Postal Service

Overview

Henry Johnson didn't want to be an accountant, an engineer or a salesman. He didn't want to work in a factory. He knew what he didn't want but he didn't know what he did want. Then he was hired by the Postal Service to be a letter carrier and he knew that this was what he wanted.

The Postal Service was always telling its workers what was important to them-things like safety, no discrimination, high standards and good employer/employee relations. These were number one concerns for an organization that had a somewhat murky past as the Post Office but was looking hopefully to the future as the Postal Service. These things were also important to Henry. But Henry soon learned that if everything is number one then nothing is number one. What was important one week was hopelessly abandoned the next week. The Postal Service had countless plans. What Henry learned though was that it didn't have a clue.

What Henry discovered in the course of a long career was that bad managers were not few and far between. They were everywhere. And at one time or another he tangled with all of them...the Baltimore Cowboy, the fast track postmaster, and countless anonymous creators of unattainable goals.

He saw incompetence at every level of the management food chain but it was the managers and supervisors that he dealt with daily in his own station that drove him crazy.

Henry did his job and did it well, only to find that that wasn't good enough. In addition to rain, sleet and snow, he had to contend with bosses who were unqualified, undignified and unscrupulous. Yet because they were bosses'given a measured degree of authority by their bosses'Henry was subject to ridicule, harassment and more ignorance than any hard working American should ever have to put up with. They seemed to enjoy punishing him for doing his job well.

These were people hired to watch other people work. With a clipboard in one hand and a snack in the other, they set out each day to break workers by stifling initiative and replacing it with a mundane follow-the-herd mentality that in the long run, practically guaranteed failure.

Their tactics were almost always the same, as they demanded more out of these workers, every day, day after day, through intimidation and bullying. At the very least, Henry thought these watchers of workers should have to adhere to the same minimum standard that doctors are held to-first do no harm.

They differed only in degrees-degrees of ineptitude, degrees of hostility towards workers, degrees of insecurity that cause them to take drastic steps to protect their turf.

Nearing the end of his career, Henry found himself contending on a daily basis with two individuals more concerned with keeping their authority-and willing to abuse their authority-if that's what it took to keep it. They didn't mind hurting employees and they didn't mind hurting the company. After putting up with their misdeeds for longer than he wanted, Henry decided to take a stand.

Sometimes Henry's behavior was funny, sometimes it was reckless; and oftentimes he was combatant. He was always unpredictable. His bosses didn't know what he would do next and sometimes Henry wasn't that sure either. He didn't understand why some co-workers called him "Psycho" and at the same time he appreciated the advantage it gave him.

He knew he couldn't change the system but he was determined not to let the system change him. He also realized that these bosses didn't care what he thought. He couldn't argue his case and he couldn't defend his arguments to people who didn't care.

None of that mattered. When he was done with them everyone would see them for what they were. And they would finally have to admit that after watching him for thirty years they never saw it coming.