Closing some post Offices

[Dee]

Well I certainly didn't get all the holidays off. I remember working out schedules FOR holidays and on certain holidays, DOUBLEING UP PATROL. As far as the weather, try walkin in 130 degree heat, in a heavily wooded, and brushy river bottom with a pack, a weapon, spare magazines, and trying not to step on anything that would bite you and kill you, or blow you up. Of course there was always winter setting up on dealers, or tracking a elderly person or small child that had wondered off, or the oh so pleasant task of diving for a child that had fell thru the ice.
The one up side to all this though was WE "WEREN'T" UNION! See we really never did it for the money. Sure they paid us, but it was barely above minimum wage in those days, and I don't think mail men ever had to take a bullet for someone else's problem. Of course, unless a mailman had gone "postal" in fit of rage over his boss being mean to him.
Face it hoss, the post office is like every other UNION job. It pays the worker more than the business is able to support, both DURING the working career, and RETIREMENT benefits. THAT'S why their goin broke.

[Hodr]

I believe there are good men and fair who have commentated in this thread.  I am perhaps prejudiced in that I am retired Postal.  Let me add though that I have been sworn to Sherriffs office for Search and Rescue.  This was what I trained for and helped train others for.  I have walked down that brush covered ditch, with the pack, the provisions and into homless camps, meth labs, and marijuana plantations but my only weapon allowed was a radio to call after it got sticky.  I and my wife found, not helped find, found more than one corpse.  As a postal carrier I have taken hurt children home, delivered to gang controlled turf, called in three burglars, assisted local police, discovered then pulled open suicide garages, put out small fires.  My kids were part of an Explorer Post with the Sherrifs Dept. that went out in flood conditions with county convicts and kept a local sanitation district from covering about 11 square miles in human waste.  All of this was after I finished my day job as a union Postal Carrier with a 35 pound satchel on my shoulder.  I do not know about overpaid but where I lived, I did not make enough to qualify for a house.  I am not going to say that what I did should be compared to any one else, but I have never even heard of any one else coming out to help the mailman in blue get it done.  Our son is an Eagle Scout, at his last exam he was asked for the definition of a HERO. His sponsor came to tell my wife and I what his answer was, "A hero is someone who goes out every day and gets the job done"
Three years in Army green, thirty five years in Postal blue, proud of every one.

Hodr

[Dee]

I think my point here, and perhaps others, is that the post office has burdened itself with bureaucracy to the point of failure. This is the same problem with other professions such as the teachers and others in Wisconsin. UNREALISTIC benefits, and such things as too many unproductive holidays with full pay for not coming to work. Imagine what Martin Luther King Day costs. One man making say $18.00 an hour gets paid $144.00 that day. Now multiply that by 10,000 employees making that same wage (or more) the same day. That's ONE MILLION, FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS, in one day, for NOT WORKING. It is not a working plan. Now throw in Christmas, New Years, Forth Of July, and even that really great one PRESIDENT'S DAY .
I've owned and ran two businesses. If I had shut down for such things I would have went broke.
The unions have out lived their usefulness, and have become what they were created to prevent, and on an even larger scale. The post office is suffering because there are more efficient businesses, doing the same thing, better. The cash cow known as the US Postal Service has been milked dry, and there is really no defense.
I believe Hodr, that YOU are a good guy, and a fair guy most likely. You however, are a member of a corrupt union for which you really have no control, and they while taking your union dues and getting you good pay, with great benefits, have satisfied you, while killing the business for the future.
As far as your definition of a hero goes, I hardly consider the mail carrier a hero, unless he rushes into a burning house to pull out the occupants. Delivering mail is no more heroic than a truck driver, trying to deliver freight in the same type of weather. It is a JOB, and nothing more.
A hero is someone that will put his own life, and well being on the line for someone else, and delivering the mail doesn't even get close. I myself spent 20 years in blue, but it wasn't postal blue, and we had to carry a badge and gun. Sometimes several.
By the way. Thank you for your service.
Also! Both my son's were AIR BORNE, with the youngest being a Staff Sgt. in the 82nd Air Borne with one combat tour in Afgansitan, and TWO in Iraq. Now "HE'S" a hero, and he didn't loose one man in all his missions.