Postal Service To Hugs Project: If You Want Troops To Get Care Packages, Load 'Em Yourself
The United States Postal Service in Oklahoma City may go down this Christmas season as The Grinch Against The Troops.
That's likely not how the USPS wants to be known, but if its refusal to help the all-volunteer workers at The Hugs Project load 40,000 pounds of donated items for troops in Iraq and Afghanistran is the measure, it will be.
The problem is that the items are in workshops at Crossroads Mall and the USPS refuses to allow more than one worker to pick them up. That equates to about 120 loads that have to be moved from inside the mall to a truck, a backbreaking task for a single worker or for the many frail project volunteers.
The USPS manager who has refused to allow postal workers to load the troop packages has, for the moment, taken the joy out of all the work the project's volunteers have done.
Founder Karen Stark explained the predicament in an email, a part of which is reprinted here:
"I know that you all thought that Edmond PO was going to work with us to get our packages to the troops just in time for Christmas and that the drama was over but not to be....
"The manager of the Business Services Network for the district United States post offices here in OKC, informed the Edmond PO that they are not going to be allowed to help us. Edmond wants to do it, they can do it but they aren't going to be allowed to do it.
"The BS manager informed them that they would 'handle' us. So, his solution is that he will allow 1(ONE!) postal worker to come out and load 40,000+ pounds of weight and then push 120 carts a lengthy distance from our office, out, down the hall, all the way through the old JC Penny's, through their storage and into their loading dock area. They estimate that it will take him 120 loads to get the job done and that's their best solution.
"What they want us to do is have our 70 and 80 year old, blind, heart, back and knee problems volunteers load the load and push the carts and DO THEIR WORK and I will not ask that of them.
"Nowhere can they show us anything that says their customers are required to load their carts for them and push them out to their waiting trucks. But, they are telling us take it or leave it. If we want our troops to have Christmas packages.....we have to do as they say."
That's likely not how the USPS wants to be known, but if its refusal to help the all-volunteer workers at The Hugs Project load 40,000 pounds of donated items for troops in Iraq and Afghanistran is the measure, it will be.
The problem is that the items are in workshops at Crossroads Mall and the USPS refuses to allow more than one worker to pick them up. That equates to about 120 loads that have to be moved from inside the mall to a truck, a backbreaking task for a single worker or for the many frail project volunteers.
The USPS manager who has refused to allow postal workers to load the troop packages has, for the moment, taken the joy out of all the work the project's volunteers have done.
Founder Karen Stark explained the predicament in an email, a part of which is reprinted here:
"I know that you all thought that Edmond PO was going to work with us to get our packages to the troops just in time for Christmas and that the drama was over but not to be....
"The manager of the Business Services Network for the district United States post offices here in OKC, informed the Edmond PO that they are not going to be allowed to help us. Edmond wants to do it, they can do it but they aren't going to be allowed to do it.
"The BS manager informed them that they would 'handle' us. So, his solution is that he will allow 1(ONE!) postal worker to come out and load 40,000+ pounds of weight and then push 120 carts a lengthy distance from our office, out, down the hall, all the way through the old JC Penny's, through their storage and into their loading dock area. They estimate that it will take him 120 loads to get the job done and that's their best solution.
"What they want us to do is have our 70 and 80 year old, blind, heart, back and knee problems volunteers load the load and push the carts and DO THEIR WORK and I will not ask that of them.
"Nowhere can they show us anything that says their customers are required to load their carts for them and push them out to their waiting trucks. But, they are telling us take it or leave it. If we want our troops to have Christmas packages.....we have to do as they say."
posted by Mike McCarville @ 6:36 AM
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