News that mail carrier Patricia Finley might be fired raises
lots of red flags. Finley was featured in a recent Dispatch story
about problems caused by a do-not-dismount order issued by Gilroy
Postmaster Penny Yates.
News that mail carrier Patricia Finley might be fired raises lots of red flags. Finley was featured in a recent Dispatch story about problems caused by a do-not-dismount order issued by Gilroy Postmaster Penny Yates.
The removal notice that Finley received cited leaning too far out the window of her vehicle and using her vehicle to move garbage bins that were blocking mail boxes as reasons for the attempt to terminate her employment.
The story on Yates’ ill-advised do-not-dismount order, issued in violation of postal service policy, must have been an embarrassing episode for the Gilroy postmaster. In case you missed it, Finley was caught in a difficult situation.
Faced with a bad management order not to dismount her vehicle to deliver mail, she did the best she could to deliver her customers’ mail while still complying with her boss’s directive.
Yates rescinded her order after the Dispatch published the story detailing the problems her order caused postal customers on Finley’s route.
The boss suffered public criticism of her out-of-compliance-with-postal-policy order, and now the mail carrier in the center of the story might be terminated. It’s fishy.
We understand that one written warning was issued at some point telling Finley not to use her delivery vehicle to “bulldoze” trash cans and recycling bins blocking mailboxes, which she was photographed doing in the story.
Legitimate safety concerns exist about the bulldozing practice – what if a child was out of sight behind one of the bulldozed bins, for example? It’s proper to order Finley to end the practice.
But it sounds like Yates might not be following standard postal service termination procedures in this case.
Those procedures, according to postal workers who talked to reporter Matt King, usually include a written warning and at least one paper suspension before a removal notice is issued.
Further, the language included in the notice, which accuses Finley of conduct unbecoming a postal worker and disloyalty to the United States government, is so overblown as to be laughable, if an employee’s job weren’t on the line.
Making the termination attempt even more outrageous is the fact that postal customers on Finley’s route like her, using words like “fantastic” to describe the service she provides them.
They are rallying to her defense in the wake of the removal notice.
We agree that bulldozing garbage bins is a bad practice.
We also believe that discipline procedures must be strictly followed to ensure that any carrier who is violating safety rules changes his or her ways or is fired without risk of wrongful termination litigation.
For Finley’s sake and for the sake of postal customers who pay for litigation against the postal service with increased postage rates, we hope that Yates and the postal service are following every regulation to the “T” in this case.
