Pros
When I first started working as a mail carrier more than 10 years ago, the job was pretty good. I worked maybe half-time (which was fine at the time as it was only to be a temporary job) and pretty flexible (though the more you were available to work, the more hours you were actually offered). Training was a bit sparse, but there was an effort on the part of management to see that trainees learned the ropes before being inundated with a full workload. I became a regular carrier in less than a year, because at the time there was a tech boom: fewer qualified applicants & high mail volume (letters & magazines). Carriers would spend the first 1/3 of the day in the office (usually til 11am) putting their mail for the day in order ("casing"). The pay is a set rate that increases with seniority, which is fairly good for some areas of the country, but for Silicon Valley is well under state & city employees pay rates (for comparable positions), though it is better than the service sector (but it is worse than UPS). There were options to move to other locations & up within the organization, but over time these have become fewer & more difficult to actually do. Carriers used to be able to relocate to a different area and retain their seniority, but now management has made that all but impossible. In order to move now one must start all over again from the bottom, which means working odd & long hours (not regular set hours that come with seniority, which becomes more difficult if you're older). Having union representation provides some wage & job security, however this too has declined over the years as the union has become overwhelmed by handling basic issues (firings & harassment), it has dropped the ball on ensuring that employees are informed about their rights & how to do the job properly as well as notifying management about other issues (safety, preventing on the job injuries, etc.). I've come to enjoy working outdoors & being mobile throughout the day and if it the job was still what it was & I was left alone to do it, then I would still be a happy camper, however the past decade has brought on too many cons:
Cons
-Work load for those who actually work, is determined by computer and micromanaged from up top. District Managers order supervisors at local offices how much work to give carriers regardless of how much time things really take to do because their job evaluation depends on it. Local supervisors in turn bully mail carriers to work more than is humanly possible. Managment that thinks outside the box is axed, move to a quiet little town somewhere where they won't be noticed, retire or find a job somewhere that actually values innovation & intelligence. -those who can't do their job (too overweight, injured or some other medical reason) or don't want to are the ones who go on to become supervisors & into the upper reaches of management. -those employees who are smart, don't go into management because iUSPS does not provide proper training for managers, makes them work well beyond 40 hr. work week for their salary (which means that supervisors make less per hour than mail carriers or mail handlers and they have no job security. Because they have no training & unrealistic (target goals set by computer to eek out the most amount of work from as few people as possible), they resort to bullying employees in to skipping breaks & lunch, running their routes & doing many unsafe practices. -the few people are both respectfful of employees, customer service oriented & intelligent end up getting bullied/harassed themselves and usually retire as soon as they can or because they have talent, leave for places with better pay/lower cost of living & that actually respect their employees. -Pay is not enough to afford a house or even a new car in SF Bay area and rent eats up half of your take home pay (and that's for a seasoned regular carrier, it's worse if you're starting out). -USPS used to be an EEO, there was a developmentally disabled employee in my office & for a period the new applicants were diverse by age, race and gender (which wasn't the case until more recently). But now, all the new hires (CCAs) are young, some of them don't even look old enough to have a driver's license. The objective now is to hire as many expendable employees who have little work experience & use them as much as possible and get rid of them when they're no longer needed (and yes, the unions gave complete consent to this arrangement without objection, which just goes to show you how little you get for the union dues deducted from your paycheck). -In my 15 years I have gone out of my way on numerous occasions for managment (delivering on other routes etc.), I have only ever been thanked for something once, and that was over 5 years ago. -In contrast, I have been called into the office numerous times, about things like "time wasting practices", for 1/2 hour to an hour over things that consume less than 5 minutes of time. -I do my job as I'm supposed to, including taking my 2x10 minute breaks & 1/2 hour for lunch (using my breaks to stretch), but that has only earned me the ire of management & countless hours of managers following my every move on the street (at how much cost?), because the route in fact took 1/2 hour more than their computer projection (but exactly as long as I had predicted while in the office before being bullied into saying that I might be able to make it in less). -Resentment from CCA's because they don't know how to do their job correctly, don't know their rights & responsibilities (performing job safely). -See your route increase in size over the years because of fewer letters & magazines, but then go inundated with more parcels because you signed up Ebayers & businesss to use USPS and then get continual harassment from supervisors because it takes longer & management doesn't provide you the equipment to properly do the job (ie I'd need a UPS size truck to adequately accommodate the # of parcels I now pick up). -USPS doesn't provide you with the basic tools to even do your job properly. I was issued one mail carrier bag 15 years ago, which is shredding to pieces, continuously falling off my shoulder. Despite requesting a new one for the past 5 years & odd assurances that I would get one, I have yet to see it (managers usually end up cobbling together bits from old castaways). -USPS has shifted human resources away from local office into centralized, bureaucratic structure which now requires you to log on to the internet & submit tons of paperwork (which you have to do on your own time as you don't have access while at work) -USPS does not make any accommodations if you have a family. Forget taking kids to school, caring for a sick parent, etc. you can still have a doctor's note stating that you can't physically work more than 8 hrs a day, 40 hours a week from injuries sustained on the job & management will still order you to work 10 hour days/50+ hour weeks. -Because USPS is a quasi government agency, there is no accountability & the Department of Labor does nothing to curb USPS clearly illegal labor practices. -To sum USPS is run like the military (most likely because so many employees are from the military), the more incompetent you are, the further up pyramid you will go. If you want to learn more about USPS, just read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.