Low-Down & Dirty

By Carrie Alford

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 6, 2005
• ISBN: 9781450069472

Carrie Alford

I was born in a small town in Louisiana. I was second to the oldest of four children. I moved to L.A. Caly in 1966 fro Bastrop L.A. In 1976, I moved to Buena Park, CA. with my four children.

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LOW DOWN & DIRTY

Carrie Alford

Copyright © 2005 by Carrie Alford.

Library of Congress Control Number:          2005905210

ISBN:                  Hardcover                         1-4134-9877-9

                           Softcover                           1-4134-9876-0

                           Ebook                                978-1-4500-6947-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V

PART VI

PART VII

PART VIII

PART I

I went into the Postal Service in 1971. I left in 2004. During that time, I was harassed, sexually harassed and discriminated against.

When I first came into the Postal Service, I loved my job. I worked hard. When I went home in the morning I was tired, but I felt good because I had done my best.

I wanted to see that whatever mail came in on my station went out that morning. That meant we have zero out. There may be some nights I didn’t do my best. That was because I wasn’t feeling well. But I still tried to do the best I could.

I remember once a friend asked me, Why are you the way you are? It seems the worse they treat you, the more you work.

I told him, I’m here to do a job. I said, My father said always do a good job for a good day’s pay. That’s what I’m trying to do.

But in the end I went to work because I had to and I needed a job. But I hated every minute I was at work. I hated it so I had to make myself go to work. When morning came, I wouldn’t waste any time getting the hell out.

When you work in a place as long as I did, you find out it’s not the place or the job, it’s the people who are low down and dirty.

PART II

I wrote this because I want you to know something about the Postal Service. This is part of my story. If I told you all of my story, I could write a book as thick as the phone book.

When you read this, I want you to know the Postal Service has some hardworking people; 99.5% of them don’t need a supervisor. When they come to work, they know what to do and they do it, but this 5% do need a supervisor. They are the ones who do whatever they want to do. But on the other hand, they don’t need a supervisor either, because the supervisors let them do what they want to do and don’t say a word to them.

Remember, 99% of incidents that happen in the Service are caused by management in the way they use employees against each other and the way they treat them.

These are some examples: when supervisors go up to employees, jerk his earphone off his ear before they tell him to take it off; when a supervisor downright lies to an employee instead of telling the truth.

People think when a person goes postal they just do. Many times they are driven to that point. They may have taken the harassment for years. Then they feel they can’t take it anymore. Many of the supervisors are dirty, all they want is power.

The more my story unfolds, the things that happened to me, if I were a fool, I would have gone postal a long time ago. I knew I had too much to lose. I had four children to raise. Who would it hurt more in the long run—me and my family.

I took more shit than I wanted to. At the end, I decided to let them have their overtime. The Lord helped me—as long as I really did need it, I got the overtime.

As soon as I would make it without overtime, they took it away. What made me angry was that everybody in my unit who wanted it, got it; and even the ones who didn’t work overtime, if they wanted, could get it, too. All but me.

My last supervisor would speak to me sometimes, but the cold part of the whole thing is, she said they cut overtime, but everybody in her unit who wanted overtime was getting it, except me.

Now, at the point that she wouldn’t speak or look at me. This girl was my co-worker. She had lied and said she can work both letters and flats. So I couldn’t get any overtime. But every Sunday I came in, we had so many flats left. One Sunday, it took me all night to work that mail she left from that Friday night. The clerk on Tour II came in and he had to help me work that mail. We still had mail at 7:30 a.m., we had almost a tub of mail to mass out.

Every Sunday, after she didn’t let me come in on Friday night, mail was everywhere. The clerk lied and said she could handle both letters and flats. She would cut the mail and the only thing she would work on was first class. Anything else, she didn’t work and the first class she worked was dated and the rest were not dated or it was four day deliver mail she left every Saturday morning.

On Sunday, when I came in, there would be so much mail. The first few weeks I would come in and work like a fool to clear it. The supervisor wouldn’t thank me. But she thanked everybody else for helping her, but me.

All the things that have happened to me inside the Post Office.

When I came into the Postal Service in 1971, I thought this was the best thing that had happened to me.

I worked. I thought working hard and being a good employee is what it was about. I believed whatever an employee got was their fault. If they did a good job, they would be treated with respect. When they gave a reward, you would receive one.

I couldn’t believe the bad and dirty things they would do to a clerk or mail handler.

I stood up as acting supervisor. That’s when I found out the whole picture. I saw what the Postal Service was really like. I found out what the supervisors would do to the employees for power.

There were many times where I fought back when I became an acting supervisor. They wanted me to do their dirty work. I had to argue many times, and I refused to do what they wanted me to do.

It got on my nerves, so I took a vacation for four days. All I could do was just sit and sleep. I got up in the middle of the night and called the tour superintendent and told her when I come back, I will be coming back as a clerk.

I guess that’s when I got on the shit list. After that, I was never treated the same. No matter how hard I worked, I was still treated like shit.

I found out a supervisor didn’t like me. I may have said no more than 20 words to her. I may not have said anything to her at all. But it’s like this: if one supervisor didn’t like you, then the others don’t like you either. They just pass the word. They wouldn’t get to know you as a person. All they knew was your name. When you come into the unit, all they knew was your name, not you as a person. That didn’t matter. All that mattered was they knew your name.

I remember one M.D.O. said they were giving an award out. It was supposed to be for best work performance. No. It was for clerks they liked, not for the hard-working clerk. She said some of you will never get a reward, not matter how hard you work.

When you have an M.D.O. tell the people no matter how hard you work, if she doesn’t like you, you are not going to get a damn thing, no reward from her, you knew there wouldn’t be a reward for you.

I don’t think the up heads really knew the truth about how the employees are being treated.

Most of the managers came from the floor. Most are not up there because they worked for the job. Most of them forget where they came from. Most of them are up there because someone liked them.

Some of the employees can take the abuse and then some can’t. But there’s a handful that never know what it’s like to be abused because they are treated like kings and queens.

I believe the Post Office should send their managers to school so they can learn how to talk to and treat the employees.

Just think, my case was a mild