Postal Window Clerk Issued Discipline For Failing To Fill Out Customer’s International Forms?

June 26, 2009 by
Filed under: APWU, postal, usps, window clerks 

From APWU Tri County First Area Local (Media, Pennsylvania)

Sharon Young, a Sales and Service Associate at the Norristown Post Office, has been issued a Letter of Suspension following an incident with a customer who complained that Ms. Young did not assist her with filling out more than 100 customs forms for parcels the customer was mailing to Japan. 

All Sales and Service Associates have received training instructions from postal management not to fill out forms for customers, and to provide the forms to the customers and ask them to step back to the front of the line when the forms are completed.  The training instructions concerning international customs forms stem from regulations posted in the International Mail Manual.  However, the Norristown Post Office management decided to skip over several levels of discipline and contradict Postal Handbooks and Manuals in an effort to “keep the customer happy.”  The Tri County First Area Local Chief Steward for Norristown is assisting Ms. Young with grievances regarding the suspension and accompanying harassment.

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Comments

No Comments on Postal Window Clerk Issued Discipline For Failing To Fill Out Customer’s International Forms?

  1. rob on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 6:51 am

    2. Dumb boss. We’re not allowed to fill them out since if there’s something inside not allowed by destination country, they’ll blame us.

  2. almost home on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 7:44 am

    3. see, they they just don’t get it. I bet this ssa was proably alone at the window too, since they are cutting staff!! What a joke the po is

  3. Don on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 7:46 am

    4. Managment tolerates this type of unprofessional as well as asinine behavior from its management personnel. They would never allow an employee to act in such a manner without heaping discipline on them. This blatant disregard for proper procedure (their failure to follow THEIR OWN handbooks and manuals) should result in the management individual involved being disciplined “up to and including removal from the USPS” as they commonly tell us. The USPS is constantly harping on budget concerns and the financial situation they are currently facing yet they allow this type of action all around the country with no repercussions on the management people involved although it is costing them untold amounts in settlements that should never exist if they were the least bit competent in performing the funtions of their positions.

  4. Letter Carrier on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 7:59 am

    5. The reason the PO is going broke third world managers who can’t read english just want to make the employee suffer. Fear tactics is what they learned in their country and have been in the postal service since we let those non citizens in the PO in 1984. Thanks Reagan u bastard.

  5. Freeatlast on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 9:11 am

    6. Typical Postal abuse.
    Yall should take the early out like I did!!! LIFE IS GOOD!

  6. cran on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 12:23 pm

    7. It is one thing when as employee it doesn’t happen to you, but when it does, it is crazy. THe employee feels they are in a heap of a mess with their job on line. Right now, usps is not above any means of being shoddy, showing their true colors, that they don’t care about their clerk employees. Clerks are “dime a dozen” and “indisposable”. People are being kicked to the curb, one place to the next for whatever reason they can make up to get rid of them.

  7. Anonymous on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 12:50 pm

    8. Thought they were suppossed to start with a dissucsion first what a real joke sounds like post office is going down fast like the crap thats going on in cincinnati bmc

  8. Screwed Again!!! on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 12:52 pm

    9. She will be off for 18 months. It happened to me.
    Like I have said before the PO has tons of cash to
    waste. If and when this case is won look at all the cash the PO wasted. She should sue management.
    I know its a hard thing todo but it has been done.
    Thats one big problem the PO covers up there management mistakes at any cost.
    So as for the PO going broke its all BS. If it was true congress would be all over top management
    asses, but there not. There is something more to this game the PO is playing. I am sure we will all find out soon enough.

  9. mailmaninks on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 2:57 pm

    10. IT IS BECAUSE OF DUMBASS’S LIKE THIS THAT THE POST OFFICE IS IN FINANCIAL TROUBLE. I WISH SOMEONE WOULD SHOW HIM WHERE TO PUT THE LETTER OF SUSPENSION.

  10. old clerk on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 7:21 pm

    11. here is postal logic… to be a level 7 ssa in a one man office you have to have 1 year experience as a window clerk. BUT..the supv who oversees you doesnt have to have any exp as a window clerk..haha..what a joke…
    as for the ssa who did not fill out forms.. we cant.. if something is filled out wrong the finger is pointed at the clerk.. same reason we cant fill out a money order for a senior citizen..have we all done it..dont know about you but i have.. common sense prevails.. unfortunately.. management has none..
    on a lighter note..i told a supv today that they didnt look busy maybe they should go on standby..ahah..they didnt like it but fuck’m…

  11. happy to be here on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 7:37 pm

    12. whine and bitch…frickin pansies…just quit, quit, quit if it is so horrible.

  12. Anonymous on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 11:18 pm

    13. happy to be here sounds like he may be management material…but what happened there in Norristown doesn’t sound like something Postmaster Lisa Lehman would do…unless she told one of her cronies to do it so they would get fired for being so stupid…hang in there Sharon, this is one case the customer was definitely wasn’t right!

  13. Anonymous on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 2:40 am

    14. Discipline is crazy now. Almost every window clerk in the entire Houston district was given a letter of warning for “failure to follow instructions”. After wasting time sending us to training to tell us how to measure a parcel and telling us we didn’t have to measure our own priority boxes, they then turned around and are giving discipline because the computer says we didn’t measure every parcel we had. How much waste is going in to giving thousands of letters of warning and the time grieving them. Bet the trainers didn’t get disciplined for obvious bad trainig.

  14. anon on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 5:06 am

    15. Too bad she didn’t help the customer and the mystery shopper wasn’t next in line waiting!!!!! We are all know our jobs, but all it takes in our office is a whining customer and the supervisor folds and gives them what they want. We as window clerks look like complete fools when this happens. If only everyone was on the same page, work would be so much easier!

  15. Anonymous2 on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 6:25 am

    16. “but what happened there in Norristown doesn’t sound like something Postmaster Lisa Lehman would do…” Any discipline up to the level of suspension has to be signed off on by the PM.

  16. METOO on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 8:19 am

    17. The person responible for this “discipline” should be fired! For having no common sense!

  17. Stew Sue on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 12:58 pm

    18. I was told not to fill out customer’s forms because if there is a mistake in the written information, the customer will blame the clerk and because we don’t have time to fill out customer forms because we are so busy. I thought that we should fill out forms for customers so that is what I did…………..until a customer came in with a package with a bad address on it and told managment that I filled the form out wrong and that she didn’t want to pay to send it again. Unless someone has Parkinson’s or is disabled I do not fill out there forms for them…..peroid……it will come back to haunt you…..:)

  18. Stew Sue on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 12:59 pm

    19. should have been “their forms”

  19. Warren on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 4:15 pm

    20. I have been in the PO for 25 yrs, nothing surprises me about the PO. They treat their workers as slaves or mentally challenge people. Its not surprising that the PO is failing. The PO should be called The PU because it really stinks

  20. john/carrier on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 5:14 pm

    21. why does this surprise anyone? Don’t we all know that all people in management are scumbags?

  21. Toaster on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 5:36 pm

    22. The latest customs forms has a ‘customer’ set of instuctions on how to properly fill out the form.
    So, whats the problem with the nimrod who issued the discipline?

  22. wilbur517 on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 8:53 pm

    23. Toaster,
    If they are anything like the bosses around here,
    they like to blame first and find out (maybe)later what really went on. And of course deny any wrong doing on their part even if the facts prove out.
    Typical, unfortunately.

  23. retired on Sun, 28th Jun 2009 5:17 am

    24. She’ll get an all expenses paid vacation by a dumb shit management.

  24. retired PM on Sun, 28th Jun 2009 5:49 am

    25. Since i left do you people not have “any” semi-intelligent managers left??

  25. postalclerk on Mon, 29th Jun 2009 2:27 am

    26. just anoth example of why the postal service is where it is today.. Idiots are in charge and don’t have a clue..

  26. to sweet on Thu, 2nd Jul 2009 6:30 pm

    27. Maybe if Lisa Layman stop sleeping around with her manager Chris Hammonds, she can run her office correctly. Discipline her supervisor for issuing a dumbass suspension.

  27. phyweb on Thu, 2nd Jul 2009 8:27 pm

    28. I know Sharon personally and I know for a fact that she knows her job inside and out and is very good to her customers. I think what they are doing to her is outrageous! They should be ashamed of themselves! Seems like it doesn’t matter what job anyone has at the PO – all of them have lousy supervisors who NEVER did their job but seem to know how to tell THEM how to do it. My husband is a mail carrier and my brother-in-law is a machine operator. They ALL get treated like CRAP! TO MANY SUPERVISORS and NONE OF THEM KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING – Get rid of some of them and STOP THE BONUS GIVING!

  28. E-liz on Sat, 4th Jul 2009 11:10 pm

    29. I have never ever encountered such a destructive and psychotic work environment as the postal service produces.

    I was a firefighter in South Central LA, and I am a Vietnam-era veteran.

    this is just the worst. There is something just peculiarly cruel and destructive about the Postal Service.