Chapter 2
Fired!
Most people think that you
would have to be pretty incompetent to be fired from the Postal Service. In
John McNulty’s case, the opposite was true. He worked hard- too hard, according
to the union. And he was smart- too smart for his own good, perhaps.
For almost ten years,
beginning in June 1966, he worked as a City Letter Carrier in the Pompano Beach
Post Office. He had an excellent work record under ten different supervisors,
none of whom had ever filed a complaint. He won the safe driving award every
year and almost never called in sick. From the time he first began as a
“part-time flexible,” or PTF carrier, filling in on other carriers’ routes, he
got a reputation as a “runner.” He would finish delivering all the mail for the
route he was covering for the day and then return to the office long before the
regular carrier would have. This did not sit well with some carriers, and
especially with the union steward, who advised him to “just give eight hours
work for eight hours’ pay.”
But Dad was not trying to
make anyone look bad. He was just working at his normal pace. His loyalty and
reputation as a runner impressed many supervisors. He was always willing to
help them out. During the widespread racial unrest in the late 1960s, Dad was
the only carrier willing to go to some parts of town to deliver the mail, after
finishing his own route.
He was a hard worker, but John
McNulty was hardly a compliant or passive employee. He respected the rules, and
followed them diligently, but when he discovered that his bosses were ignoring
rules, he was indignant, and he let them know it.
Dad was impatient in safety
meetings and would ask pointed questions, which could put supervisors on the
spot. Dad had a basic distaste for “sugar-coating” things and he was never
afraid to speak his mind.
Although McNulty had many
friends in the Post Office, co-workers as well as supervisors, he acted as a
loner. He did not trust most groups, and had strong opinions on many
topics, which he did not mind sharing. He read a lot, knew a lot, talked a lot,
and loved to laugh at human foibles. But some things- like dishonesty, laziness
and injustice in general- made his blood boil. He was frustrated much of
the time. Sometimes that frustration boiled over into anger. He was known to be
short-tempered. He once finished sorting the mail for
his whole route, then, in a rage prompted by a verbal haranguing by his
supervisor standing behind him spitting out insults and threats while he tried
to work, he pulled over the entire eight-foot-high case, spilling the day’s
mail for his whole route across the floor.
He was angry, but Dad’s
sense of humor and sharp wit helped him cope with the frustration and,
possibly, with the boredom of the job. He liked to make up names for
supervisors who seemed out of touch with the workers. He referred to Postmaster
Wilton P. Banks as “Witless P. Blanks.” He wrote up parodies of their
nonsensical bureaucratic memos and passed around his carbon copies to amuse
co-workers. Disrespectful, ill-conceived, perhaps, but hardly fire-able
offenses.
He would later refer to Supervisor
Edward Tellian, the first supervisor ever to
complain about McNulty’s job performance, as “I, Supervisor Tellian,” since
Tellian would always begin his petty and negative reports about Dad with the
phrase, “I, Supervisor Tellian, observed Carrier McNulty…….”
Dad was
clever about carrying out “nuisance orders” - directives he felt were illogical,
and being unnecessarily imposed on him in particular. One time a patron
called to complain that Dad had not allowed enough time for them to get to the
door to sign for a certified letter. When Dad returned to the Post Office, he
was ordered to go back out to the address, ring/knock, and WAIT for the patron
to come to the door. A couple of hours later, when the supervisor went out to
find him, Dad was sitting on the front stoop of the patron’s home, stubbornly and
literally following the supervisor’s order.
On another route, he
insisted on taking the time, every day, to climb the stairs to deliver mail to
a frail elderly woman in a second-floor apartment whose mailbox was on the
ground floor. He continued to bring the mail upstairs to the woman’s apartment even
after her written request for second-floor delivery had been refused by the postmaster.
Postmaster Banks was not impressed, and gave Dad a hard time about defying his official
decision to refuse delivery to the old woman. Dad had suggested she write to
the postmaster in the first place to ask if her mailbox could be moved upstairs,
so maybe he felt responsible for her trouble.
Supervisors were frustrated with
McNulty, and possibly threatened by his intelligence, but they had no basis for
serious disciplinary action against him. In
spite of his restless and critical nature, Dad was a reliable employee who
received nothing but excellent job performance reviews from supervisors and
appreciative notes form customers. He got along well with his co-workers, some
of whom became life-long friends.
But things changed in early 1975,
when Edward Tellian arrived at the Pompano Post Office as Supervisor of Mails
and Delivery. He was Dad’s direct supervisor, and he took an immediate dislike
to John McNulty.
Tellian was the kind of man
who was threatened, personally, by Dad’s forthrightness, and hated any
perceived challenge to his authority. He was in a position to exert all kinds
of control over a carrier’s day, and he used this bureaucratic power to mete
out constant punishments to carriers he resented.
It didn’t take long for Supervisor
Tellian to start acting on his personal antagonism towards Carrier McNulty, and
he busied himself, almost daily, with finding ways to insult and discredit him.
The fact that he could not find a way to
suppress McNulty’s antics enraged him over time.
It was no secret in the
Pompano Post Office that Tellian and McNulty did not get along. Tension between
them began when Dad started asking questions in safety meetings, (called
“stand-ups” because carriers were required to stop sorting mail and turn away
from their cases to stand for several minutes listening to supervisors reading
dry bureaucratic memos out loud, when they were itching to get their mail out
to their vehicles.) Most carriers would just stay quiet and endure the boredom,
trying not to delay the meeting. Not McNulty, who would ask supervisors the
hard questions.
Dad filed complaints about
conditions that other carriers complained about, but were not willing to
report.
He annoyed Tellian, for
example, by refusing to take out a Jeep whose bad brakes had already been
reported.
The antagonism increased between
Tellian and McNulty for several months. Dad would ask for more time to deliver
a new route, or a route which had just been adjusted to include several new
streets, (a routine request, as mail volume varies daily,) and his written
requests were refused, in writing. Then, Dad would be suspended without
pay for using “unauthorized” overtime when he had to work late to get all the
mail delivered.
In August of 1975, in the
worst of the Florida summer heat,
Dad returned to work from a
rare weeks-long sick leave to recuperate from chest pains, or what he liked to
refer to as “a period of forced idleness. ” He was ready to get back up to
speed on his route, and prove that he had recovered from what he believed was a
temporary setback.
But what he was faced with
on his first day back on the job was a whole new route to learn and
deliver. While he was out, supervisors
had changed Dad’s route assignment from a mounted (truck) route to a
park-and-loop route. This involved parking the truck every few blocks and
walking with up to 35 pounds of mail in his bag to deliver to each house in a
several-block area. A park- and- loop route was much more physically
demanding than a “mounted” route.
Dad, 52 by then, was working
six days a week, 12 hours a day, to get his new route delivered. Tellian and
Munnell could only have been further frustrated by McNulty’s outstanding job
performance under harsh circumstances.
When Dad consulted the union
shop steward about his situation, the shop steward advised Dad to comply with
orders because “Munnell is a tough man and hard to reason with.”
At some point, Dad quit the union
because he had philosophical objections. He resented paying dues which in part paid
for union representatives to attend their annual conventions in luxury resort
locations, while serious issues at the Pompano Post Office were being ignored. When
it was suggested that, instead of complaining, he could serve as a union
steward himself, and enjoy the free vacations. Dad declined, but not before
commenting that one such union convention was being held in Hawaii, where, he
said, “he had visited in 1942, as a Navy enlisted man aboard the flight deck of
the USS Enterprise at Pearl Harbor, and was not in a hurry to return there.”
Although the union is legally bound
to represent non-members equally with members, their commitment to Dad waned as
his difficulties mounted. So Dad became his own advocate, and saved every scrap of paper documenting the harassment he was
enduring.
Dad later recounted the pattern
of harassment in his own words in an affidavit filed by the union as part of a
grievance:
“When a new route became available at another
station (Margate Branch) I bid on it in order to get away from Mr. Tellian.
In Margate, things went smoothly. About
this time a Mr. C.R. Munnell was appointed Customer Relations Manager of the
entire Pompano Beach delivery area. He noticed me working at the Margate Branch
and asked me why I was there. I told him that I ‘just want to be away from Mr.
Tellian and enjoy a peaceful relationship with supervision.’ Munnell replied,
‘You better get used to him because he’ll be here long after you’re
gone.’ Shortly after this, Tellian was transferred to the Margate
Branch as a Carrier Supervisor. Since that time I have been subjected to
intense harassment by both Mr. Tellian and Mr. Munnell.
“One morning in early March, 1977, as I was
preparing mail for delivery on a route I was not familiar with, Mr. Munnell
approached me. He stood directly behind me, making remarks regarding my working
speed. I objected to his remarks as I was having sufficient trouble trying to
get the mail in proper sequence. Mr. Munnell accused me of loitering on the job
and threatened to send me home and possibly take further disciplinary action
against me. At this point I asked to speak to a shop steward. Munnell told me
to ‘shut your damn mouth and face your case.’ When the shop steward
inquired as to the nature of the disturbance, Munnell replied, ‘I only asked
him to shut his case and face his mouth.’ When asked to repeat
his reply, he did so in exactly the same manner. Mr. Munnell then ordered me
into his office, where he berated me in very abusive language, telling me, ‘I
don’t like you, your work, or your attitude, and I will make it my business to
have you removed from the Postal Service.’ “
Dad relished
the fact, for several years hence, that he had witnesses to this exchange.
Dad was not the only worker
Tellian and Munnell
harassed. Others complained
to the union about the tactics the supervisors used, but those tired carriers were eventually beat
down, and one by one, left the Post Office with early retirements or disability
pensions.
In December of 1976, the
simmering standoff between McNulty and Tellian reached new levels when Dad
filed a safety complaint about exposed electrical wires on the loading dock,
dangling over a puddled area where carriers had to walk. Tellian ignored
that report, which Dad had filed appropriately, with Tellian himself. He asked
Tellian about it every day for weeks. When he got tired of waiting for any kind
of response, Dad brought it to the attention of Tellian’s supervisor in Fort
Lauderdale, further pressing Tellian’s buttons.
The fact that Dad had “gone over his head” offfended Tellian deeply.
By the spring of 1977,
Tellian had not succeeded in breaking McNulty, which he himself had said was
his goal two years earlier.
In refusing to “play dead”
in response to Tellian’s abuse, and then, in overtly defying him, Dad
antagonized Tellian to the boiling point. Thus began the activation of a huge
bureaucracy. Rumbling into action with its crushing power, it changed the
course of our father’s life.
Tellian’s stated goal, since
he arrived at the Pompano Post Office, had been to separate Dad from his job,
and he foolishly relied on his assumption that he would be able to grind
McNulty down.
Tellian and Munnell worked
in concert for almost two years to get rid of McNulty. Their strategy was
to “to get him out on a disability.”
From management’s point of
view, this time-honored method for getting rid of a troublesome employee would
be a “win-win.” Typically, the carrier would sign on the dotted line, and walk
away with a pension for life, and the Post Office would be relieved of an
annoying employee. Tellian and Munnell started building their case - that McNulty
couldn’t handle the physical (and possibly the emotional) demands of his
job. But they would find that they had targeted the wrong guy.
Tellian was determined to
get McNulty out, but he didn’t have any serious ammunition.
So Carrier McNulty and
Supervisors Tellian and Munnell maintained a tense standoff for almost two
years.
The balance shifted when
Tellian stumbled upon an unexpected vulnerability in the beleaguered carrier.
In late 1977, Tellian made a formal complaint to the union steward that he had
observed McNulty with “slurred speech” and that he did “not seem to be
aware of his surroundings,” further implying that McNulty was using non-prescription
drugs on the job.
Now, in
order to defend himself and explain this
situation, Dad was forced to reveal what
he had been denying to others, and possibly to himself- that he did have some
medical problems. He had no choice but to provide written proof to
Tellian that he had a prescription for the sedatives he was occasionally using.
Two years earlier, in late
1975, Dad had taken almost five weeks’ sick time to “rest up” from what he
wanted everyone to believe was temporary muscle strain. What his pride did not allow him to reveal at
the time was that he had been diagnosed with a potentially serious heart
condition, a condition ironically made worse over the next two years by the
constant harassment at work. He had been keeping this condition hidden from
everyone who knew him.
What
brought him to the doctor in a rare visit in the summer of 1975 were symptoms
of chest and shoulder pain that he could no longer ignore. Dad thought/hoped the problem was from carrying a heavy mail bag on a new route. He was 53 years old at the time, and
had been on the job for nine years.
Our family doctor, Dr. Shaw, examined Dad and ordered an EKG which showed
that he had more than a case of sore muscles. There was some blockage of the
arteries of the heart, causing pain upon exertion or stress.
The
truth is that Dad was diagnosed with “arteriosclerosis (partially blocked
arteries) with angina (heart pain) on exertion.” This meant that heavy physical
work and emotional stress was causing pain, and cumulatively damaging his
heart. Dr. Shaw urged him to see a cardiologist for possible bypass
surgery, which Dad declined. At the time, open-heart surgery was a rare
and risky proposition, especially for a man who had always stayed as far away
from the medical establishment as he could.
To
manage Dad’s symptoms, Dr. Shaw prescribed rest for four weeks, and Valium and
nitroglycerin tablets as needed, and recommended that he request temporary
“light duty” at the Post Office. Dad reluctantly took the sick leave, and he
used the Valium when he had to, but, as a point of pride, he never asked for permanent
relief from the physical demands of his job.
He
considered his “heart trouble” cured after he was able to go back to full-time regular
work as a carrier after a temporary light duty assignment. Over the coming
year, he would work not just his regular hours, but 250 hours of overtime
delivering the mail: “Enough to buy a new GMAC truck- the first new vehicle I
had ever owned,” he proudly wrote, years
later.
Dad
and Mom had been divorced for seven years by then, so no one in the family knew
of Dad’s heart trouble. He certainly did not share this with any of his
children. Now he was being forced to reveal his vulnerability to the
supervisors with whom he was engaged in a battle of wills. They could possibly
use this information contained in a two-year-old doctor’s report to build a
case that Dad had a permanent physical disability.
He
had no choice but to provide Dr. Shaw’s report to prove he was taking medicine
as prescribed, but the last thing he wanted was to provide those supervisors
with information they could use in their effort to make him look disabled. It was a point of pride for him, and he was
willful and stubborn about it. For two years, he had never formally used his
heart condition as a reason for objecting to the overwork and harassment. He
had been determined to treat his “heart trouble” as a private matter, a
temporary setback, and to prove through hard work that he had recovered fully
from it.
Now
he would have to show his hand.
Dad may have actually felt hopeful about having this medical
report, which he chose to see, essentially, as a ticket to work, in spite of
his heart condition. The doctor said he could perform the “normal duties” of
his job as long as he took the medication he was prescribed when he needed it. In
addition, it gave him the documentation he needed to show that Tellian’s
accusation that he was “using non-prescription drugs” was false. He was taking
prescribed medication occasionally, as needed. He thought he had denied Tellian
a tactical move against him. This would
prove to be not the case at all.
Dad
later referred to this development when he made the argument for himself in a
letter to NC Senator J. Helms, one of the other congressmen he appealed to
later on in the fight for his job:
“ In August 1975, it was determined that I was
suffering some kind of heart disease. This caused me to use up over a month of
sick leave time, after which I returned to work on a limited duty basis. I feel that I was making steady progress
toward complete recovery. I was even able to return to my regular mail route (a
heavy one,) and do an effective job.
Things were really looking up for me until a Mr. C.R. Munnell was
assigned to this office as a “customer service manager.” I have not had a
minute of rest since this man showed up here.
I am not a ‘trouble-maker’ type of person. I
solicit comments by foremen and supervisors who have known and worked with me
since June 1966 as to my performance of duties and general attitude concerning
my job. I am not a drunk, a smoker, habitual absentee or late-for-work- type.
I am a 10-point veteran, with a service-connected injury suffered during combat
on Oct 24, 1942, Santa Cruz Islands aboard USS Enterprise. The above injury
(intra-cranial) has not interfered with my job as a letter carrier. It does
cause some headaches at times. I am not an isolated case. The Munnell/Tellian
team has been systematically attacking and harassing several older, ill or
injured people in the Pompano Beach delivery area for several months. I seem to
have presented a stumbling block to them by my refusal to lie down and play dead
on command. I’ve heard rumors to the effect that Mr. Munnell was out to nail me
at any cost. Now, I’m beginning to believe them myself.”
The
union submitted a three-part grievance on Dad’s behalf in September 1977 which detailed
unfair labor practices carried out by Tellian and Munnell. It concluded with this paragraph:
“It
is now obvious in view of the preceeding grievances that Mr. McNulty is and has
been subjected to a personal vendetta with a conspiracy to deprive him of his
means of livelihood. That the means to carry this out has been totally
unethical and a disgrace to the functions of an agency of the US government. Mr.
McNulty has been willfully subjected to discriminating, abusive and injurious
treatment by E.F. Tellian and C. R Munnell, assigned to extremely heavy and the
most physically exerting duties, to wit- distributing large heavy mail sacks
filled with parcels to carrier cases and then assigned by Mr.Tellian to work
out in the 90-degree plus heat carrying a heavy mail satchel while having a
letter in his possession revealing complainant’s medical condition,
demonstrating a malicious attitude toward the complainant, and a punitive
demonstration that may have caused permanent damage to his health. This is not
in accordance with any procedures of government employment.”
The
grievance letter outlined the legal remedies that were being demanded- that the
Post Office accommodate Dad in accordance with the National Association of Letter
Carriers’ union labor agreement with the Post Office (Article XIII, National
Agreement) - to provide him with a temporary light duty assignment, to restore
lost pay and sick and vacation time he was forced to use when he was wrongfully
suspended for two week periods (twice) without pay, and to provide permanent
relief from the harassment. It ended with this paragraph:
“
Grievant now demands a supplement to heretofore remedies- a letter of apology be
submitted to grievant and be made part of his personnel file. “
Dad
was not looking for vengeance; he just wanted to know that his livelihood was
secure and to be able to do his job in peace. It was important to him, though,
that his ordeal be acknowledged, and he wanted that acknowledgement to be
personal. He wanted Tellian and Munnell to apologize to him in writing, and on
the record.
As
he prepared his response to Tellian’s complaint about alleged drug use, he
rationalized that once Tellian knew about his heart condition, Tellian would
realize that he himself could be held personally responsible for emotional
stress that could possibly cause Dad to suffer a fatal heart attack on the job.
This would include the continual harassment and
unnecessary extra working hardships to which Tellian had subjected Dad. Maybe then Tellian would be scared into backing off. Maybe
now McNulty would get some relief.
Instead,
Dad’s revelation gave Tellian exactly what he needed- evidence of a distinct
vulnerability in McNulty. It would provide exactly what Tellian needed to build
his case for forcing a disability retirement on this troublesome carrier.
Apparently, Tellian was anything but
intimidated. Instead, he leaped upon this evidence of “weakness” in McNulty and
began to capitalize upon it.
Dad would come to discover that his
supervisors would cruelly use this information to further harass him,
increasing his route by over 100 deliveries, refusing his written requests for
overtime in the morning and then writing him up the next day for using
“unapproved overtime” when he had to work late to finish delivering his route
on a heavy mail day.
He was “written up,” with false and slanderous
reports of poor job performance entered into his file. At least twice, Dad was
punished with unpaid week-long suspensions for using “unapproved overtime.”
As they built their case for separating him,
Tellian, with the cooperation of Postmaster Wilton Banks, scheduled a Fitness
for Duty exam for Dad with the US Public Health Service (USPHS) in Miami. Tellian
and Banks must have been so sure this exam would easily provide the final bit
of evidence they needed that they did not bother to prepare the USPHS doctor by
requesting Dad’s medical records.
Dad, believing he was fit despite his prior heart
trouble, was more than willing to be examined by a doctor.
He kept
the appointment, of course, and hoped for the best. The medical exam was, in a
stunning understatement, not what he expected. Here's what Dad wrote about
that appointment with a doctor at the US Public Health service in Miami.
The said
"physical examination" in fact, never occurred. I was interviewed by a Dr. Seymour Feld,
who did not perform any kind of medical examination whatsoever. He did
not take my temperature, check blood pressure, or listen to my heartbeat, or do
any of the things which are commonly considered to be part of a medical exam.”
Following this appointment, the doctor, Seymour
Feld, MD, wrote, “In absence of medical records, I cannot make a final
determination (on his fitness for duty.)”
There was no follow-up exam requested by the Post
Office. Unbelievably, this physician,
tasked with performing a Fitness for Duty exam, did not perform any kind of
medical examination.
After a genial two-hour conversation between the
doctor and patient (interrupted several times by the doctor’s other duties,)
the doctor wrote a two-page report which acknowledged that the patient had
reported that, in the past, he had experienced stress and effort-induced
symptoms of chest pain which were being managed with prescribed medications. The
doctor wrote, “He should be temporarily transferred to work that is less
physically demanding.” The doctor added, “I see no evidence whatever of any
mental disturbance nor, in prolonged conversation, any lapse in awareness of
surroundings,” which led Dad to conclude
that he had possibly been sent, covertly, to Miami for a psychological as well
as a physical evaluation.
Tellian
probably expected the Fitness for Duty exam to result in a routine confirmation
of the Postal Service's assertion that their employee was no longer fit to
carry the mail- a rubber stamp. The results, however, supported anything
but that conclusion. But Tellian, inexplicably, arrogantly, proceeded as if Dad had actually failed the
exam, and he was never called on to account for that mendacious absurdity,
except by John McNulty.
I
doubt the doctor, or the postal supervisors who ordered the exam, ever expected
that his glaring lack of procedure would become the subject of the five-year-long
legal and bureaucratic battle which ensued.
How
had the doctor failed to perform a physical exam when that was the obvious
purpose of the appointment? After all, it was called a Fitness for Duty
exam. The doctor apparently wrote his report based on what Dad told him about
his medical history. He did not hide any medical information from the doctor,
including the physical and emotional harassment he had been dealing with. But
the doctor simply did not have the information he needed to write a
comprehensive
report of Dad’s fitness for duty. And
there was no follow-up exam ordered.
Dad
was always careful to not blame Dr. Feld, in all of his complaints following
the Fitness for Duty exam. The fault was not the doctor’s; it was the Post
Office’s, for failing to follow up, as Dr. Feld had suggested, with a thorough physical
exam informed by Dad’s medical records.
So the Fitness for Duty exam, which the Post Office
was counting on to prove their case that McNulty could be forced to take a
disability retirement, was without substance. But that did not matter to
Postmaster Banks.
When Dad received the doctor’s written report on
the exam, and saw how unsubstantial it was, he must have thought he had all the
proof he would need that he was indeed entitled to keep his job, and that he
was certainly not permanently disabled. He
must have felt relieved and maybe even lucky to have dodged a bullet.
The Postmaster and his two supervisors, meanwhile, treated the
ridiculous excuse for a Fitness for Duty
exam as if it had in fact found McNulty unfit.
The incomplete Fitness for Duty
exam was followed by an order for Dad to meet with a Postal Service disability
retirement counselor. This counselor told Dad, “You are qualified to quit
working and live off the taxpayers for the rest of your natural life.” In
addition to the fact that the counselor’s statement was not true (because Dad insisted
that he did not qualify for a disability designation.) Dad was repulsed by what
the retirement counselor said to him, and he refused to sign.
If he had agreed to it, this
pension would have provided him with a reliable income for the rest of his
life. He was only 54, and he would never
have to work full-time again. He could
escape the harassment and be done with the whole ugly ordeal.
But he refused, because it would have
gone against his very character to go along with this scheme. He had no formal education, but he was
well-read and skilled. He was proud of his ability to support himself and his
family with hard work. He had a resume packed with good honest labor to prove
it, starting from the time he quit school at 14 to help support his family
during the Depression.
From one of the many letters he
would write to congressmen and others over the coming years, laying out his
case against the Post Office:
“I’ve worked as a construction laborer, a steelworker
(blast-furnace and open-hearth basic steel processes, ) truck driver (inter-
and intra-state work,) aircraft mechanic, (aboard USS Enterprise CV6 during the
business negotiations with Japan,) refrigeration mechanic, and various other
fields of honest endeavor.”
Ironically, Dad had been qualified
to collect a 100% disability since 1942, when his skull was fractured by
shrapnel during a battle in the South Pacific when he was serving on the flight
deck of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. He had spent several months in a
Navy hospital, and then gone back to serve as an aircraft mechanic for another
four years, under war conditions. But he never collected the full
compensation to which he was entitled because of his injury, until 1968 when he
and Mom were divorced and he needed to start paying child support for the
youngest three of their children still at home.
Dad was morally opposed, in the
extreme, to collecting a disability pension like the one being proposed by his
supervisors now at the Post Office.
So, following the Fitness
for Duty exam and the meeting with the retirement counselor, Dad kept showing up for work and working hard.
This surely frustrated Tellian and Munnell. They couldn’t get him
to take the easy way out, as they had traditionally done with other postal
employees they wanted to get rid of.
But the two supervisors were
determined. Despite the questionable findings of the cursory Fitness for Duty
exam, Tellian sent Dad, by Certified Mail, an official Letter of Proposed
Removal.
“August
5, 1977- This is a
notice that it is proposed to remove you from the Postal Service…. The reason
for this proposed action is that, as a result of a Fitness for Duty examination
performed on May 20, 1977, you were found to be not fit for the full duties of
a city letter carrier….. ”
Those
sentences were followed by bureaucratic language about how, where and when he
could answer to the proposed removal, as well as this sentence: “If you do not
understand the reason for this notice, contact the undersigned,” who was, of
course, Edward F. Tellian, Supervisor of Mails and Delivery.
Dad would answer this
notice, all right. He would call their bluff and he would object with all his
might. You can see the shadow on the
back of this letter, of his typewritten lines. He must have started writing his
response immediately, without taking a moment to find a clean sheet of paper to
type on.
For the time being, though,
he treated the proposed removal as another act of harassment, and continued to
show up for work in uniform and on time, ready and willing to carry his route.
For the next three mornings, Tellian
would tell him there was no work for him. Dad’s time card had been pulled from
the rack, so he couldn’t clock in. But he would come back the next day, ready
to work. He gathered the signatures of two dozen co-workers who attested to
these facts, until he was taken out of the building, without resistance, by the
local police department.
Twenty years later, when he
was dying of heart disease in the Pittsburgh Veteran’s
Administration Hospital, Dad made a kind of speech to us, his six
adult children gathered in his room.
“You kids know that the Post Office tried to work
me to death.”
Then he said nothing for what
seemed like minutes as he struggled to stand from his chair. On shaking
legs, he made eye contact with each of us in the room before he
declared, slowly and deliberately,
“But every morning, as I pulled into the parking lot, I
would say to myself- ‘Let’s see how much FUN we can have with those
bastards today!’ ”
His eyes glinted and his
smile was wide, but the way he said the word “fun” was dead serious.
