So, I was playing around on Google and came across this arbitration decision posted by the National Association of Letter Carries (NALC). It was a sweet reminder of those long ago days when I represented the Postal Service in grievance hearings. I never took joy in seeing someone lose their job (ok, I took much satisfaction in winning the case, but I maintained empathy for the plight of the individual involved) but it was a responsibility I took seriously.
I miss my working life. But looking back on 34 years of government service, I can see it was mostly meaningless. It sure did seem important at the time though.
Here’s hoping things turned out OK in your life Mr. Brooks.
Interesting. My mother worked at NALC’s head office in DC for most of her life. She was constantly rubbing elbows with the likes of Vincent Sombrotto, the enfant terrible Bill Young (loud, and cussed a lot), and all the rest. Many of the NALC office ladies came to Mom’s memorial service.
I even temped there for a time, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, doing boring-as-hell data entry work and trying not to fall asleep. One of my less-boring tasks involved writing an article on world religions for NALC’s magazine, the Postal Record.
Over the years, I watched bosses come and go; Mom’s favorite was Richard O’Connell, who used to call her “Sukie.” (Her real name is Suk Ja. She hated the Japanese-sounding “Sukie,” but didn’t have the heart to tell O’Connell to stop calling her that.) Mom would often come home with war stories about her day– who was fighting with whom, who was being a jerk to her, etc. In the end, though, she liked her job and she did it excellently.
Amazing. An NALC connection.
Yes, I set across the negotiation table from Bill Young during collective bargaining negotiations in 1998. I visited the NALC headquarters in DC numerous times and may have actually seen your mother there, but of course I had no inkling that I’d one day be sharing cyber-space with her son. Strange world we live in, that’s for sure…
She worked on the 7th floor, in the Finance Department, usually doing Accounts Payable, but sometimes also Accounts Receivable. Scary bit of trivia: one of Mom’s coworkers was the Japanese-American wife of this guy. I knew Eri well; never liked her that much. Saw (and liked) her husband even less.