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I hate to even mention this, but I retired from USPS seventeen years ago, after working for thirty two years. Actually, I should say I was forced out rather than retired. At some point the unions were coerced into signing a two-tier contract, with all new hires coming into the service at a greatly reduced rate of pay. Naturally, as soon as a large enough workforce was created at the lower pay rate, management turned an eye on those of us with seniority, seeking to get us out the door. It made sense from an economic standpoint, but as you might expect, they were eliminating the experienced workers without much thought given to the end result. I held many different jobs during the course of my tenure, and at the end was actually wearing several different hats at once. One of my more difficult tasks monitoring PMB companies, that is Private Mail Boxes. A considerable amount of fraud was perpetrated through such outfits, they basically act as a receiver for mail, and often had business fronts set up with secretaries and phone lines, all to make it appear that a client had an actual business with a physical address. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The number of scams that originated with such companies was almost overwhelming, especially in a large city such as where I worked. At one point there were 14 different PMBs operating in our town, with thousands of people utilizing their services, all of which I was supposed to be vetting whilst simultaneously performing other duties. I worked closely with Postal Inspectors, police departments, the DMV, all in an attempt to keep things on the straight and narrow. It was a complicated job, and I was the sole person running it in that office, and the most experienced person in the San Francisco Postal District. I went from city to city trying to train other employees, and running multiple audits. So, long story made longer, a few months before retiring, I gave my managers plenty of time to allow me to train a replacement. Not a week would go by without my reminding them of the need to do so. And as I expected, they never assigned anyone to take my place, and just piled on the tasks I needed to accomplish before leaving. Unfortunately, that was the game plan across the board. Anyone with a complicated job was patted on the head and reassured that a new victim would be found, and we all actually left without ever training replacements! You can imagine the state of the affairs that left the PO in!
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