Postal Service Memo On Improving Reliability Gets Lost In Mail

Each employee will be allotted a maximum number of epithets per day to be directed at customers.

Credit: Daniel Kanas

Jerusalem, April 17 – Implementation of an effectiveness-enhancement program at the Israel Postal Service has been delayed as a result of memorandums to employees apprising them of the plan got lost in the mail, a spokesman for the agency said today.

Enkazeh Davar, a representative of the agency’s administration, told reporters that in order to comply with a government directive ordering certain steps be taken at the agency to improve performance, reliability, and profitability, Israel Post had developed its Postal Utility = True Zionism (PUTZ) Initiative, aiming to inject a sense of purpose and patriotism into its employees to encourage greater diligence and responsibility. However, most the notices alerting the employees to the program, which was scheduled to begin next month, never made it to their intended recipients.

“We’re not exactly sure what happened yet, but somewhere along the line, somebody dropped the ball,” said Davar. “This is exactly the kind of thing PUTZ is designed to address, but of course we can’t formally begin the initiative without properly informing the people whose job it is to implement it.”

For decades, the Israel Postal Service has suffered from a less-than-stellar reputation for reliability, and in more recent years has struggled financially as its inefficient practices led to a shrinking market share and growing citizen dissatisfaction. Branch closures and service cutbacks have done little to improve the agency’s situation, which for years involved heavy government subsidies as profit and sustainability considerations played little role in the management of the monopoly. Of late, communications technology providing free, instantaneous contact, and competition from for-profit courier companies have severely eroded the postal service’s ability to function even at a basic level. In response, the administration unveiled PUTZ.

PUTZ calls for more individual accountability at all levels of the organization, including the teenagers earning less than minimum wage whose job is to sort letters toward, but not necessarily into, baskets representing different destinations. Letter carriers will be graded on reliability, with financial penalties for those who underperform – specifically, they will be required to place items of mail into the mailbox or mail slot of the recipient, and not on the ground somewhere in the vicinity of the property. Customer service personnel at branches and at the central hotline will be monitored for adherence to a new, stricter set of procedures that limits coffee breaks to six per day and twenty-five minutes per break. Additionally, each employee will be allotted a maximum number of epithets per day to be directed at customers.

PUTZ is on hold until the administration can determine how to avoid a recurrence of the problem. “Theoretically, we could maintain a contact list with e-mail. WhatsApp, or some other communication software, but that’s hardly in keeping with our ethos,” explained Davar.