I'm a 17-year US postal worker who has never witnessed such bad mail delays or heard management admit 'we can't handle volume' until now

https://www.businessinsider.com/postal-worker-for-17-years-no-logic-behind-delayed-mail-2021-1

Lauren Lee

Jan. 8, 2021

Chris (not his real name), 41, is a veteran postal worker in Massachusetts who talked to Insider about the extreme delays he's seeing with the mail since the holidays, which were unusually slow:

When I returned to work after Christmas, I heard stories from all my coworkers about how there was very light volume during the Christmas season.

This has never been the case. In my years at the post office, a 40-hour work week is unheard of during the holidays. Usually the month of December is filled with 60-hour work weeks. 

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Upon my return, I started paying more attention to the packages as they slowly came in.

Many dated back to the first and second week of December. This includes priority mail. 

My local management's hands are tied. My office supervisors and postmasters know very little outside of the same thing they keep being told and relaying the message that "we can't keep up with the volume." They don't have any more information than we do. The packages get sent and just get stuck somewhere in the middle.

We haven't limited the workforce, so there's plenty of people to deliver the mail. Previous holiday seasons we kept up with our own volume along with Amazon packages.

Now, with Amazon creating their own fleet, we have less volume than ever, but we're still being told we can't handle the remaining volume. 

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Customers on my route ask why they're just getting things that they ordered before Christmas. I get messages from friends via social networks asking me what's up with the post office lately because they're expecting overdue packages. I see more and more people acknowledging how long things sent via USPS take to ship and receive.

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Editor's note: In a statement to Insider, a US Postal Service spokesperson said: "The 2020 Holiday Season was a record for the United States Postal Service with more than a billion packages delivered.  

Shippers across the board were challenged with airlifts and trucking capacity for moving historic volumes, causing temporary pockets of delays. As is our duty, we accepted all volumes and our employees rose to the occasion to deliver for America. This epic volume was also amplified by employee availability challenges and necessary COVID-19 policies designed to keep our employees and our communities safe.

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