Post office reduces hours for training

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Lindsey Maurice
  • 31st Fighter Wing Public Affairs
AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy --  As most Aviano Airmen have discovered by now, the base post office recently reduced its weekday customer service parcel pick-up hours of operation from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. to 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and is closed for training the first and third Wednesday of each month.

This change comes as part of a plan to provide post office Airmen time for mandatory training, which the previous hours were not permitting, said post office officials.

"There were a lot of factors taken into consideration in regards to our new hours and training days," said Senior Master Sgt. Chris Saatzer, postal superintendent. "Between Program Budget Decision 720 manning cuts, constant deployments and a new in-depth postal career field education and training plan operated through a new web-based system, this was something that had to be done."

The sergeant said postal operations include a variety of tasks that the Airmen must be proficient in for everyone's safety and security. These tasks include ion scanning packages for explosive residues, suspicious package reporting, bomb threat response, antiterrorism and force protection, mail barcode scanning, tracking and processing, mail flow, quality control and more.

But what many people don't realize about the post office training days is that out of that time, they only get about 4-8 hours per month of actual training time, as it is contingent upon the mail volume from the day prior, said Sergeant Saatzer.

"Even on training days, we are still serving the customers on base," he said. "The unending mail processing mission must be completed that day before training can be conducted, which takes anywhere from 6-8 hours. Closing the customer service windows allows the office to pool all available manpower (5-7 personnel) in the back to facilitate breakdown, shelving, pitching notices and working first class mail; thus leaving the remaining time for team training which is the best way to standardize daily operations."

In addition to mail distribution, a crew of Aviano post office workers must travel to the Venice Marco Polo Airport, daily, even on training days, to dispatch outbound mail and receive inbound mail.

"Aviano is the only APO at a major operating base that operates its own trucking leg of mail transportation and mail control activity," said 2nd Lt. Rachel Egley, 31st Communications Squadron officer in charge of the section. "During these runs, the crew must inspect each pallet and container of mail that arrives at Marco Polo bound to Aviano and the U.S. Army Garrison at Vicenza, Italy."

Another factor that has played into the recent hour change, is the post office's constant support of down range contingency operations over the last few years, said Sergeant Saatzer.

"Each AEF bucket has four to seven Airmen assigned and historically most members have been tasked," he said, "meaning we normally have 4-7 personnel deployed during each cycle throughout the entire year and have been operating like this for almost three straight years."

"In addition, several of these taskings have been 179-day Army deployments, which cause the members to attend a 30-day combat skills training course on top of the deployment," he continued. "This reduction in manning and heavy deployment commitment has also factored into our need for this additional training time, which includes training for these downrange missions."

The post office superintendent also noted manning reductions under the Department of Defense's PBD 720, in which the post office lost three manpower positions in June 2007 and will lose three more in June 2009, constituting an overall 18 percent manpower loss.

"This was also factored into our customer service hours reduction decision," he said.

Sergeant Saatzer said the post office has received a few complaints from customers on the change in hours since its implementation last month, but that the final decision took the base population as a whole into consideration, while balancing the needs of those post office Airmen working behind the scenes.

"It would be impossible to please everyone," he said. "But we tried to factor in the schedules of the majority of our customers into our decision. We just ask that our customers have patience and understand that our hardworking Airmen are doing their best to balance customer service with mission requirements."

In addition to its weekday hours, the post office is also open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays.