FAIL Blog

Nefarious Mailman Treats Temp Like Garbage, Gets His Career Sabotaged

When we're being treated unfairly, it's important to look at what power we might actually have over our own situation. What most people would consider a no-win situation of being bullied by a jerk mailman, this person figured out a way to make Dave look like the lazy, vindictive sack of crap that he is. For another wild one, here's the employee who got fired and asked to finish a job but insisted thought would violate their NDA.

  • 1
    Font - U r/ProRevenge · Posted by u/Rknot 6 days ago O 13 10 S 15 "I Got You A Souvenir." Yeah, I Got You Fired From The Post Office Edit: TL/DR at end with some comments Background Sit back and enjoy a story about some revenge I achieved at the US Postal Service back in the 1990s that cost a bullying full-time carrier his union job. In summer of 1991, I found a summer job as a “casual carrier" for the USPS. They used to hire summer temps to cover for all the full-time carriers who mostly took t
    Via Rknot
  • Advertisement
  • 2
    Font - The USPS had (has?) rules that things had to be delivered within certain time windows. People could get fired if they took too long to do tasks. Carriers were both openly and secretly monitored and timed on tasks and we had the first computerized time system I ever saw. They would be secretly followed a few times per year to be sure they were working hard the entire time they were outside the post office. The post office building even had secret back hallways, passive sound monitoring, an
    Via Rknot
  • 3
    Font - We were supposed to walk over and punch in and out of tasks so that they could track productivity to the second. People walking a delivery route were expected to do it FAST and better routes went to faster carriers. Slow carriers got mercilessly hassled to be faster and were disciplined for slowness. Look at Newman on Seinfeld. "Going postal" due to overwork was not really a joke there, because people would flip out and murder their bosses. I hear it's worse now with GPS.
    Via Rknot
  • 4
    Font - Pre-Internet, there used to be a huge volume of mail that got shuffled around the country every day. Quantities of mail that you would find hard to believe compared to what we see now. I was a broke college student home for the summer and was willing to work any hours they gave me, so the supervisors liked me. I was also very friendly with most of the Full-time (FT) carriers because I was a good worker and didn't rock the boat. Also, for other reasons that you'll see below.
    Via Rknot
  • Advertisement
  • 5
    Font - I'm a fairly big guy (6'5" or about 195cm, about 210 Ibs back then) and I could carry a lot of weight so that also made management happy. I was also in my early 20s with long legs so I could move fast carrying a lot of weight. Sorting mail back then was labor intensive and took a lot of time to learn. I had a regular route that I would deliver in the afternoons that was sorted by a regular. I would usually do oddball delivery stuff in the mornings, help move heavy things around, do specia
    Via Rknot
  • 6
    Cheezburger Image 9649938176
    Via Rknot
  • 7
    Font - I was assigned to do the T6 work for Dave (name changed) for a few months. F#@king Dave. Picture a failed Phys Ed teacher in his 40s. Bad moustache, about 5'7", wore knock-off sunglasses like Magnum PI's, and had an opinion about everything. Dave learns he has me as his T6 and decides he will leave all of the heavy stuff for me. So, once a week I got confronted with the entire week's worth of heavy mail for this a-hole's route. I confronted him about it and he basically laughed and said t
    Via Rknot
  • Advertisement
  • 8
    Font - I went to our boss and escalated to our postmaster but was told that he was FT and I was a temp so I just had to deal with it. If the mail needed to be delivered that day to meet the deadline, I had to make it happen. The postmaster's exact words were, "Just deliver every piece of mail for the route as fast as you can and don't worry about the time it takes or anything else. You're making huge OT on this route." They did talk to Dave and the most egregious stuff stopped, but I was still d
    Via Rknot
  • 9
    Font - I mentioned earlier that everyone was always on the clock and tracked. In my first week, some of the nicer people took me aside at the beginning of the summer and made it clear to me that I was not to move quickly when delivering FT carrier's routes because it could make them look bad and cause trouble for them. As a temp, I should always take longer than the FT carriers because (1) my job was limited and the USPS did not really track temps closely; (2) I had zero experience so everything
    Via Rknot
  • 10
    Font - I decided to wreck Dave's job since he was such a bullying little tool. I requisitioned two additional mail carrier bags. These are the over-the-shoulder satchels you see all the time. I was asked why and I specifically told them it was to be able to carry all of the heavy items on Dave's route without having to keep going back to my jeep to reload along the way. The postmaster personally approved it. After doing Dave's route 1 to 3 times per week (he called in sick a lot, too) for a few
    Via Rknot
  • Advertisement
  • 11
    Font - No one really noticed I was coming back so quickly and punching back out of delivering his route when I was only doing it a few times per week. I would come back, pick up other work and get that done. The fun started when Dave took a 2-week vacation and I handled his route 6 days per week. Since I was doing the work right, there was never a backlog of heavy items landing on me once per week. This made it even easier to jog or run his route as I was back to using one mailbag and fast-walki
    Via Rknot
  • 12
    Font - I got pulled aside by my supervisor and the postmaster after the first week. They asked me about my timekeeping practices and I confirmed that I was doing things correctly. I would punch into his route on departure, keep the appropriate logs, and punch back in when I got back. The Postmaster then asked me about Dave's route. I played completely dumb. He noted that I complained about the mail volume several weeks ago and that I used to take 6, 7, or more hours to get it delivered. I explai
    Via Rknot
  • 13
    Font - I told him I was having trouble understanding why this route was budgeted 4.5 hours to deliver when it clearly could be done much faster than that. I pointed out that it was a lot of dense multi-family housing, which means less walking. I told him lots of people on the route seemed surprised that I did not want a soda pop or to sit down and talk for a minute like Dave always did with them (pure lies). All in my innocent, gosh-I-want-to-help-the-USPS voice. I told the postmaster that I was
    Via Rknot
  • Advertisement
  • 14
    Font - I jogged the route again for the next 6 days and kept getting it done in much less time than Dave. Dave did not know about any of this. He made a point of finding me on his first day back to ask how I enjoyed doing all the hard work for him while he was vacationing. I told him I'd learned a lesson about how to treat your coworkers. He laughed at me and went back to sorting mail. He came back a few minutes later and said he got me a souvenir, he then pulled his middle finger out of his poc
    Via Rknot
  • 15
    Font - That was my last week at the USPS and I headed back to college. I kept in touch with some of the friends I'd made there and one of them was very happy to tell me that Dave was fired about two months after I left. Due to the massive discrepancy in how long it took me and him to deliver the route, the higher-ups audited his route and discovered that he actually was lollygagging, taking unauthorized breaks, and apparently having an affair with a woman on his route - all on the clock. I, on t
    Via Rknot

Tags

wtf job revenge work mailman story mail funny

About the Author

Posted by MinWage

Next on FAIL Blog

Puns of Varying Quality and Clevertude

Puns of Varying Quality and Clevertude

Comments

About the Author

Posted by MinWage

Hot Today

Employee Quits When Leave Request For Honeymoon is Denied, Boss Doesn't Realize They're Gone, Gets Fired 1
Karen Leaves 1-Star Review For Tattoo and Piercing Studio, Owner Claps Back 2
Vegan Gets Upset When Roommate Tells Cat Shelter That She is Lying About What She Intends to Feed the Adopted Animal 3
Baseless Choosing Beggars Who Wanted Something For Nothing 4
What Things Are Red Flags From Employers That People Might Not Immediately Recognize? The Internet Answers. 5
Childcare Worker Gives Her Parents A Much-Needed Reality Check After They Criticize Her Line of Work, Prompts Ire From Siblings 6
Customer Cons Front-End Developer, Tech Revenge Ensues 1
Choosy Beggar Expects Family To Move Out Of House For The Week 2
Customer Believes Computer Never Needs To Be Charged, Tech Support Intervenes 3
Neighbors Steal From Garden, Plant Puns Wall Of Shame Ensues 4
Tumblr Post: People's Bizarre Information Gaps 5
Random Tumblr Gems To Hack Through With A Machete 6

Follow The Laughs

Terms | Privacy | Security | DMCA Policy