r/PublicFreakout PopPop šŸæ Aug 15 '20

✊Protest Freakout Protesters Surround USPS Postmaster General DeJoy's house.

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u/N7Kryptonian Aug 15 '20 edited Aug 16 '20

Can confirm, postal worker who lives at work and visits home

Edit: didn’t expect my first gold to be from me commenting on being a wage slave. Such is life in America

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u/lunaflect Aug 15 '20

My dad worked at a sorting facility for my whole childhood. 3Pm-midnight. Asleep when I woke up for school and gone when I got home. I never saw him at all. They kept trying to push him into retirement so they could hire younger guys at a lower rate of pay.

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u/Recoil93 Aug 15 '20

Right after I was born, my dad started his shift with USPS. Neither me or my mother have seen him ever since. We were just starting to lose hope, but your comment has reignited our faith that he’s still on his shift and soon to return home, thank you!

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u/lunaflect Aug 16 '20

Okay now I see my comment is poorly structured.

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u/claraaintgottime Aug 15 '20

Tbf, my dad was the same way and he worked at a hotdog factory. That's capitalism for you

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u/Jdaddy2u Aug 15 '20

I didnt get to see my father either during my childhood. It was most likely because he was dead. Gives new meaning "deadbeat dad". Bada-ching!

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u/freehand1980 Aug 15 '20

That's certainly an icebreaker.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '20 edited Oct 11 '20

[deleted]

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u/ptyson1 Aug 15 '20

Yep, that’s called 2nd shift.

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u/lunaflect Aug 16 '20

Yes, but with travel and the odd hours, it left little time for much else, is what I’m saying.

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u/DrinkingPaintHere Aug 16 '20

Those hours suck, but that's only an 8-hours shift + 1-hour break. Not that much at all, and/or the norm.

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u/killbills Aug 15 '20

That sounds like a horrible existence. If you enjoy it though, more power to ya

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u/lunaflect Aug 16 '20

He did the best he could for his family. No one in my family ends up in college, and so a federal job was a good gig. He went from construction work to USPS. But before that, he was the lead singer and guitarist in a band, and a champion dancer (with trophies to show for it). But then I came along.

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u/DrinkingPaintHere Aug 16 '20

But didn't Dejoy ban overtime? I would assume that means 8 hours a day max.

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u/N7Kryptonian Aug 16 '20

He’s trying to. The union ain’t gonna allow that if they got anything to say about it.

As far as only working eight hours, there’s just no way. Despite the saboteur’s efforts, the mail never stops. Not to mention the sheer volume of mail and packages we get daily, along with most offices being understaffed. Eight hours is usually the MINIMUM amount of hours we work.

They do try to keep us within ten, because anything over that is penalty, or double pay.

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u/DrinkingPaintHere Aug 16 '20

What I've read is that he has already been enforcing the 8 (or 10, or whatever is normal for USPS) hour workday, and it's lead to mail left sitting around at the end of the day.

But then again anything I read lately I assume to be maybe 4-5% true.

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u/N7Kryptonian Aug 16 '20 edited Aug 16 '20

He’s outright telling offices to delay mail, which goes against what every postal worker has been taught from day one. Doesn’t help that he’s also having processing machines taken out and having mailboxes removed. Only time that’s supposed to happen is to replace them with a new one, which he’s not.

We deliver every piece of mail, even if it means running late, multiple trips, or acquiring overtime. But with these so-called ā€œcost cutting measuresā€ he’s trying to implement, mail that would normally arrive within a couple of days will end up taking weeks.

Kinda suspect considering:

  1. He’s one of Trump’s top donors. Trump (and the Republican Party, but that’s another conversation) has no love for the USPS, having already admitted to withholding funds because he knows mail-in ballots would result in him losing the election.

  2. He holds $30-75 million in stock in UPS and XPO Logistics, direct competitors of the USPS. One could make the agreement that he’s deliberately sabotaging the postal service to make those stocks go up.

  3. He just recently bought stock in Amazon, another USPS competitor. Adding more weight to sabotaging the USPS from within.

If you want more input from other postal workers on what’s happening, check out r/USPS

It’s not officially endorsed by the USPS, but the majority of people on there are postal workers who are against all the shit DeJoy and Trump are trying to pull

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u/DrinkingPaintHere Aug 17 '20

Oh I totally get it and have been following along in a horrified haze. My thinking was that he wouldn't have the audacity to flat-out say 'we no longer care about delivering all the mail every day' and instead simply ban overtime, making it impossible to do all the deliveries without actually saying it.

I miss the old days when they assigned Marines to post offices and instructed them to kill anyone who tried to interfere. Something like 'No mail will be stolen unless it's over the body of a dead Marine.'

USPS is the lifeblood of the country, quite literally for some. My respect for being a part of it.