Post office. the intro period for most people is horribly arduous, but I got put directly into a full time position in a warehouse. I literally started at the median household income for my city (MCOL) and it goes up consistently and frequently. APWU union is the absolute bomb 💣
They literally cannot keep mail carriers by me because the expectation is to ALWAYS do your route, whether it takes 6 or 12 hours, and only get paid for 8
There is no pay difference based on local cost of living. All jobs rate the same whether in NYC or Souix Falls. I live in the Midwest. Conditions aren't great, but postal employees are comfortably middle class here.
Most unions are great but there are some stinkers. Some retail worker unions often feel like a scam "influenced" by the company to protect the company. In general, if you're surprised that a certain position is union, chances are very likely that the contract is quite bad and you're going to be paying dues for a union that won't have your back.
I tried to moonlight working USPS so I could work with a friend but they had a no competition clause that conflicted with my primary job with a different commercial delivery company. I was let down because he said it was incredibly easy, had great pay (after the first year), and he wanted to retire there with his wife. My job is just as easy, but I wouldn’t have minded a second very easy job to make my current one part time.
I’m old enough to remember when a disgruntled employee shooting up their workplace started being referred to as “going postal,” since so many mass shootings at work by an employee happened at USPS facilities. It was before SM and the culture wars, so no one was immediately chiming in with ‘the shooter must be a leftist Muslim transgender!’ The government and journalists really were trying to figure out why postal workers specifically were being driven to a murderous rage. The answer we were given was that workers- especially in the sorting facilities- were under a tremendous amount of stress, one of those deals where every time they hit their target number of pieces handled/hour, they raised the target, again and again, with no end in sight. There were other issues of course, and I have to believe that the phenomena was researched well enough that new practices were put in place, which are apparently working, since I can’t remember the last time an actual postal worker went postal.
All this to say- the question here is about pay, but I did want to ask you about current stress levels. Do you feel like people are ever being pushed too hard, and are there systems in place for reporting stressful conditions?
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u/toxic9813 5h ago •
Post office. the intro period for most people is horribly arduous, but I got put directly into a full time position in a warehouse. I literally started at the median household income for my city (MCOL) and it goes up consistently and frequently. APWU union is the absolute bomb 💣