February 21, 2007

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            People grumbled about the lack of upkeep at the United States Postal Service office in Wake Forest, but the real complaints, continuing year after year, were about the long waiting lines and poor customer service.

            Postmaster Mike Keen heard all this, loud and clear, when he stepped into the position a year ago. “My main job is moving the mail and customer service.

            “The two worst things were the wait time in line and customer complaints,” Keen said. “I’ve focused on both of them, and you don’t hear as much now.

            “Our goal is five minutes or less waiting in line. We have external people who shop us” and report if the wait time is too long or the service is poor. “There’s a lot of motivation to get that wait time down. It’s drastically improved.”

            Keen is trying to improve service, repair the building, and meet a sudden increase in the demand for passports with a staff that should have at least 15 more people and at a time when the town and service area are growing exponentially.

            One morning last week the large sorting machines that take up about a quarter of the large work space sorted 61,404 pieces of mail, representing 85 to 90 percent of the office’s letter volume. That figure does not include the magazines, mailers, catalogs and other third-class mail they refer to as “flats.”

            The machines begin to work at 3:30 a.m., shuffling the mail three times to get it in proper order for the carriers, who take the loaded carts and sort again, plugging mail into individual slots in their cubicles, each slot representing a customer or mail box. The carriers are usually ready to leave by 10 a.m. or noon.

            Each carrier will leave the building with first-class mail that, if stacked up, would be 8 feet in height. The flats would add several more feet, depending on the day and season.

            He has heard from people who complain they do not get their mail or get other people’s. Keen said he would like to challenge some of those complainers to ride along with a carrier for two or three days. They would see how difficult it is when people move from an apartment without giving a change of address notice and the new tenant gets the mail or a new subdivision is underway, streets still muddy, and people are moving into homes so new the paint is still wet.

            Keen has between 55 and 60 employees, depending on the day. He would be fully staffed at 75. “I’ve got one clerk leaving, but a new one is coming in March third.” He is also short a supervisor, one of two, who has been sent on temporary duty to Carrboro.

            The clerks “are getting tired,” Keen said, because of the understaffing. “Last week was the first time in a year they’ve had a day off.” He has five full-time regular clerks and four full-time flexible clerks who have been working up to seven days a week when the normal schedule is five days a week.

            Then there are the mail carriers. There is a high demand for the carriers because the Wake Forest office has grown from 10 rural routes (carried by car or truck to individual mail boxes) to 28 since 2003. The four city routes are carried on foot to front-door or porch mail boxes.

            Keen’s problem is keeping substitute rural carriers. A permanent rural mail carrier is a career employee with benefits and holidays.

            Substitute carriers often have to work at least two years before they become permanent, depending, Keen said, on there being openings due to retirement or growth. In that time they have no holidays, no sick leave, no benefits and no guarantee of work hours. “We have a high turnover in that area because of those issues. Sometimes the job doesn’t really attract the good quality of employee. It’s a national struggle to keep those positions filled.”

            Keen said that this fall he had only six vacancies in the substitute carrier positions. Then, “we lost five or six in a short time frame due to resignation or termination.”

            Out at the customer desk, the sudden demand for passports hit the office hard. After Jan. 23 anyone flying abroad had to have a passport. “It was incredible the people who were coming in. It became chaos.”

            To sort it out, he set up an appointment system that is usually backlogged. Several clerks have been trained to handle the passport applications, but only one works on them on any given day.

            “The growth [in the area] has really affected us. My [customer service] window is picking up at a tremendous pace,” Keen said. “Revenue is up.”

            His money, and the money for the entire USPS, comes from selling stamps. “People think they’re subsidizing the post office with their taxes,” Keen said. “That’s not where we get our money.” The USPS is quasi-governmental, authorized by the U.S. Congress but operating without government funding.

            The expense column in his budget includes operating expenses, building repairs, maintenance and supplies, employees and overtime. Last year the Wake Forest office had 7 to 8 percent more revenue from stamps than the expenses.

            The building and property repairs are finally coming together. Keen was not sure how long the former postmaster, Jerry Breed, had been asking for money to repair the leaky roof. “Probably at least the last three years.” Until the roof was repaired, there was no point in repairing the damage to the roof overhang or replacing the stained ceiling tiles.

            The new roof is complete, and the new custodian has already replaced 80 tiles in the lobby. Keen has not been able to find a hinge part for the broken door, there are lighting issues and he is about to have the parking lot re-striped so people can see where they should park.

            He has some funds for the flower beds and, most importantly, he has a new maintenance person, Chad Guetterman.

            The previous maintenance person had an accident and eventually had to leave on disability. In the interim, there was a contractor who worked four to five hours a day but was not able to keep up with all that needed to be done. “By the time he [the previous maintenance person] retired, it took another year to approve the position again,” Keen said. “That’s the reason a lot of things got to where they were.”

            Keen has the tiles for the post office entry and has put in an order for the glue. He has ordered new rugs for the entrance and lobby. “We’re plugging away at it.”

            Although the 20-year-old building, has no unused space, Keen said there are no plans to expand it now although “it will be looked at in the near future.”

            There are other post offices with much more pressing need: Rolesville and Apex, for two.

            “In Apex, they put in double-wides and put the mail processors out there. I hope they don’t do that here.”

            If you want to improve your mail service, you can go to http://www.usps.com to view all the available services, including package pickup and calculation of mailing costs. You can use the orange envelopes – just ask your mail carrier for some – to order and receive stamps. A thank you and a word of appreciation help, too.

            And we all need to watch for the improvements at our post office.