Latest / United We Scan / The Aftermath Part Deux / 150th Episode

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The Aftermath Part Deux / 150th Episode · United We Scan

• 0:34
  Hey, welcome to the United We Scan podcast.
• 0:37
  Just a quick disclaimer here that any of the views and
• 0:39
  opinions expressed by the individuals are not that of the
• 0:44
  USPS or the NRLCA. This podcast is for
• 0:49
  entertainment purposes only and if you are in need of any
• 0:53
  assistance, please contact your designated union representative.
• 0:58
  Thank you. Welcome back, everybody.
• 1:01
  Woo. Episode 150.
• 1:04
  I know we were initially. Yeah, I know.
• 1:07
  I'm surprised we've made it this far.
• 1:12
  Initially, we were going to break into history, but given
• 1:14
  that mini mail survey and rowdy valuations have come out and it
• 1:20
  is causing quite the stir on the social webs, we may actually be
• 1:26
  called calling this one the Aftermath Part 2.
• 1:32
  So it won't be like the previous Aftermath episode, that's for
• 1:36
  darn sure. Yeah, it's been kind of ugly out
• 1:41
  there. Josh, how did you fare?
• 1:45
  I actually went my standard hours actually went up.
• 1:49
  But then again, I think that's mostly because we moved with the
• 1:53
  extra mileage and walking distances.
• 1:58
  I haven't had a chance to look at my paperwork to see what
• 2:00
  actually is up versus down or stayed the same.
• 2:06
  But I know looking back from what was it April 25 to October,
• 2:15
  that that six month period I was down 1000, about 1000 flats a
• 2:21
  week. So I have to look and see what
• 2:23
  my numbers are this time around now.
• 2:28
  So I was at 45 K and I lost 7 minutes so and I stayed A45K
• 2:42
  which I'm very thankful for but I have since August I have
• 2:49
  activated about 40 new build addresses.
• 2:54
  So looking through my numbers, I could thus far not tomorrow's
• 3:01
  going to be my tomorrow. I actually get my K day and I'm
• 3:05
  going to start getting in the nitty gritty a little bit more.
• 3:08
  But thus far, from what I can visually see, I lost about 9
• 3:14
  parcels on average a day. And my assumption is that we
• 3:21
  lost UPS parcels at the beginning of last year.
• 3:26
  And I think that it fully caught itself up.
• 3:32
  But yeah, so I I stayed the same.
• 3:34
  My office overall everybody lost about an hour or went down to
• 3:42
  the next base hour. Out of the 64 what is it 626460?
• 3:50
  Some routes only one route went up an hour.
• 3:55
  The rest all either stayed the same or dropped.
• 3:59
  We went from like 36 K routes to 30 K routes and then I think we
• 4:05
  went from 20 J routes to 15 and some of the JS went to HS and it
• 4:13
  was not good. This was probably the worst one
• 4:17
  since the initial 1. So I am thankful that I'm on a
• 4:24
  growth route and that my growth is essentially balancing out the
• 4:30
  the lack of parcels. My letters and my flat volume
• 4:34
  look like they either stay like my flat volume stay the same.
• 4:38
  My letter volume went up a little bit, which is kind of
• 4:40
  weird, but overall I it's not been not been good.
• 4:47
  And it, it seems like it's nationwide, which I know we'll
• 4:52
  get into in a little bit, but how about you, Kristen?
• 4:56
  Well, at the last mini mail survey, I came in at just three
• 5:01
  minutes over the low, low end, just stepping into at a 46 K.
• 5:09
  So I was just at what was it 5439?
• 5:14
  And then I did my dispute over two boxes.
• 5:19
  I got that. So that added an additional 3
• 5:22
  minutes. So, you know, still on the low
• 5:27
  end what, 6 minutes over. So that would have been at what,
• 5:30
  54, 40? I don't know.
• 5:34
  I'm not looking at the calculator at the moment, but I
• 5:38
  did you. Yeah, something like that.
• 5:40
  I came back at 5518 so I gained a little over 1/2 hour and put
• 5:48
  me right back in my comfort zone of my 46 K So I still have 30
• 5:51
  minutes before I'd hit a 47. You're not good now.
• 5:55
  I yes, I'm in that comfort zone where I pretty much like to be.
• 6:00
  Gives me a little bit of wiggle room there.
• 6:03
  I haven't really compared it with the last mini mail survey
• 6:07
  numbers just yet, just because, you know, my life is really
• 6:11
  crazy at the moment. So but yeah, I, I was happy.
• 6:15
  I stayed the same. I was happy I got into my safe
• 6:18
  zone where, you know, I am not stressing if I had too many
• 6:23
  boxes and I'm not stressing if I take away too many, you know, so
• 6:28
  many boxes. So I I'm happy with that.
• 6:32
  I can't complain. I was, I was going to say I
• 6:36
  should have said, you know, premise it with my results this
• 6:39
  time. This is the first time I've had
• 6:42
  a game. Every other survey I've lost
• 6:45
  between 2:00 and 3:00 at standard hours.
• 6:49
  And yes. Stayed but stayed A48K.
• 6:53
  Yeah, but stay, you know, have stayed a 48.
• 6:56
  K So I mean over overall, I mean it, it, it seems like based
• 7:02
  upon, you know, we all talk to different people across the
• 7:06
  country, you know, friends and other rural carriers and we can
• 7:11
  see like what our offices kind of did.
• 7:14
  But it generally from the initial and throughout this this
• 7:20
  week, as it's progressed, it seems like a majority of the
• 7:23
  routes went down this survey. That's what.
• 7:28
  It's feeling like yeah. And then how did the rest of
• 7:31
  your office do, Kristen? From what I've seen from the,
• 7:37
  you know, the few that I've talked to, pretty much everybody
• 7:40
  stayed the same. You know, maybe had a few
• 7:43
  minutes go up or there except for our POV route.
• 7:48
  He did lose an hour, but that has to do with we had Sunday
• 7:53
  start for Amazon and they're only doing the two other zip
• 7:56
  codes, which are his route and the other route.
• 7:59
  And so, yeah, he knew he was going to end up losing and he
• 8:02
  did. He end up losing like an hour
• 8:04
  and 15 minutes and dropped him. Down.
• 8:06
  Oh, so he lost the Monday parcels, Yes, that he would
• 8:09
  normally deliver, Yeah. Yep, Yep.
• 8:11
  So he he went from a 44 to a 43. Wow.
• 8:15
  But yeah, I don't really know. I know RJ route stayed the same.
• 8:20
  He didn't gain enough to knock him out of being able to high
• 8:23
  option. So he's he's still good there, I
• 8:27
  think pretty much. Otherwise things stayed the
• 8:28
  same. I don't know about the 47 K,
• 8:31
  haven't asked, haven't bothered to look.
• 8:33
  Oh, to see what he did, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I don't really care.
• 8:40
  Like you're still overburdened. You know Mr. Drama himself.
• 8:44
  So yeah, I really it's not an issue.
• 8:48
  But yeah, for the most part, I think most of our routes roughly
• 8:52
  stayed the same. The one lost an hour, but again,
• 8:55
  that's lost the Amazon parcels on Monday.
• 8:58
  So that's a big chunk and but isn't that, yeah, no, I was
• 9:02
  happy with my my comeback. I got my numbers.
• 9:06
  I wasn't disappointed. I was like, whew, I didn't lose
• 9:09
  any money. OK, I'm good.
• 9:10
  And I didn't go and I didn't, I didn't bust and go overburdened.
• 9:13
  So I'm good. Yep, that sweet spot.
• 9:17
  That sweet, sweet spot. Yes, yes, I am back to being,
• 9:21
  you know, roughly in the middle there and that's where I want to
• 9:24
  be. I know my office we have in the
• 9:29
  other zip code. I want to say 16 or 17 of the 17
• 9:34
  or 18 routes are frozen. And the reason I say that is
• 9:37
  because one of them said that the went down from a lower K to
• 9:44
  AJ route. So and I know she doesn't have
• 9:47
  the 10 years for the high take the high option, high low option
• 9:52
  SO. Yes, she's.
• 9:53
  And then? She's JN now.
• 9:56
  Yep she's like I'm fine with that because it's more money.
• 10:01
  Of the three in my zone, 1 lost I think about 30 minutes but she
• 10:08
  had just went to A48K last survey so she's still 48 K and
• 10:14
  the other one lost almost two hours and went to a down to a 46
• 10:19
  J with the high option. And you'd said she had lost one
• 10:22
  of her customer pickups, right? You'd said.
• 10:25
  Yes, yeah, we, we think we figured out that she lost a a
• 10:29
  huge pickup that was anywhere from 150 to 300 a day.
• 10:33
  So we think that probably where most of that time went and that
• 10:38
  would have been about a year ago now.
• 10:40
  At at Lynette's office, she lost 3 hours.
• 10:45
  So she went from a 44 to a 41 Ki think or maybe yeah, something
• 10:52
  like that. And then they everybody in her
• 10:56
  office lost and two routes from went from AK to an H out of that
• 11:00
  SMDC. Did they lose?
• 11:04
  Like did they lose Amazon delivery?
• 11:07
  No, no, this is. This is the Mail Lion.
• 11:10
  This is an SMDC. Wow.
• 11:13
  Yeah. Everybody lost and two routes
• 11:15
  went from an 8 to an 8. Wow.
• 11:18
  Yeah, I know in that that very last count in 2018, I went from
• 11:26
  A47K to a 401K. So I I can definitely sympathize
• 11:32
  and empathize with all these people.
• 11:34
  I've been there before. Well, yeah.
• 11:37
  That hurts. From what I understand in the
• 11:40
  office that I'm in, because I wasn't in this office for that
• 11:43
  last actual mail count in 2018, I was still in my old office,
• 11:47
  right? I do know that all the routes
• 11:50
  tanked because that was the year where, you know, it was the pill
• 11:53
  packages, if they could fit them in the slot, they were counting
• 11:56
  as a flat. And the supervisor at the time
• 12:00
  who was OIC, who's now our postmaster, under the direction
• 12:06
  of the Puma at the time, counted all the pill packages as flats.
• 12:10
  And so all the routes tanked. The route that I was on went
• 12:14
  from a 40 or the route that I'm my route now I know dropped down
• 12:21
  to like a 42 or a 40. Yeah, dropped down to a 42.
• 12:26
  And then when we and then with our Rex in the first mini mail
• 12:30
  survey, it did go up to a 45. Oh wow.
• 12:33
  Yeah, yeah. And so with with our Rex went
• 12:38
  into place, all the routes to my office gained because of the
• 12:42
  previous that and Amazon came in two weeks after that actual mail
• 12:46
  count. So they didn't have Amazon back
• 12:49
  then and then came in and get paid for it for how many years?
• 12:54
  And so everybody went up and now it's, you know, I know at least
• 13:00
  in my office, it's starting to even out a bit.
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  You know, spring mini mail survey last year my route did go
• 13:07
  down to a 45, but that was understandable.
• 13:11
  And then in the fall time it was back up to a 46 and now it's
• 13:15
  back up to a 46. So in the middle where it was
• 13:18
  when I center. Yeah, yeah, Cuz it was a 45 when
• 13:21
  I took the, as I was getting ready to bid on the route and
• 13:25
  that mini mail survey, cuz I was running that route from like
• 13:28
  September up until it went up forbid when I was awarded the
• 13:31
  route as an RCA. So, you know, I worked my tail
• 13:34
  off on that route and I still do.
• 13:36
  I I have a very high maintenance route, let's put it that way.
• 13:41
  Even today my postmaster went through with the pars labels and
• 13:45
  she's like, well, you were the winner of the stickers today.
• 13:47
  And I was like, yeah, that's because all but two of those on
• 13:50
  there she goes, yeah, I said those were all move left, no
• 13:53
  addresses. I'm trying to clean it up before
• 13:55
  I start owning my new sub next week.
• 13:59
  Get all the junk out of there, yeah?
• 14:01
  Yeah, I'm trying to clean up the route a little bit more.
• 14:04
  I got, I got my, I got to do labels tomorrow before I leave
• 14:08
  and just, you know, I'm trying to clean it up best I can before
• 14:12
  my brand new sub who's in Academy this week starts OJT
• 14:16
  next week. So yeah, I said yeah, those were
• 14:20
  all who've left. No addresses.
• 14:22
  I think I have done probably 7 of them this week.
• 14:26
  Yeah, Oh my gosh. Oh yeah, it's just been well,
• 14:31
  the one I put on hold I held it more than 10 days, but that was
• 14:35
  I was waiting for that move left no address.
• 14:37
  Unfortunately Custer mine had passed away.
• 14:40
  I found out cuz I saw the the obituary online and so I no
• 14:46
  yeah. And then I saw EU haul truck at
• 14:48
  the house. It was a rental and you know, I
• 14:51
  saw EU haul truck first then I saw the obituary so I'm like OK,
• 14:55
  we'll just. And then the mail wasn't getting
• 14:56
  picked up so I went ahead and pulled it, threw a vacant card
• 14:59
  in there cuz I had seen other activity and yeah I have new
• 15:03
  residents in there now so I. Yeah.
• 15:07
  And so I waited. I held it for probably two weeks
• 15:11
  at least. Yeah, in case the family member
• 15:14
  gets in a forward for it or. And nothing.
• 15:16
  So I did the move left no address 2 days ago.
• 15:19
  Wow. Does that mean I can't just keep
• 15:21
  it piling up every day? It's all medical stuff is what's
• 15:24
  coming in. Yeah.
• 15:26
  Yeah. So yeah.
• 15:28
  And I have a few. Yeah, I know.
• 15:30
  I'm trying to catch some of them as I can to like, start getting
• 15:34
  that junk weeded out and cause less issues on the new RCA.
• 15:39
  Yeah. Which will help them.
• 15:41
  Yeah, overall, I hope so. What I one of the things that I
• 15:46
  I think is really interesting about like the what I've seen
• 15:50
  thus far too, is that the routes that were overburdened, most of
• 15:54
  them stayed overburdened from what I've gathered, and I've won
• 16:00
  a question that I've seen popping up a lot is what is
• 16:04
  considered overburden and 47 KS and 48 KS are considered
• 16:10
  overburdened. Yes, and if you.
• 16:12
  And I don't have this. If you look in the contract, it
• 16:15
  will tell you that those are interim evaluations.
• 16:19
  They are starred on the table under it's article 9.2.
• 16:26
  Point C .6 is a further route classifications and it is stored
• 16:32
  and underneath it does say normally these categories should
• 16:35
  only be used as interim classifications pending route
• 16:38
  adjustments. It starts at 5548 standard hours
• 16:43
  or A47K and 48 starts at 57 standard hours.
• 16:49
  So yeah, I mean, I'm at 5518, so I'm comfortable.
• 16:54
  Yeah, you're right. Yeah, the highest you can be
• 16:58
  without going over and the other.
• 17:01
  So there is still about 6200 overburden routes in the entire
• 17:06
  country and it and it pretty from what I've gathered it
• 17:10
  stayed about that still so. And we have like 120 something
• 17:15
  in Michigan alone, so. That are still.
• 17:18
  Overburdened My question for you of those ones that you said that
• 17:22
  the overburdened stayed overburdened, did they?
• 17:26
  Were they for example like my route after the before the 1st
• 17:29
  survey was like 65 hours? Did they lose but only lose an
• 17:35
  hour or two and they're still above the 57?
• 17:39
  I haven't gotten to like I don't know completely, but the ones
• 17:43
  that I've seen they were already like either over the table, the
• 17:49
  timetable and they just got closer to that base range of of
• 17:56
  a 48K. So they're actually in that 48
• 17:59
  hour rate, 48 K hour range there.
• 18:03
  But some of them there's some Fort of like 48 K's that went
• 18:06
  down a little bit, but it wasn't like the same drop overall like
• 18:11
  the other routes did I know of, I don't know, I don't one out of
• 18:16
  every 10 people I've kind of talked to went up a little bit
• 18:20
  and there's only like one person I've talked to that was that
• 18:24
  went overburdened this time in another state.
• 18:28
  But but they, I mean, so management is all has the
• 18:32
  ability to cut those routes. And if you are a person who's on
• 18:39
  an overburdened route, I would try and communicate with
• 18:42
  management, you know, and ask them like if you were slated to
• 18:46
  be adjusted and if you're in an office that has an overburdened
• 18:54
  route, that could open up them adjusting the entire zip code
• 18:59
  and squaring things off. Now if you are adjusted or a
• 19:04
  part of an adjustment due to an overburdened route, you are then
• 19:08
  a part of that 52 week of you're frozen other than for interim
• 19:14
  growth. But I would you, they cannot cut
• 19:18
  you or drop you below what you were.
• 19:22
  So like if you're a 43K and they're cutting A48K in your
• 19:28
  office and they're going to move some territory through your
• 19:32
  route to another route or or swap some territory around they
• 19:37
  and they can do that. They just have to make sure that
• 19:40
  they keep you at that 43K. And.
• 19:45
  And if and if you are somebody who is being adjusted, I would
• 19:50
  highly recommend that if management is asking for input
• 19:56
  from the whole zip code, please give them the input that you
• 19:59
  think would that you think would be good and whatnot.
• 20:02
  But also, when they finalize this information, don't just
• 20:09
  throw it in a shelf or take it home.
• 20:13
  Like you really need to go through those and double check
• 20:17
  that management correctly move territory that you have the
• 20:23
  correct CB US and collection departments and and those sorts
• 20:28
  of things. What were you going to say,
• 20:30
  Josh? Sorry.
• 20:31
  I'm going to say in in regards to also with as you were
• 20:34
  mentioning about, with them doing the adjustments and
• 20:37
  friends up and transferring territory from 1 route to
• 20:41
  another. They only need keep in mind they
• 20:44
  only need to leave 1 box to maintain your route.
• 20:49
  So if you have one like a church that's all by itself on your
• 20:52
  route, they can leave you with just that church and take
• 20:55
  everything away and give you all brand new.
• 20:58
  Yeah. As long as they leave you where
• 21:00
  you were, unless you were overburdened and they're
• 21:03
  bringing you down. And maybe we, we could do
• 21:06
  another time, like an episode about route adjustments and
• 21:11
  those sorts of things. I personally have not gone
• 21:14
  through one in with the new system, but I have seen my there
• 21:19
  like my zip code was adjusted and I I saw like what happened
• 21:22
  with some of the other routes and, and, and some of the
• 21:25
  information regarding that. But I know like my big thing
• 21:30
  right now and I know I actually even went and I re listened to
• 21:34
  the aftermath again. I don't know how many times I've
• 21:36
  listened to that. And it's interesting for me,
• 21:41
  like you guys and like we are so much more educated in RX and the
• 21:48
  verbiage and, and the things that we need to do as rule
• 21:51
  carriers to ensure that our routes are correctly evaluated
• 21:57
  compared to how it was then. And there were I just, there was
• 22:02
  so much uncertainty and nervousness.
• 22:07
  And they're like looking back on it, like just that initial
• 22:12
  shock. And there was, you know, even in
• 22:15
  my office, like I had one guy, he was crying because he went
• 22:20
  from AK to AJ and lost. And he's like in the, he was in
• 22:25
  the middle of doing like custody with his kid.
• 22:27
  And he's like, I don't know how I'm gonna afford stuff.
• 22:30
  And I just it, it like, it shook me to my core to the point where
• 22:35
  like that honestly is what motivated me to educate myself
• 22:40
  even more with RX because I didn't want to ever see it to
• 22:45
  that degree ever again. And I think, I don't think that
• 22:51
  it's to that degree, but it's interesting that I feel like
• 22:56
  over the last, maybe over the last year, maybe year and a
• 23:01
  half, we've kind of like as a craft kind of gotten numb to it.
• 23:08
  And we're not paying as much attention and maintaining it the
• 23:15
  way that we should all be doing it.
• 23:18
  And I know there's a lot of people on the Internet who are
• 23:21
  just want it to be gone, but it, it's not going away.
• 23:25
  Like we can pound our fists on the table all we want, but it's
• 23:31
  not going to go away. And I just think right now is a
• 23:35
  moment where we all need we we're triaging what happened and
• 23:42
  we're kind of like nursing our wounds a little bit, but we
• 23:45
  still also need to dust our knees off and get back up and
• 23:51
  reassess here. And this is one of those
• 23:54
  moments. And I know me, me and Kristen
• 23:57
  have talked a little bit too. The number one thing, Well, let
• 24:02
  me backtrack a little bit here. After that first RX evaluation,
• 24:06
  the biggest thing too that I had to like fathom and, and figure
• 24:12
  out like personally was what are the parts of RX that I control
• 24:18
  and what are the parts that I have no control over?
• 24:22
  And, and so like some of those things would be I don't have
• 24:25
  control over the mail volume. I can suggest like rural reaches
• 24:30
  and try and get, you know, a business to ship through US and
• 24:36
  like different things like that. But I can't, I can't just
• 24:40
  magically make letters appear for my route, you know, without
• 24:45
  it costing us something, you know, But there's a lot of
• 24:50
  pieces of RX that we do control. And the number one thing, and me
• 24:56
  and Kristen talked about this a little bit that I have seen is
• 25:00
  that nobody is mapping the routes.
• 25:03
  Yeah. And or they're not or they're
• 25:05
  not coming out and saying, yeah, I mean, that was, you know, we
• 25:09
  both, you know, I brought that up too is, you know, like I see
• 25:11
  all these people, I'm doing my scans, I'm doing my scans, but
• 25:15
  I'm not seeing people saying anything about mapping.
• 25:19
  And mapping is a huge part of the evaluation.
• 25:24
  And I am still seeing issues where offices are not mapping
• 25:29
  month monthly management telling the carriers well you didn't
• 25:33
  have any changes, you don't have to map.
• 25:36
  Yes you do. You still have to map.
• 25:40
  You need to be present every month for mapping whether you
• 25:44
  had changes in your edit book or not.
• 25:47
  I mean, that's, I mean, if I don't have changes in my edit
• 25:50
  book, I still at least go in that DPM.
• 25:53
  I kind of do a really quick thing, make sure everything
• 25:55
  that's still supposed to be active, make sure my dismounts
• 25:58
  are still correct. And I go through and make sure
• 26:01
  my pinpoints, you know, I maybe do a real quick going through.
• 26:05
  But then I'm still going through that LTM, making sure that all
• 26:09
  my traffic control points are correct, making sure my bread
• 26:12
  crumbs are correct and something's not wonky because as
• 26:16
  much time as I've been off, who's to know how the Subs run
• 26:20
  in the route sometimes. So I wanna try and double check
• 26:23
  that. So yes, if you don't have
• 26:25
  changes in your edit book that month, you should still be
• 26:30
  mapping. And the managements excuse of I
• 26:33
  don't have time is not an excuse.
• 26:36
  I mean, if you're not mapping monthly, if you're not sitting
• 26:40
  down with management facilitator or another facilitator trained
• 26:46
  in your office and seeing that is my thing in my office, I am a
• 26:50
  facilitator. I am still having I got red tape
• 26:54
  to go through to get the mapping with my ACE ID, but that that's
• 26:58
  a different story. But so you know, I do use
• 27:01
  management's login when I map my route and if and my postmaster
• 27:06
  is the only other person that knows the mapping in my office.
• 27:09
  So if she is gone during this time to map, then I'm the only
• 27:14
  other person left to facilitate. So you gotta be.
• 27:19
  If you're not getting that, reach out to your doctor and
• 27:23
  say, hey, management's not mapping with us every month.
• 27:27
  What can I do? I'm willing to help facilitate,
• 27:31
  get your doctor to contact management, say, hey, you're
• 27:34
  supposed to be doing this. If that's not gonna work and
• 27:37
  management's giving you excuse after excuse after excuse, file
• 27:40
  a grievance explaining something.
• 27:42
  Yep, Yep. Yep.
• 27:44
  I know. I've had multiple on that and
• 27:48
  they ended up going to step. You know, there was four of them
• 27:51
  that ended up at step three that came back down for language,
• 27:54
  which the Dr. was not happy about.
• 27:57
  But I, I. Yeah, it is what it is.
• 27:59
  A continuing to you, it's still gonna be.
• 28:02
  We have to continue to push. And yes, the fact that you kept
• 28:08
  continuing to file these grievances on it, like we have
• 28:12
  to do that because if, like I, this is one of those moments
• 28:17
  where are you going to wake up and fight for what you're owed
• 28:21
  for your route and you're just going to run into a brick wall.
• 28:25
  Like that's what I'm saying this, there's pits of this that
• 28:28
  you control and you run into that brick wall of management's
• 28:32
  doing that. It's, it's not the end of the
• 28:33
  road. Now you're in control of.
• 28:35
  You're going to file a grievance because you need to do the
• 28:38
  mapping. And whether carriers want to
• 28:41
  believe it or not, but RX is a carrier driven compensation.
• 28:47
  It really is when you think about it, yes, the things that
• 28:50
  we can't control as Neo mentioned are mail volume.
• 28:53
  We can't control that. We can't control our package
• 28:57
  volume. We can't control what our
• 28:58
  customers order and don't order. That's our volume of mail and
• 29:04
  our packages is out of our control.
• 29:07
  But where we deliver that package is in our control.
• 29:11
  How many trips it takes us to deliver their packages to the
• 29:15
  door is in our control, you know.
• 29:18
  All all those scans not. Just those six mandated scans,
• 29:23
  but all the rest of them or within our control, our end of
• 29:28
  shift duties, our load time, that's all in our control.
• 29:32
  Regardless of what management wants to say and try to
• 29:35
  benchmark, there is no benchmarking.
• 29:37
  I know if I have, I have one business one day had 10/11/12
• 29:43
  packages. Ten of those 12 were huge and
• 29:47
  heavy. And I looked and told her I said
• 29:50
  if you see nine trips to the door, if that gets flagged for
• 29:53
  some reason, This is why, because they just took up 3/4 of
• 29:57
  my truck. Yeah, You know, I at least let
• 29:59
  them know if I'm gonna have more than two 3 or 4 trips to the
• 30:02
  door to one particular spot in case District wants to say, hey,
• 30:07
  this carrier had 10 trips to the door and one spot.
• 30:11
  What was going on? You know, obviously you can only
• 30:14
  put 9 in, but you know what I mean?
• 30:16
  So. Yeah, you can see.
• 30:18
  You can put 9 in at a time, but. Yeah.
• 30:21
  You know, things like that. That's all within our control
• 30:25
  and IT. App does.
• 30:26
  It really is a carrier driven program.
• 30:30
  Edit books are our control. Mapping and making sure our park
• 30:35
  points and our delivery points are correct is within our
• 30:39
  control. Our LTMS making sure our traffic
• 30:43
  control points and our bread crumbs line of travel is correct
• 30:46
  is in our control. Regardless of what management
• 30:49
  wants to say or do, that is within our control.
• 30:53
  Where we deliver, where we park, where we deliver, where those
• 30:57
  mailbox stops are, all that stuff we pinpoint and mappings
• 31:00
  in our control and mapping is such a huge part of the
• 31:06
  evaluation. I'm trying to think about the.
• 31:08
  The outer route distance, whether it's walking or driving,
• 31:12
  that outer route driving is where you go to park.
• 31:15
  The outer route distance from walking is from where you park
• 31:19
  that truck to where you walk to drop that package off.
• 31:22
  That's all within your control. I try and think about mapping
• 31:26
  like a almost like a living Organism of your route.
• 31:30
  Yeah. And you have to.
• 31:32
  You're feeding your pet route here.
• 31:35
  You gotta water it every month. You know, if you think about it
• 31:38
  like oh, or it's like a Tamagotchi, you know, you gotta
• 31:44
  gotta feed the, the the DPM and LTM.
• 31:49
  But but it's not, and it's not even just the fact of you could
• 31:55
  be missing things that are in there.
• 31:57
  Management might have unanchored a, they might have gone in there
• 32:01
  without you, which they should not have.
• 32:03
  And that's another issue. But if your footage for your
• 32:08
  dismount was or your your dismount was unanchored and
• 32:12
  moved, it zeroes out your dismount footage and your
• 32:16
  collection compartments and those sorts of nuance little
• 32:20
  things. All of those things add up.
• 32:23
  Tip to be what you could be missing.
• 32:25
  And if you had. Centralized and CBU units or if
• 32:30
  you have any type of mailbox grouping that you have a line of
• 32:36
  on the same post and you activate or deactivate a box in
• 32:42
  your edit book when that uploads from AMS into the DPM, that's
• 32:47
  going to UN anchor everything and wipe everything out.
• 32:51
  That's how that happened. And then you also should be
• 32:55
  doing the mapping on end of shift time and that should be
• 32:59
  essentially upping your average for your end of shift time.
• 33:04
  Like you're leaving minutes on the table by not doing.
• 33:09
  Your edit books, your mapping, your case labels, all that stuff
• 33:16
  should be end of shift duties. If management doesn't want to
• 33:19
  stick around map at the end of shift and they don't want to be
• 33:23
  there, then like I said, get on the horn with your Dr. and see
• 33:28
  if you can get another facilitator in there that would
• 33:30
  be available when you return to do your mapping.
• 33:33
  That last week of the month that set up, was it the 23rd to the
• 33:37
  31st? I do believe the SWI says, yeah,
• 33:40
  trust me, I argue that when in my office all the time, You
• 33:44
  know, same with I guess a lot of places are saying, well, you
• 33:47
  want we want the edit books by the 5th.
• 33:48
  No, actually, the printed language says we have until the
• 33:51
  10th. And then I get I get a sticky
• 33:54
  going. Well, you've got one place to,
• 33:56
  to, to, to, to map or whatever, and we, you know, we want it
• 34:02
  done. And it's like the 15th, 16th,
• 34:04
  17th of the month. I'm like, no, I'm not doing it
• 34:06
  until after the 23rd. Yeah.
• 34:08
  Because I know even if I did it, then I'm gonna get a OAMS
• 34:12
  updated and need to do the mapping again.
• 34:15
  Yeah, yeah. That's reason why there's an SWI
• 34:19
  out there that says when it's supposed to be done, and it is
• 34:22
  in black and white. Yeah, I make that argument all
• 34:26
  the time with my management and I usually win so.
• 34:30
  Yeah, it's a postal document. It's not even a union document.
• 34:34
  It's a postal document. Yep.
• 34:36
  So I just, I mean, yeah, people, I, I know that people are upset
• 34:40
  and right now, like that's OK. But like I said, you have to get
• 34:44
  up and and assess and if you need I, we put out an episode.
• 34:50
  What was it in October that went over the 4241 A&M in detail?
• 34:55
  And I seriously recommend going back and re listening to it.
• 35:01
  I also recommend taking your last 4241 A&M or even the one
• 35:07
  from a year ago and comparing line by line.
• 35:10
  You can you can just put one-on-one side and 1 on
• 35:13
  another. I was, I've been a debating
• 35:17
  creating like an Excel spreadsheet document where you
• 35:20
  could plug in the numbers from like the last one from six
• 35:23
  months ago next to the other one and see the difference.
• 35:27
  So that because I'm such a, I'm a visual person.
• 35:29
  So it would be, it would be so satisfying to see him without me
• 35:32
  just manually doing it with a sheet.
• 35:34
  But you can look at it and you can see what changed.
• 35:39
  And there's certain things like if you're, if you're not on a
• 35:42
  growth route or if you only have like a little bit of centralized
• 35:45
  boxes or key boxes, CBU's that shouldn't change.
• 35:50
  And so if your unit count changed, that's a red flag that
• 35:56
  something's wrong with your mapping.
• 35:57
  And a majority of the things that you can look in there and
• 36:01
  see, you know, there like I was able to see I lost on average 9
• 36:06
  parcels a day and it was over the course of like there was 3
• 36:11
  in that mailbox, 3IN parcel locker and three front door.
• 36:15
  And so as a result of that you, I could see the dip in the on
• 36:25
  the street time of like delivery and all those sorts of things
• 36:29
  versus me going up with the deliveries.
• 36:31
  So you just have to like, I understand, like we are not,
• 36:37
  I've talked to this before. I know we're not engineers and I
• 36:40
  know that as rule carriers we didn't sign up to like look at
• 36:43
  math and want to compare, oh, I lost .83 seconds or .83 minutes
• 36:53
  in, in the shift time, you know, but a lot of these sorts of
• 36:57
  things that up over time and it it's there, like I said before,
• 37:03
  there, it's a living thing and we actually have living
• 37:07
  documentation that we can actually look at and compare.
• 37:11
  It's not there. There's parts of RX that I
• 37:14
  personally do not like and I think that a lot of people would
• 37:18
  agree on that. And I've said before too, you
• 37:21
  know, I understand that the flat volume and the WSH flats and
• 37:26
  that problem that is presenting itself there, the unions filed a
• 37:30
  Step 4 on and that's separate. But you know, there's a lot of
• 37:36
  good things that are inside of it and you can go through your
• 37:41
  evaluation on end of shift time. That's part of route
• 37:44
  maintenance. That's you going through and,
• 37:47
  and going, oh, OK, I lost like 10 letters a day.
• 37:51
  Oh, OK, that equated to this much time.
• 37:54
  I mean, it's, it's all right there for you to look at the,
• 37:58
  the union and the Postal Service again signed a new MOU for the
• 38:05
  dispute process. The I know Kristen's done what
• 38:10
  Kristen and Josh have done other dispute process episodes in the
• 38:14
  past. The the process is almost all
• 38:17
  completely the same, one dispute per form.
• 38:22
  So once you've triaged your route essentially and you see
• 38:26
  that there's something that looks off to you, there is
• 38:30
  documents that you can get from management that they are
• 38:33
  required to give you, AKA the radar report and your MDD scans.
• 38:40
  And if they're not getting them for you, call your union steward
• 38:43
  because that's another issue. But you can look and go, oh, OK,
• 38:48
  why did I lose 9? Like, why did I lose 30 flats a
• 38:54
  day? And I can go to the radar report
• 38:56
  and I can look and see, oh, OK, like something's off here or,
• 39:02
  oh, there's like 30 days that says I have no ASFM 100 flats.
• 39:08
  That's concerning. You know, there's, there's gonna
• 39:10
  be things that you can look for that are going to be a red
• 39:14
  herring. Personally, like in the past, I
• 39:17
  have actually done a dispute. I did one about my end of shift
• 39:21
  time because my there was different Subs that were doing
• 39:26
  my route and they were hitting return to DU and clock out in
• 39:29
  the same minute. And it takes more than a minute
• 39:32
  to walk from my vehicle to my case.
• 39:35
  And I was it. It took some time, but I went
• 39:40
  through all of my, I went through 52 weeks of my RX scans
• 39:43
  and I was able to pinpoint how many days that I only have one
• 39:49
  minute of end of shift time and I was successful in my dispute.
• 39:53
  I didn't gain a lot more time. I think it was only like a
• 39:56
  couple more minutes, but you know, 1 isn't going to hurt the
• 40:00
  route. But when it was repeated the way
• 40:02
  that it was, that's why I was successful in my dispute so.
• 40:07
  Another good document to have as well is when you do your mapping
• 40:13
  after the LTM, get the print out because that summary page has
• 40:19
  your number of traffic control points.
• 40:21
  It has all that stuff listed right on there.
• 40:25
  And that's where I found out the, you know, the last time
• 40:28
  where I had the discrepancy between my, my, my print out
• 40:32
  after mapping compared to my box count on my 4241 going wait a
• 40:38
  minute, this is off by two. This is says I have more than
• 40:41
  this. And so that was my dispute.
• 40:44
  I thought at first I had a traffic control point dispute
• 40:48
  because like, why is this? But then I went in and I was
• 40:51
  figuring the difference and went, Oh yeah, it's these three
• 40:55
  stop signs that I don't go past on Saturdays because that whole
• 41:03
  and railroad crossing, because my industrial park doesn't get
• 41:09
  delivery on Saturday, so we don't even go in there.
• 41:11
  So I was like, that's why that's off.
• 41:13
  That's the difference. That's why I have a point
• 41:16
  whatever on my 4241 for my traffic control points because I
• 41:21
  don't go through those six days a week.
• 41:25
  Yeah. Well, and what gets really
• 41:27
  interesting too is that, you know, other people can look at
• 41:31
  the data of your route, but you're the one who does the
• 41:34
  route and like you're going to be able like you were able to
• 41:38
  troubleshoot it yourself and figure out, OK, this is correct.
• 41:44
  You know, and that I understand like there's a lot of confusion
• 41:47
  when it comes to the dispute process and a lot of people do
• 41:51
  not want to put in the effort. But honestly, like if, if you're
• 41:55
  on Facebook and you're, you're, there's a lot of people who are,
• 41:59
  who are just on there and like screaming from the rooftops
• 42:02
  right now. And it's like, OK, you let it
• 42:04
  out. But like, let's get
• 42:05
  constructive. Like, what is it about RX that
• 42:08
  you do not like? You know, is it, you know, you
• 42:12
  don't like having to enter, you know, the, the scans, you know,
• 42:17
  is it just, you know, I know there's people out there who,
• 42:21
  you know, don't like the fact that our pay can fluctuate.
• 42:24
  But you know, right now as it stands, we have regular carriers
• 42:29
  have about four raises built into their to our our yearly
• 42:35
  salary, not in not including if you go up with RX cuz we have
• 42:39
  what is it 2 Colas. Right, two colas you have your
• 42:43
  your generally increase and your step increase.
• 42:47
  Yes. And well, I know that it's
• 42:50
  frustrating because there's some people who essentially, you
• 42:54
  know, maybe went up a step and they, and it sucks because they
• 42:57
  lost time and they went down. So their pay, you know, it, they
• 43:03
  got a little bump and then they went back down a little bit.
• 43:06
  And so there's just this ebb and flow that, that I do.
• 43:10
  I feel for people. I I know I've I've been a one
• 43:13
  income household. I despite what somebody on
• 43:18
  Facebook wants to say and accuse me, I am a Table 1 carrier.
• 43:22
  OK. The niche insult that somebody
• 43:25
  decided they wanted to call me a Table 1 carrier and I was like
• 43:28
  what? Because I defended our Rex.
• 43:31
  But it there's, there's an ebb and flow that's going to happen.
• 43:37
  And I don't like the fact that mail volume is going down.
• 43:44
  And it's, it's interesting to me because we all have like a love
• 43:47
  hate with Amazon. But I guess like the UPS parcels
• 43:52
  over the last year and then them coming back kind of shows in
• 43:57
  this evaluation like, Oh, OK, this is what how how UPS
• 44:02
  affected our routes. You know depending on the area
• 44:05
  that you live in and how much UPS dropped off for you, UPS
• 44:09
  drops off about, I deliver about 10 parcels of of UPS a day now.
• 44:14
  So what are we going to say, Josh?
• 44:17
  I forget now I'm. Sorry I'm.
• 44:20
  Sorry, I was going to say, you know the insult of being a Table
• 44:24
  1 carrier that you got. I've been accused of being
• 44:30
  management too in comments and I I just left.
• 44:35
  It's like I know I educated myself on RX.
• 44:37
  Do I know everything? Absolutely not.
• 44:40
  But you know, I I started in a test study office, so our Rex
• 44:45
  was something I was familiar with from day one.
• 44:48
  And I knew it was coming down. It was just a matter of when.
• 44:51
  I mean, like I said, when I transferred into my office and I
• 44:54
  mentioned our Rex and scans, they looked at me like I was an
• 44:57
  alien with three heads. OK, what the hell are you
• 45:00
  talking about? Yeah.
• 45:01
  And then it came down and they all went, this is what you were
• 45:06
  talking about. Yeah.
• 45:07
  And then I had to reacquaint myself for that because it was
• 45:11
  different from when I started in a test study office.
• 45:14
  They took some scans away. They added some different ones.
• 45:18
  So yeah, I had to learn brand new again as well.
• 45:21
  But at the same time it's like, you know, this is you just have
• 45:27
  to educate yourself and educate your Co worker.
• 45:30
  Yes. And I the biggest thing and I
• 45:33
  have seen another big huge complaint is about the
• 45:37
  comprehensive guide. But how the post office didn't
• 45:40
  print this out and give it to everybody.
• 45:42
  Well and #1 it's not a post office document.
• 45:45
  The 99 page RX guide is a union publication and the union is not
• 45:51
  going to print it out and send it to everybody because they
• 45:53
  still update it from time to time.
• 45:56
  Yes, it is an ongoing thing. It yes, it is a great tool to
• 46:01
  educate yourself with. Is it perfect?
• 46:05
  No, it's not. Nothing is perfect out there,
• 46:07
  but it is a great guide. It is you know a union member.
• 46:12
  It's on the website. You can download it.
• 46:14
  You can flip through it on your phone.
• 46:15
  You can print it out yourself if you want to.
• 46:18
  When it first initially came out, I did print out a copy.
• 46:22
  And you know what? My postmaster was nice enough to
• 46:24
  take my copy and run photocopies for every carrier, every route
• 46:29
  in my office. That's nice, I remember the.
• 46:31
  Initial one, I haven't done it for the updated ones, but you
• 46:34
  know. Yeah, there's not very much that
• 46:36
  they've updated, but. No, there isn't.
• 46:39
  A few things here and there, but not a lot.
• 46:41
  Like the pars labels is the big thing I think.
• 46:43
  And you know it's. What I was going to say is back
• 46:48
  to when you were talking about with mapping and going in and
• 46:51
  checking your plot points each month, your park point and your
• 46:56
  to the door point. I go in there and I do, I
• 47:00
  randomly pick 10 to 15 addresses and make sure they're all still
• 47:05
  correct. And then I call it good for that
• 47:08
  month, and then next month I'll do a different.
• 47:12
  Yeah, I, I. You know.
• 47:14
  It's just route maintenance part of route maintenance.
• 47:16
  It really is right. I do something similar with the
• 47:19
  way that I break my route up in the different sections because I
• 47:23
  have one one part of my route that's the North End.
• 47:26
  It's roughly the first hour of my route, I should say.
• 47:30
  And then I have to drive through town through the city route
• 47:33
  before I pick my route up again. So, you know, I kind of divide
• 47:36
  it up. So, you know, if I don't have
• 47:38
  many changes or I just maybe have one or two addresses to
• 47:42
  plot, or it's probably an address that I had deactivated
• 47:45
  then reactivated and I don't have to plot it because it's
• 47:48
  already plot. I will still go and double check
• 47:51
  those ones to make sure things are still proper because you
• 47:54
  never know. Your customer gets a brand new
• 47:56
  mailbox and decides it to move it to the other side of the
• 47:58
  driveway. You want to reposition it.
• 48:01
  Or you could have had two mailboxes, but we're not on the
• 48:05
  same post. Snow plow took them out.
• 48:08
  Happens to be. Well, in my case, it's a house
• 48:11
  rental and a motel. It's the same person that owns a
• 48:15
  motel, owns the house next door. The mailboxes were taken out.
• 48:19
  When they put them back up, they put them on one post.
• 48:21
  So I had to go in and regroup. Those a different way.
• 48:25
  You know, those little things. Yeah.
• 48:27
  Those little things as you know that you want that you need to
• 48:31
  change or what used to be a hardship is no longer a
• 48:34
  hardship. And so now the box.
• 48:36
  Or vice versa. Yes, exactly.
• 48:38
  In fact, I've got a hardship I have to vacate this month and
• 48:43
  you know, so I'm losing one of those again, but because the 90
• 48:47
  days will be up, so time to change that one.
• 48:50
  So I lose, yeah, I'm going to lose that distance, that
• 48:53
  dismount and whatnot. But, you know, it's those things
• 48:57
  that you want to, you know, kind of make either write it on a
• 49:01
  sticky note in your, you know, for yourself when you do your
• 49:04
  edit book, when you're updating stuff that you.
• 49:07
  Make like a little notepad. For yourself.
• 49:09
  That way you know when you go to do your mapping, even though it
• 49:13
  may not show that you have changes in your mapping because
• 49:16
  those were previously plotted. Just make notes on that so you
• 49:20
  can go in and double check it when you do your mapping.
• 49:24
  Yep, the the thing to that I that that I think you know that
• 49:30
  like I've had a lot of conversations with people too,
• 49:32
  about, you know, that maybe we should be hourly and there's
• 49:37
  just almost like it's almost like a divide and like just a
• 49:40
  finger pointing and anger sort of thing right now.
• 49:44
  But ultimately, like you have the ability to try and educate
• 49:48
  yourself. I understand like the Postal
• 49:50
  Service has done A and part of my French here a really shitty
• 49:54
  job at educating us about it. But the union has put on a lot
• 49:59
  of a lot of information. You know, the the Postal Service
• 50:04
  does not want us to be educated in it.
• 50:08
  They don't because it's in their best interest and you should be.
• 50:12
  You're the keeper of your route and you need to maintain your
• 50:17
  route and ensure that that's what that you.
• 50:20
  I just, I want people to be compensated fairly for what they
• 50:25
  are owed. Like that's the whole point.
• 50:27
  Like we, the three of us wouldn't even we wouldn't be on
• 50:30
  here right now on a on a Thursday night, you know,
• 50:33
  talking about this time. Yeah.
• 50:36
  Hey, hey, hey. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot it's
• 50:41
  only dinner time where you're at.
• 50:44
  Yeah, it's pretty late here too. I mean, I've had a, I've been
• 50:48
  like triaging, I guess I've been like, I'm somebody who I, I, I
• 50:54
  empathize with a lot of people right now.
• 50:56
  And I, I want to help where I can and make sure that people
• 51:03
  are, that their eyes are open and they are fighting for what
• 51:08
  they are owed and that they are, that their route is evaluated
• 51:11
  fairly. And I think that we do have a
• 51:15
  lot of routes that are evaluated fairly, but there's still that
• 51:19
  apathy of, of things. And it's, it's every single day.
• 51:25
  And I, you know, I have anxiety and these sorts of things, but
• 51:28
  I, it was funny the other day. My, my, my man, I was ranting to
• 51:37
  him about RX and, and I like went all the way back to the
• 51:42
  beginning of how it came to be and the history of it.
• 51:47
  And he cuts me off like partly way through it.
• 51:50
  And he goes, I know I probably know more about RX than some
• 51:56
  carriers do. And I was like, that's
• 51:58
  concerning because he does not work for the Postal Service, but
• 52:02
  he hears me rant about it and it's an everyday thing.
• 52:07
  Like it is, it's, I mean, like I've said before, it's not going
• 52:11
  to go away. An arbitrator made that like
• 52:16
  decided it. And the only other thing we
• 52:20
  could go to is hourly. And a majority of the people
• 52:24
  that I have communicated with over the last week that are
• 52:27
  frustrated with, with this still don't want to be hourly.
• 52:31
  And you know, like, yeah, I do not.
• 52:35
  Want to I know a lot of city carriers that would rather be
• 52:38
  evaluated. Well, yeah, I mean, because if
• 52:41
  you, if you were to put us hourly like the city carriers,
• 52:45
  we would lose iron. We would lose the ability to
• 52:49
  finish our route on a super late day and just go home because
• 52:53
  now, because now, you know, if your hourly, they're gonna hold
• 52:58
  you to 8 hours regardless of how long it's gonna take.
• 53:02
  Look at how City side is managed.
• 53:05
  I mean, nothing against the City side at all.
• 53:08
  I mean, we're comparing apples to oranges right here with how
• 53:11
  we're paid. If a city carrier is under 8
• 53:16
  hours, projected to be under 8 hours for the day, and they come
• 53:20
  in under 8 hours, well now they're having to take a pivot
• 53:23
  off another. They have under time.
• 53:24
  Yeah, they have under time. They're going to get penalized
• 53:27
  for under time by either having to use their leave to make up
• 53:32
  that under time or they're going to have to pivot make up for
• 53:36
  that under time. Yep, Yep.
• 53:38
  And if they're going to be over 8 hours, then they're looking at
• 53:43
  having a filling out a 3996 and asking for that overtime or.
• 53:49
  Or the assistance. Or the assistance or giving a
• 53:53
  pivot to somebody who would be either in under time or ACCA or
• 53:58
  APTF. Yep.
• 54:00
  And we have on at like we have 1 to 8 hours of overtime built
• 54:04
  into our salaries, regardless of if, I mean, there's some that
• 54:09
  are 40 hours, they're either 40H40K and there's some under,
• 54:13
  Oh, I was going to talk about that too, The ones that went
• 54:15
  under the low HS. But regardless, we have that
• 54:20
  much built into our route, regardless of if you work it or
• 54:23
  not. And they're the union likes to
• 54:27
  post they I haven't seen it for a while.
• 54:30
  There's a rule work hour tracker that.
• 54:34
  And so on average, every time that I've seen it, rule carriers
• 54:39
  almost it's like it's a pretty high amount are working under
• 54:44
  their evaluation from anywhere from three to six hours under
• 54:49
  evaluation. And I, I kind of chalk it up to
• 54:52
  the fact that we are resilient and we are efficient and we try
• 55:00
  to, you know, work the best that we can.
• 55:03
  And if you personally want to, you know, calculate your own,
• 55:08
  you can go in and look at your actual hours and your in your
• 55:12
  pay stubs and see how many hours that you are working under your
• 55:16
  evaluation. Another good indicator of it is
• 55:20
  if you're staying under 2080, that could be, you know, a
• 55:23
  factor in it. You there's people out there who
• 55:27
  who could be going into 2240 and stay under 2080 because they're
• 55:31
  working their relief day and then, you know, so.
• 55:36
  There's and OR resisting. On other routes, yeah.
• 55:40
  So there's that to kind of that. It's kind of a chuckle to me,
• 55:45
  you know, but if you, you can, you can do your own
• 55:50
  troubleshooting and, and a data analysis on your own stuff if
• 55:54
  you, if you want to. I, I get intrigued by all of it.
• 55:57
  So I'm like, oh, I could do that and look, but I know like I
• 56:01
  didn't go over 2080 and I know that there's some weeks that I
• 56:04
  stay under my evaluation and there's other weeks that I
• 56:06
  don't. And typically when the summer
• 56:09
  comes, we're going to be this week.
• 56:11
  I've been not feeling it, but that's a whole nother story.
• 56:17
  But I also like, you know, there's there's the carrier in
• 56:21
  my office. She lost her Monday K day and is
• 56:26
  devastated by it. Like it's been like every single
• 56:30
  day. She's just.
• 56:32
  And I understand and like it's frustrating, like she is a true
• 56:37
  middle of the road, 43 J and there is no low option.
• 56:41
  There's no high option H and there's no low option K because
• 56:46
  she went further now like so there's people like. 20 minute
• 56:50
  window. As I say, like how many times do
• 56:53
  I sell it like in that 20 minute window of the Yeah, the of the
• 56:58
  of the J, Yeah. Yeah.
• 57:00
  Yeah, there is a 20 minute window where there is no high or
• 57:04
  low. Yeah, but.
• 57:06
  And I also. I would say back to your point
• 57:08
  of putting what we are in control of and what we're not in
• 57:13
  control of and correlating that with the mapping.
• 57:16
  You have a big box that gets delivered to the door and you
• 57:20
  scan it halfway up the driveway at some point and this happens
• 57:26
  and they get packages often at some point the system is going
• 57:30
  to move the front door to the middle of their driveway, which
• 57:35
  is something you need to check for all you know why you why I
• 57:38
  say I randomly check I was in the habit.
• 57:41
  I'm still breaking myself of that habit and trying to
• 57:45
  remember wait until I get and put the box down to scan it.
• 57:51
  But there are sometimes, but it's a smaller box that still
• 57:53
  has to go to the door. I'll be in poof out of habit so.
• 57:57
  Yeah, I remember. Just.
• 57:59
  I had a mind when you're doing. It, I remember doing the when I
• 58:03
  was doing the initial mapping of the office with the carriers and
• 58:07
  I had one carrier where, well, I knew where she parked every time
• 58:11
  because that's where she was scanning the package.
• 58:15
  I said, oh, I said where do you park?
• 58:17
  She's like right there. I said, where do you drop the
• 58:18
  package off? She's like over here and we go
• 58:20
  to the next one. I said, oh, that's where you
• 58:22
  park, huh. She's like, yeah, I said starts
• 58:24
  to get in the package where you deliver it.
• 58:25
  Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean it can, you
• 58:28
  know, if you or you know, if your customer changes where you
• 58:32
  want to deliver, where they want you to deliver the package.
• 58:35
  So if you've always delivered to the front door and they start
• 58:37
  saying no, will you start leaving it at the garage or
• 58:39
  leaving at the side door? Go in and change those because
• 58:43
  that should that you know that that could change your out of
• 58:48
  route walk distance, which is you know that that's time.
• 58:52
  Oh, it, it, it will. Whether it's a matter of how
• 58:57
  many feet is what, you know, Yeah.
• 58:59
  Whether it's a gain or a loss also.
• 59:01
  Exactly. But you know, keep that stuff up
• 59:04
  to date. You know, I did.
• 59:05
  I had one house where I always deliver them to the side door on
• 59:09
  the garage right there and then they had some things going on
• 59:13
  and she was like, hey, can you start leaving them at the front
• 59:16
  door because they never used their front door and at the time
• 59:19
  and that's what they were using. Do new personal stuff I'm not
• 59:23
  going to get into obviously because it's personal.
• 59:25
  And hey, can you leave, start leaving them at the front door.
• 59:29
  Yeah. So the next time I mapped and
• 59:30
  went in and changed it to the front door.
• 59:32
  Now we're back to the putting them at the garage.
• 59:33
  Now I go back and change it to the garage.
• 59:36
  So yeah, it's right down. Or if they put, you know, a box
• 59:39
  out, I had one always left them at the front door.
• 59:42
  Now they have a box listed for deliveries by their garage door.
• 59:45
  So I had to go in and change where I was dropping it.
• 59:48
  That's, you know, the stuff that you want to do.
• 59:51
  Even if you have no changes in your edit book and your and
• 59:56
  your, your, your management says you have no changes.
• 59:58
  You don't need to map. No, that's Bolwicki.
• 1:00:01
  You want to go in and make sure your deliveries points are where
• 1:00:07
  they're supposed to be. Yep.
• 1:00:09
  And regardless of what your manager or postmaster supervisor
• 1:00:13
  says, they're going to hear it from there up above from
• 1:00:16
  district on why they didn't go in and certify every route in
• 1:00:21
  the office being that that month.
• 1:00:24
  And more than likely a lot of these management are going in
• 1:00:28
  and just doing the bare minimum and certifying it without even
• 1:00:32
  letting the carrier know. Yep.
• 1:00:35
  But I would it goes back. To yeah, sorry.
• 1:00:38
  You know, but I do have because when I went and did some OJT up
• 1:00:41
  in another office a couple months ago and that office
• 1:00:46
  doesn't have a postmaster, they had a 2O four boi seeing at the
• 1:00:49
  time from another office. And they were pretty much
• 1:00:53
  self-taught in mapping and they wanted to make sure mapping got
• 1:00:55
  done. And she knew that I knew mapping
• 1:00:57
  and whatnot. So she took my number and of
• 1:00:59
  course I get a phone and I'm like, who the Hell's calling me?
• 1:01:01
  So then I get a text because then I'm like, I don't know who
• 1:01:04
  that is. And it was actually, it was at
• 1:01:06
  2O4B with a mapping question about collection boxes.
• 1:01:09
  And I'm like, Oh yeah, this is, you know, yeah.
• 1:01:12
  I said MO, you know, if it's a blue box, this is how you go and
• 1:01:15
  market because she was asking about addresses and stuff like
• 1:01:18
  that. I said, Nope, this is how you go
• 1:01:19
  do it. I said, if it's collection boxes
• 1:01:21
  for centralizer CBU units, this is where you go in and enter it.
• 1:01:26
  And she's like, Oh my gosh, thank you so much.
• 1:01:28
  I'm like, hey, not a problem. You know, I don't mind helping
• 1:01:32
  with those type of questions if I know it's going to benefit my
• 1:01:35
  rural carriers. Yeah, thinking about blue boxes.
• 1:01:38
  I don't. I don't know if you either y'all
• 1:01:41
  realized with mapping that started a few months ago.
• 1:01:45
  You have to put the address prior to and post the blue box.
• 1:01:52
  So that it works it in with the line of travel so that it knows,
• 1:01:56
  oh, OK, this blue box is here. That's why like it's, it's like
• 1:02:00
  an address essentially in the line of travel.
• 1:02:02
  But it's right now like it's, it's the post like we
• 1:02:07
  collectively as rule carriers should be coming together.
• 1:02:10
  We should be collectively, you know, troubleshooting this
• 1:02:14
  together, going to union meetings, go educating yourself
• 1:02:19
  on the union website and doing these maintenance things for the
• 1:02:25
  benefit of of all rule carriers and, and the Postal Service
• 1:02:29
  wants us to be divided. And there is, you know, there's
• 1:02:34
  some things that I've seen online and I'm, I'm legitimate
• 1:02:36
  like, oh, this is prop management propaganda on here
• 1:02:41
  like it and it and it's, it's no bueno.
• 1:02:45
  Don't believe everything you read on the Internet because
• 1:02:49
  it's not good. But take the moment to educate
• 1:02:53
  yourselves. And I think that it's really
• 1:02:56
  good right now. Like, you know, like I said, I
• 1:02:59
  went and I re listened to that episode and you could tell like
• 1:03:04
  I mean, even because James hadn't gotten his evaluation yet
• 1:03:07
  and like Bill had and he was talking about how his phone was
• 1:03:10
  ringing off the hook. And like I said, this this week
• 1:03:13
  is kind of mimicked some of that for me personally.
• 1:03:16
  But it's good that we have you know, we have the dispute
• 1:03:19
  process now. There's more documentation and
• 1:03:24
  more resources for us as rule carriers then there was at that
• 1:03:28
  that time and that this is our this is our 7th evaluation under
• 1:03:32
  this now that's. What you keep telling me.
• 1:03:35
  This is our 7th one RX7, so we've come a ways, but we still
• 1:03:43
  have a ways to go too. I know that I wish that I could
• 1:03:48
  like if I wish the Postal Service and the union could come
• 1:03:51
  together and maybe like make ARX for dummies kind of thing.
• 1:03:58
  But it's a little bit more complicated than that.
• 1:04:00
  And I think, you know, there's some that there's things that
• 1:04:03
  are out there that you can, you know, I think this, this is a
• 1:04:06
  good resource that people have to, to look back on and stuff
• 1:04:12
  too. And like I said before, going in
• 1:04:14
  and listening to that 4241 A&M episode, the old dispute ones
• 1:04:21
  that are in here, there's there's a lot of things that and
• 1:04:25
  there's a lot of good that like that.
• 1:04:28
  Like Kristen, seriously like that you guys have done since
• 1:04:31
  that like came out, you know, like the fact that this is the
• 1:04:36
  150th episode and since then, you know?
• 1:04:44
  Yeah, those were early on episodes.
• 1:04:46
  So yeah, definitely it's, it's been interesting.
• 1:04:53
  Yeah, and I, I remember like the first, the first time I list
• 1:04:56
  because I didn't listen to it live because you guys, I wasn't
• 1:04:59
  in the in the discord and all those sorts of things then.
• 1:05:02
  But it, it awoke people up like a it like, I don't know, and I
• 1:05:10
  hope that this is, this isn't here to like be like, you know
• 1:05:14
  what, like Josh's route went up, you know, like, no, we empathize
• 1:05:20
  with you guys that have gone down and we want to make sure
• 1:05:23
  that like there is, we're trying to give you the resources to
• 1:05:28
  triage and troubleshoot your route and get everything that
• 1:05:31
  you're owed. And, you know, know, knowing
• 1:05:35
  like there's countless episodes, you know, even before I was on
• 1:05:39
  here too, that go back for years now to try and help you and the
• 1:05:47
  betterment of all of us. Like we're, we're all just,
• 1:05:49
  we're all just hard working rural carriers trying to get,
• 1:05:55
  get through day by day. I know we're not engineers, but
• 1:05:59
  these are the things that we, we unfortunately have to do in
• 1:06:04
  order to make sure that we are getting paid for everything that
• 1:06:07
  we do. And cause 'cause we're owed it.
• 1:06:10
  We, there's the unions, you know, fought for countless years
• 1:06:15
  and the old mail count system was so random.
• 1:06:21
  What credit was for certain things like it does not make any
• 1:06:24
  sense to me why things were evaluated the certain certain
• 1:06:28
  ways. And granted, there's some of the
• 1:06:30
  standards that we have now that I think are low too, but I know
• 1:06:35
  that they measured them across the entire country.
• 1:06:39
  And the other thing too, this is kind of my last little bit here
• 1:06:42
  too, but then I'll shut up. Don't work off the clock.
• 1:06:46
  People stop working off the clock because me saying, you
• 1:06:52
  know, on average rule carriers are working under their evals.
• 1:06:56
  If you're working off the clock like that's not, that's going to
• 1:06:58
  taint the data and there's a whole other plethora of things
• 1:07:03
  that are bad, but please don't work off the clock.
• 1:07:07
  That that that could potentially affect time standards, Yes, I
• 1:07:13
  mean, I'm not saying. It has.
• 1:07:14
  Yeah, it has in the past. And that we went from what were
• 1:07:19
  what was GPS was. 1.8 for L routes and two and two for none
• 1:07:26
  else. No, no, no, it was. 40. 20 No,
• 1:07:31
  no, no, it was 20 some pieces. Oh, you're going away?
• 1:07:34
  But a minute, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:07:36
  You're going away. And then I was thinking and then
• 1:07:39
  they you were thinking by by our box factor.
• 1:07:44
  Yeah, box factor. And then because we with the
• 1:07:48
  evaluated system, which also takes, you know, we with the
• 1:07:53
  reports shows that we are as a whole, as a collective are
• 1:07:58
  working, would you say 2 to 6 hours under evaluation each
• 1:08:02
  week? Yeah, So arbitrator said it, you
• 1:08:05
  know, OK, this is your new standard, went to 46 and now
• 1:08:10
  it's what, 83? 8086.
• 1:08:13
  Yeah, I don't even know. Oh, we get, we don't get credit
• 1:08:16
  for. We get credit to verify.
• 1:08:19
  Yeah, like 86 pieces per minute. Now it doubled from what it was.
• 1:08:23
  It was 43. Yeah, so and and and and your
• 1:08:28
  box factor value has dropped too in the past for L routes, high
• 1:08:32
  density, you know, high, high high density routes.
• 1:08:35
  Yeah, L routes was 1.8 minutes a week and your non LS were two
• 1:08:40
  minutes. Now it's 1.2 across the board.
• 1:08:43
  Yeah, and the difference, well, it doesn't matter.
• 1:08:45
  L and not now are gone, but the difference was how many 1212
• 1:08:51
  boxes within a mile on average. Yep, and.
• 1:08:55
  Your. BPS standards were different
• 1:08:57
  between POV's and government vehicles.
• 1:08:59
  Now it's all the same. Yep.
• 1:09:01
  So, yeah, I mean, there, there, there are all Yeah, I mean, and
• 1:09:07
  even I've witnessed it. And I have mentions to this
• 1:09:10
  individual time after time after time after time after time, you
• 1:09:14
  know, even you know when our start times changed.
• 1:09:18
  So you can't touch your mail till start time.
• 1:09:20
  OK, but that doesn't mean that you grab the keys and you go do
• 1:09:24
  your vehicle check while you're waiting to clock in.
• 1:09:28
  No, you still do that on the clock.
• 1:09:30
  Yep. Yeah, what happens if he trips
• 1:09:33
  when he's on his way to go do that vehicle inspection and
• 1:09:36
  like, breaks his leg and then tries to claim it as OWCP?
• 1:09:39
  You weren't on the clock, bud. Yeah.
• 1:09:42
  So manage like management might try and argue with you over
• 1:09:45
  that, which I, I mean, you could try and argue back like, hey, I
• 1:09:48
  was on postal property, I was trying to get to work.
• 1:09:51
  You know, there's different things like that, but management
• 1:09:54
  could try and deny it and it could be a whole other plethora
• 1:09:58
  of problems with that. So.
• 1:10:00
  Well, that would be border Labor would deny it.
• 1:10:02
  Yeah, they're like, oh, you weren't on the clock.
• 1:10:04
  Why are we compensating him OWCP for that?
• 1:10:08
  There's a yeah, there's a lot that it's a can of worms and I
• 1:10:11
  just the generalized statement here.
• 1:10:13
  Is like don't. Work off the clock, Yeah, Don't
• 1:10:16
  work. Yeah, don't work off the clock,
• 1:10:18
  people. But all right, we're gonna Yeah,
• 1:10:22
  we need to get out of here. It's going 11.
• 1:10:24
  Yes, you guys know, maybe 9th. I got a yes tomorrow and then
• 1:10:28
  take a three and a half hour drive.
• 1:10:30
  Yeah, so all. Right, guys.
• 1:10:33
  So yes, this is kind of like the Aftermath Revisited Part 2.
• 1:10:39
  Something like that but way calmer.
• 1:10:44
  Yeah, we're not crying or I wouldn't.
• 1:10:46
  Well, you guys weren't crying either.
• 1:10:48
  You guys were shell shocked though, Like it was it was
• 1:10:51
  crazy. There was a lot of uncertainty.
• 1:10:54
  There was a the the I still go back to that month and like this
• 1:10:59
  is the last thing I'll say. Our former director of Labor
• 1:11:04
  relations in a Zoom said and I quote, we are in turmoil.
• 1:11:10
  And that has stood with me till now, like forever.
• 1:11:14
  That will always stand and speak like that.
• 1:11:16
  That April of 2023 chaos that was ensuing and the uncertainty
• 1:11:23
  and the like the destabilization.
• 1:11:25
  And I think now we're in a better grounding.
• 1:11:28
  We just need to not be as apathetic to what these
• 1:11:32
  evaluations are, and we need to look at things we can control,
• 1:11:37
  do our mapping, and educate each other.
• 1:11:40
  Absolutely, yeah. So.
• 1:11:42
  And file those disputes so as they're warranted.
• 1:11:45
  And the disputes are due April 24th.
• 1:11:48
  Yes, yes. So on that note, guys, anything
• 1:11:51
  else? Otherwise, we're just going to
• 1:11:52
  do a sign off. I think I think we're good and
• 1:11:59
  if. She's.
• 1:12:01
  Got the only thing I am I will say this, if you still are
• 1:12:05
  stressed out over your evaluation and I know it was
• 1:12:08
  kind of overwhelming for you to have that initial shock and it
• 1:12:12
  it could be an upheaval of your life and I I get that.
• 1:12:15
  Please call the AP like they can help you.
• 1:12:19
  They can like I, I I've asked them before how is there a, a
• 1:12:23
  pamphlet help My route dropped during RX can can there be an
• 1:12:29
  EAP pamphlet for it? But the phone number again is
• 1:12:32
  1-800-327-4968. And please call them if you need
• 1:12:36
  to Don't feel any shame for doing it like they it's just
• 1:12:41
  nice to talk to somebody who's not in the post office.
• 1:12:44
  It's just like an outside entity, so, but I think that's
• 1:12:49
  it because I could keep going, you know, I could talk about 20
• 1:12:52
  million different things. Me too, but some of us need to
• 1:12:55
  get some sleep because. We have to work.
• 1:12:57
  Tomorrow, yes, and, and I will, I will proudly say that last
• 1:13:03
  week and this week I worked all five days.
• 1:13:07
  That's the first pay period since the beginning of the year.
• 1:13:11
  Yeah, that I've worked on entire pay period minus my relief day.
• 1:13:16
  Not next week though. I'm I'm off next Friday and the
• 1:13:21
  following Monday for mom's appointments.
• 1:13:23
  Yeah, nice, Yeah. So anything else, Josh, just.
• 1:13:30
  In regards to it was just said about with EAP, you know if need
• 1:13:35
  be take a step back, take a deep breath and step back in and it's
• 1:13:40
  still thing called EAP, that's it.
• 1:13:45
  That's all I got you guys. That's all.
• 1:13:47
  That's all she wrote. Yeah.
• 1:13:49
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 1:13:50
  We got through our 150th episode.
• 1:13:54
  Don't worry, The history stuff is still in the works.
• 1:13:57
  I am bound and determined to get that done soon.
• 1:14:00
  Like, yeah. Or at least started.
• 1:14:03
  Yes, yeah, started and and done. And you know, we're coming up
• 1:14:07
  into annual meeting time. State conventions will start
• 1:14:10
  rolling around. We've got the last couple
• 1:14:15
  regional conference is going on so and then we got national in
• 1:14:19
  August. Woo Hoo and Sunday Easter.
• 1:14:23
  So happy early Easter. Yes, happy early Easter,
• 1:14:26
  everybody. Tomorrow's not going to be an
• 1:14:29
  easy day for me, but I will get through it and then drive down
• 1:14:32
  and see Tom. Tomorrow would have been my
• 1:14:33
  dad's 75th birthday as you guys are listening because yeah, it's
• 1:14:39
  11:30 at night and this will be going up around so.
• 1:14:43
  Yeah, well, in that case, my dad and my kids, your birthday.
• 1:14:50
  Happy having Lee birthday to my dad.
• 1:14:52
  Yeah, so, and in case anybody's wondering, Ruby went down to my
• 1:14:57
  mom's last week and she is staying.
• 1:14:59
  She's been down there and she's staying at least through next
• 1:15:02
  week. She has been possibly thinking
• 1:15:05
  about moving down there and if anybody is in that area of South
• 1:15:14
  Central, Southwest Michigan and wants to move northeast, I might
• 1:15:22
  consider a mutual transfer. Or if something pops up district
• 1:15:27
  wide, I may bet on it. Just if somebody's at home with
• 1:15:31
  my mom so we aren't forced to put her somewhere she doesn't
• 1:15:34
  want to be, just throwing it up, you know, if it's going to have,
• 1:15:39
  if it's supposed to happen, it'll happen, you know, So, but
• 1:15:43
  you know, I've been tossing those ideas out there too.
• 1:15:45
  So as much as I'd hate to leave my office, leave my route, leave
• 1:15:48
  my customers, that's my mom. Yep, right.
• 1:15:53
  You got to do what you got to do for you.
• 1:15:55
  Yeah, you and yours. I have talked to some people
• 1:15:59
  from that area. They are going to keep their
• 1:16:01
  eyes and ears healed for me and let me know if any possibly go
• 1:16:06
  up district or any higher real soon.
• 1:16:12
  Yeah, I am open to that as well, even if I have to go to a
• 1:16:17
  smaller route and APOV, you know, I'll do what I got to do.
• 1:16:22
  Clear my mouth, guys, as it's why as we are trying to get out
• 1:16:28
  of here and we're all talking. It's yeah, 150th.
• 1:16:33
  And thank you guys for being part of this with me.
• 1:16:35
  I appreciate it. And thank you for having us.
• 1:16:38
  Yes, thank you for making this podcast.
• 1:16:42
  Yeah. And we will be working on the
• 1:16:45
  history stuff to get that out. And then you guys have a happy
• 1:16:51
  Easter and we'll be back when we get a chance to get back about
• 1:16:58
  all I can say. But all right, guys, have a good
• 1:17:01
  night, have a good day, be safe, stay hydrated, and yeah, till
• 1:17:05
  next time.