Going Postal

The term "going Postal" was pretty common some time ago and came into vogue based on a series of events that were happening in U.S. Postal Services offices in the early 1980's. The whole organization was under stress, they had a terrible reputation for customer service, and their employees were so stressed that several of them went totally crazy and ended up shooting up their work places, sometimes killing supervisors and Postmasters. The whole phenomenon got its own name: Going Postal; and any time something similar happened were workplace violence took place people just referred to the incidents as a another episode where someone has "gone Postal". Let's just say it was not exactly the way the USPS wanted to be characterized, and in spite of the violence that got the whole notion started, "going Postal" became something of a punchline.

This a short story about a personal experience I had with the Postal Service this week. Here's the background. It all starts with my daughter and her family deciding to buy a new house. They list their house for sale and are fortunate to sell it in fairly short order. Then they found a great new house to buy. The only small issue in this whole real estate transaction was that the new place wouldn't be available until about three weeks after the old house sale closed and they needed to be moved out. No big deal, they can move in with us for a short while. Of course they needed to do a Change of Address with the USPS having their mail come to our house until they can move to their new place. No problem, their mail comes to our address until their new house is ready and they move. When that time came, they did another Change of Address to their new place. The only problem was that when they did the second Change of Address (on-line) they inadvertently checked the box that said "whole family". It was innocent enough, my daughter thought it meant HER whole family. An easy mistake to make, but the result was that now my mail started going to her new home and mail service at my house just stopped.

Now I have do something to get this whole thing straightened out. I start with a call to the USPS and I got guy on the phone (in California) who patiently listened to my tale and told me the best thing to do is just go to my Post Office in person to deal with this. I follow the instructions and head to my postal annex station. I'm expecting the worst, based on all those stories and the old reputation of the Postal workers. I enter the building which is not a full-service Post Office, it is just the annex where the home delivery for my zip code originates. All I see is a large solid door with a peep hole and a buzzer to get service. I know now that I have entered bureaucratic hell and brace myself for the experience.

After a few seconds a woman came to the door to help me. From this point on everything changes. This woman asks about me about my problem. She doesn't ask me to fill out any forms, she doesn't give some bureaucratically inspired canned response. Instead she writes down all the information herself, diagnoses the problem about my mail service, and takes down all my daughters info too, to ensure that the fix doesn't effect my daughter's mail service across town. Then she said that another guy from the USPS would call me to confirm that the problem was taken care of. I thanked her and thought to myself as I was leaving, "that was pleasant enough, but I won't hold my breath waiting for that phone call".  I'm about 10 minutes out from the Postal Annex driving back to work when my phone rings. A fellow named Danny from the USPS leaves me a phone message saying he's working on my problem and gives a short instruction for my daughter to alter her second Change of Address that should solve the whole thing and I'll get my mail service restored. I get to a spot where I can call him back. I reach him on the phone on the first try just to get some clarity about his earlier message. As I start ask him a question he stops me to say that he just took care of the whole thing himself and my daughter and I didn't need to do anything more. Problem solved.

I have to say, that made my whole day. I had a problem with a formerly notorious organization. I went to them and they treated me well. On top of that they acted quickly and actually went out of their way to solve the problem. You might think this is a small thing and you'd be right in some regard. But this experience got me thinking about several issues. First, it just nice to go to a large agency and have people treat you well, do their job and actually go above and beyond to just fix the problem. Being treated well by strangers, and particularly by those in normally faceless organizations is not what we expect in this era. So when it happens it is very pleasant.

The other thing that occurred to me is that a large organization with a bad reputation is capable of change. I don't believe I was just incredibly lucky to have gotten good service on that one day. I have to believe that the USPS realized some time ago that they became the poster-boys for a crappy outfit and set about to purposefully change that. This gave me real confidence that large organizations, be they private companies, government entities, or quasi-government agencies can actually change their culture and transform themselves into organizations that are well regarded. If the Post Office can do it, I'm quite sure other organizations can too.

 I cannot think of another national organization that has suffered more bad press, more negative market pressure, and more Congressional scrutiny that the USPS. As I mentioned before they were so bad in the 70's and 80's that it was actually dangerous to work there. Then the computer age of digital communication (email and such) came along with the growth of private package delivery by UPS and FedEx, and on-line billing and bill paying all cut seriously into their bread and butter business. Just as they were turning the corner on modernizing in the new market place Congress forced them to over-fund their pension programs to the point of nearly driving them completely out of business- which I think was the whole point Republicans in Congress were going for. But the U.S. Postal Service is still with us after all that. It goes to show that organizations with value can undergo the change in corporate culture needed to survive. This should be a lesson to other organizations who desperately need to change.

As so many people condemn big government and the services it provides, they tend to believe the simple answers and not dig deeper for the real solutions to fix our ailing institutions. Congress itself has a lower approval rating than a root canal. But they, like so many bureaucracies refuse to take an honest look at themselves. Instead they do as they have always done, and therefore never improve themselves. We need the services government provides, just like we still need the USPS. My brief personal encounter the Post Office tells me that others can improve, just like they did. The secret is leadership that sees the need for change and a willingness to embrace it.

Thanks for looking in.