’Tis the season...
for mail
Long days at the post office
By Mary Adamski
Star-BulletinLike 1998 Hawaiian Open golf tournament winner John Huston, Lance Tanimoto swears that the magnetic inserts in his shoes are an energizing force.
Tanimoto is among those on the front lines of the Christmas rush -- a U.S. Postal Service employee. He's on his feet all day at the counter at the Airport Main Post Office in Honolulu.
"I just bought them from an acquaintance to be polite," he said of his secret magnetic weapon, which has developed a wide following as a sports-therapy device. "But they work, I don't have to massage my feet."
The long lines at the holiday season "get to you" but it's not an unpleasant time to work, Tanimoto said yesterday, the last relatively quiet day for a month.
"I find there's less complaining at Christmas. People expect crowds," he said.
Compared to the hundreds of people behind the scenes sorting and processing tons of mail in the adjoining Processing and Distribution Center, Tanimoto said counter workers like himself benefit from contact with customers.
"They'll come up and say, 'This is for my grandchild,' and it becomes personal, urgent, you want it to get there in time," said Tanimoto, a 15-year Postal Service veteran.
All the mail going in and out of Hawaii passes through the Airport Processing and Distribution Center which, with 633 regular employees and 198 "Christmas casuals," is the biggest assembly line in the state.
They expect to process 1,101,000 pieces of mail on Dec. 14, and 1,143,000 pieces on Dec. 21.
The forecast for those peak days is based on the pattern of past years, said Art Watkins, distribution operations supervisor on Tour 2, the day shift. Last year, 1,069,000 pieces of mail were processed on Dec. 15 and 1,110,000 pieces on Dec 22.
This week was the peak week for workers on Tour 2, who process magazines, bulk mailings and catalogs, catalogs, catalogs. The incoming flats of standard- and periodical-class mail arrived in 54 Matson and Sealand containers. The weekly average is 46 containers."We try to hit 40,000 pieces per machine without too much jams," said mail processor Tanya Arcangel. "Sometimes we challenge each other and the winner gets lunch."
Kris Heckel, a 14-year veteran, calmly directed the flow of magazines as they spilled from a chute onto his station on the Small Parcel Bundle Sorter, known as "Spibs." Right hand resting on a computer keyboard, he typed the ZIP code of each piece or bundle as he laid them on a link of the conveyor belt. Down the line, the belt tipped that link's load into a bin for the correct ZIP code.
"You've got to pace yourself," was Heckel's response to a question about job stress.
Watkins said that "we'll be faster than last year" thanks to improved technology like "Spibs" -- moving 22,000 items per shift -- and the use of machine-read bar codes, as well as expansion into a new building mauka of the plant that will go into operation tomorrow.
There is still a corner where manual sorting is done. It takes humans, not high-tech, to cope with damaged items, incorrect ZIP codes and mangled Hawaiian street names.
The epicenter of stress is not the day tour, which primarily handles mail categories that must pass through the plant in two or three days. The worst burden is on Tour 1 workers, who start at 10 p.m., and Tour 3, starting at 3 p.m., because they handle just-mailed first-class and priority items, which must be moved in one day. And they have aircraft takeoff times as deadlines too.
Later in the season, "working a 10-hour day, six days a week, you do see people getting tired and short-tempered," said Watkins. He said post office officials are all too familiar that "going postal" has entered the language as a result of incidents of violence by disgruntled workers.
"We have zero tolerance for violence, verbal or physical," he said.
Distribution supervisor Bonnie Tomooka said the key to coping with the holiday pace is that "you need to be flexible. Every day there's a different set of problems and you handle them. It can be stressful if you let it. I don't let it."
Watkins, soon to retire after 30 years of service, said, "It's not the amount of mail, and it's not the machines. The most frustrating thing about the job is some of your peers, the lack of responsibility or accountability.
"You correct the things you can and accept the things you can't."
At Ewa Beach Post Office, Hawaii Kai Station, Kapalama Station, Kapolei Post Office, Makiki Station, Mililani Post Office, Pearl City Post Office, Wahiawa Post Office, Waikiki Station and Waipahu Post Office: Dec. 12, 19: 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Special holiday hours
Ala Moana Station
Dec. 7-23 (M-F): 8:30 a.m.-9 p.m.
Airport Main Post Office
Downtown Station
Kaneohe Post Office
Waialae Kahala Station
Kailua Post Office
Haleiwa Post Office
All offices will be open normal business hours Dec. 24. All offices will be closed on Christmas.
