Delayed Mail at Cape Girardeau & Incompetent OIG Agents
[The information posted on this page is done so by Randy Zelznick in an attempt to get answers and proper mail service standards reestablished at the Cape Girardeau, MO postal facility]
There has been an ongoing problem of intentional mail delay at the facility since January of this year. Here are the most recent communications with USPS OIG. No action has been taken thus far. In fact, the OIG Special Agent has suddenly dropped the case.
Vern, Next time can you send me some of the tracking nos. off the packages so I can track them? Also, when was this mail rec’d at the plant? Was there a truck it could have been placed on to ST? I assume it is supposed to go to the NDC or Annex? I need a little more details.
Thanks
Ellen Massey Special Agent USPS-Office of Inspector General 1600 Woodstone Drive, Suite 100 St. Charles, MO 63303-9928
These scans were taken at about 2300 hours. I may get a talking to tonight. The Tour 3 Expeditor told me the fan got filthy when the folks here on days found out I scanned the parcels last night. We scan them every night, it’s just that I left a tag on those four floats from yesterday letting them know. Apparently, that mail is only important if it is being scanned. I am going to run one of the numbers and see if they are being scanned in at all.
2 DAYS LATER, after working on this case for 6 months….
Vern, There is no need to send any further data to me. Only the KC, MO OIG office can assist you regarding Cape issues. Sorry I can be of no help. Ellen
Ellen Massey Special Agent USPS-Office of Inspector General 1600 Woodstone Drive, Suite 100 St. Charles, MO 63303-9928 O: (636) 345-9765 C: (314) 914-1855 F: (866) 644-6820 emassey@uspsoig.gov
Missed this float. None of this was scanned as received. I did the first scan just now on these parcels.
Cape Giradeau Plant manager put out a memo (June 17, 2014):
Cape Girardeau Plant Manager Memo
Mid-America District Manager put out a memo (June 9, 2014):
Gail M. Hendrix, Mid-America District Manager Memo
This following exchange of emails is from when OIG counsel was first sought, in January of this year. Strange how inefficient and incompetent this OIG Special Agent was in “wasting” 6 months of the agency’s time and money concerning herself with something she now claims is totally out of her jurisdiction. Isn’t intentional mail delay the business of EVERY OIG Agent, no matter where you are domiciled? Read the history below and you tell me what you think happened.
From: Bean [mailto:walking.dead.bean@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, January 27, 2014 11:45 PM To: Massey, Ellen Subject: Instructions To Not Move Delayed Mail
To begin, we have not been sending priority mail as described in this memo we got today. We have sent 1 box of priority mail to STL on that truck in recent weeks and it was one of the Centralia boxes that is already Star Routed.
We have deliverable mail that we are instructed to hold in place so that STL doesn’t have to process it. This makes us, as a facility, look bad and I fail to see how further delaying the mail helps STL correct its shortcomings in their mail processing capabilities. This reeks more of mid-level managers wanting to show an inaccurate picture of their mail accountability and condition reports.
Is holding this mail the proper thing to do? I do not want to get into hot water down the road for following the instructions of a manager who will no longer be around.
Holding mail is NEVER the proper thing to do. However, I want you to continue to follow the instructions you are given by your managers. You need to document when you feel you are being instructed to do something that appears to be illegal or may lead to allegations of misconduct to include willful delay of any class of mail.
I hope to find time to meet with you next week.
Ellen Massey
Special Agent USPS-Office of Inspector General 1600 Woodstone Drive, Suite 100 St. Charles, MO 63303-9928
This was mail I came in to see just now on our dock. This is raw 1C, Priority, Periodicals. It is my understanding that the supervisor was instructed to instruct us not to send it.
I was just informed that there is mail being held at Sikeston & Poplar Bluff daily as well. There is an early semi truck collection run that picks up there. There is a second semi truck that comes through Poplar Bluff (1700) & Sikeston (1800). There is a third truck that leaves Poplar Bluff an hour after the 2nd truck (1800). That last truck does not stop at Sikeston. Only that 1st collection run that leaves Poplar Bluff at 1200 noon is the only one of those three trucks that is allowed to pick up collection mail. The remaining collection mail that comes in after that first truck leaves is left until the next day.
From what I am hearing from my truck drivers, this is not unique to those offices only. This is happening all over our service area.
The mail I took photos of and sent to you that is here every night is just the tip of the iceberg. If all the collection mail that is being held was collected here, I would guess that the amount would be staggering. I say this because most folks hit the boxes after work in the afternoon. You must also consider that the mail being held in these figures do not even include all the carrier-collected residential and business mail that they bring in at the end of their day.
I could use your advice. We had an OIC who was moved in to close Cape Girardeau down for consolidation. That is what she does. To make the plant look as bad as possible (sabotage productivity), she ordered that the dumpers from our the de-plasticizing operation (Flat Prep 035) be removed from the workroom floor. This greatly increased the man-hours in that operation while greatly diminishing the productivity for obvious reasons. We are so backed up with flats most days, we do not run parcels on the SPBS, because we are running all the delayed backlog of flats. With Cape off the chopping block for now, that OIC is now gone, and nobody here in management seems interested in putting it back in, thus making that a viable operation again. Here is the backstory, the two shift supervisors on nights are up for day jobs elsewhere and that is all they care about. What do you see as the most direct route to getting those re-installed? Obviously ergonomics and safety are factors. But productivity and timeliness in processing our customers’ flats are most certainly suffering.
Are you part of the Gateway District or another district?
Ellen Massey Special Agent USPS-Office of Inspector General 1600 Woodstone Drive, Suite 100 St. Charles, MO 63303-9928 O: (636) 345-9765 C: (314) 914-1855 F: (866) 644-6820 emassey@uspsoig.gov
These are various images of unscanned mail left sitting on the dock and in the facility:
June 27, 2014
1 thought on “Delayed Mail at Cape Girardeau & Incompetent OIG Agents”
Want proper staffing, cleaner facilities, better equipment, locking doors, accountability for safety on the street and on the workroom floor?
Cape Girardeau’s P&DF was one of those few honored sites with the VPP Star Award. It got us our best years of working and serving our Southeast Missouri customers with the best service that was the envy of St. Louis, Hazelwood and any other facility in the region and both districts.
They wanted what we had. It wasn’t the positions that made us so successful, it was the people and managers we had at the time who saw the benefits and perks that came with being a VPP Star Site. The USPS can take every job in rural America and pack it into filthy, overcrowded, inefficient and logjammed facilities like STL P&DC, the Annex & NDC, all it gets you is massive failure and corruption, as USPS management continues to lie and delay mail. Worse yet, the OIG assists with the coverup by ignoring the delayed, missent mail looping through every office in Southeast Missouri.
The OIG Report on Hazelwood and the localized impact on the STL Metro area stations & facilities is a whitewash and I cannot understand why the The American Postal Workers Union is silent on this. The USPS OIG is painting this as a geographically isolated impact. For lack of a better word, this is a coverup.
The regional impact of District Management’s gross mismanagement in all of Rural Southeast Missouri is decimating the public trust in our ability to serve our customers with any acceptable standard of basic customer service. We are failing and the OIG is again covering it up.
Again, if they can get away with it in the heart of America, nowhere in America is going to be spared in the march to privatization.
Be vocal! Demand better from your unions and your elected representatives in government. Are you really going to lay down and take it all without a fight?
See video: Free OSHA VPP Intro – Go VPP!!!