Verbal Harrassment Criteria

[BHC]

What is the name of your state?
I'm from NC. I'm trying to head off a potential problem. My wife works for USPS. After almost a year witout a substitute and working 6 days a week, she finally got one in November of last year. USPS gave him the amount of training they considered adiquate. 24hrs broken into 3, 8hr sessions and then several days on the job. After the first month her new Temporary Rural Carrier's Assistant (TRC) could still not complete the route on his own. 7 months later he still is making extreme errors in delivery. Examples: Leaving perscription mail order drugs outside at the wrong house. Repeated misdeliveries to the same addresses. Sending stamp money collected from customers to the main office for delivery. Repeatedly sending back mail marked "No Such Address" when there clearly is. And the list goes on. After the first month my wife had him over to our house (I was in the room the whole time) for some additional assistance. Hoping this might correct his poor performance. After several months with no improvement she started writing down his errors and giving them to him. After over 7 months he has yet to complete the route once without my wife having to pick up misdelivered mail behind him.

Yesterday he told one of the assistant supervisors (AS) that his mother (he's 19) was going to sue my wife for "harrassment." She wasn't specific about the type, but its obviously verbal. Though she has no ledgitimate grounds for this, if it comes up for investigation, my wife will be suspended without pay for at least a month. This will devistate us financially and we will lose everything we own. At the very least, last evening, my wife got NO sleep and is literally worried sick over this prospect.

My questions are these:
1. Do they have any legal grounds for harrassment? I realize he'll have to be the one to press charges.
2. Do we have any recourse to prevent us from losing everything we own if charges are filed? We are two months away from paying off a bankruptcy.
3. What counter charges can we file if it comes to it?
4. Am I missing any pertinant questions that I should be asking?

Any knowledgable help would be appreciated.

 

[Beth3]

1. Do they have any legal grounds for harrassment? No. Certainly not any form of illegal harassment anyway.

2. Do we have any recourse to prevent us from losing everything we own if charges are filed? We are two months away from paying off a bankruptcy. No laws require an employer to suspend an employee because another employee brings allegations. Of course we're talking about the USPS here but I find it strange that an employee would automatically be suspended just because a co-worker brings unfounded (at that point) allegations. Heck, if I just worked with somebody I didn't like I could make an internal complaint about them simply to be rid of them for a month.

3. What counter charges can we file if it comes to it? None.

4. Am I missing any pertinant questions that I should be asking? I think you're assuming that all forms of harassment are illegal. They're not. Only harassment due to race, religion, gender, national origin, age, etc. are prohibited. If you're wife's idiot TRC wants to refer to your wife's on-going retraining as harassment he may do so - that's simply a semantics issue. But it's not PROHIBITED harassment.

The USPS works in mysterious ways but in the real world, I'd advise your wife to beat a path to her supervisor or manager and fully acquaint him or her with my assistant's horrific job performance and discuss this "harassment" complaint he says he's going to bring. (Surely the terrible job performance can't come as a surprise. I can only guess at the complaints being made by those on your wife's route when the kid is handling it.)

P.S. This kid doesn't know the law, either. He has absolutely no basis to sue your wife.

 

[BHC]

Your right USPS does work in strange ways. Yes there has been complaints. To the best of our knowledge they are being short cut by the assistant postmaster (APM) because she thinks "He's a nice boy." There's some politics involved here too as my wife took this APM on in a workers comp injury and won...by herself !!! We couldn't get an attorney to touch it with a ten foot poll. They all said she didn't have a chance of compensation although it was a completely legitimate claim. There's been bad blood on the APM's part ever since she was proved wrong. My ole' ladies a pretty smart girl. Thanks for your advice.