in all caps: “USPS IN EUGENE IS CURRENTLY HIRING / PLEASE GO TO OUR WEBSITE AT WWW.USPS.COM/EMPLOYEMENT / THEN SEARCH AND APPLY FOR JOBS / DON’T MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY!
I noticed immediately that “employment” had been misspelled in the web address. Since I had time to kill between attempts to track the package, I used my phone to confirm that the web address on the flyer didn’t work but the correct spelling did.
I shared this information with the shift supervisor. “If you’re looking for proofreaders and copy editors, this flyer is brilliant,” I teased. “Otherwise, that misspelling might be why you’re not getting much of a response, despite a starting wage of $22 per hour.”
The supervisor shook his head, tilted slightly down. “I’m not surprised,” he muttered. And then he promised to fix it.
Let’s break down his response. Before he uttered a word, his downward glance told the story. His expectations for his flyer producers is very low. Even if he wasn’t surprised by the error, was that the best thing to share first with a customer? It didn’t sound like anyone would be held accountable for the misstep, including him.
Accountability is tricky business. Managers must always be willing to ask questions of themselves first. Did they assign that task to the wrong person? Was somebody improperly trained? Does this failure fit a larger pattern? Does the system require a failsafe? Are employees overworked or careless? Is morale flagging, producing this flag? Only then can accountability be applied to the problem at hand.
Maybe they’ve filled every vacancy and the flyer is moot. But it’s not mute. The flyer is still up, three months later. Has the misspelling been corrected? (Shake your head with me.) We’re not surprised.
Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday and Sunday for The Register-Guard. Past columns are archived at www.dksez.com.
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Flyer at Eugene post office points to US Postal Service plague
