Posted on 03/09/2003 11:18:55 PM PST by TexRef
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WASHINGTON — They bark like a pack of dogs, quack like a flock of ducks and hiss like a nest of vipers.
They wrap each other from head to toe in toilet paper and aluminium foil and pipe cleaners.
They build sandcastles and gingerbread houses and practice picking up oranges while blindfolded.
These are the professional auditors and investigators who police the United States Postal Service.
The mission of the USPS Office of Inspector General is to make the mail more efficient and cost-effective by rooting out waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.
Yet hundreds of IG staffers have been taking part in bizarre bonding and team-building exercises and playing goofy games that burn up millions of dollars — and appear to do little or nothing to curb postal inefficiencies, a Daily News investigation found.
As stamp prices and postal deficits soared over the past few years, the agency's well-paid, highly trained employees got a lesson in scat singing, took an outing to a racetrack — and delved into the history of the Civil War during a $100,000 retreat to the battlefield at Gettysburg.
On USPS time, they've composed Christmas carols, belted out "We Are Family" at sing-alongs, conducted mock trials in which witnesses were paraded before a judge and jury — and played children's games like follow the leader.
Under the supervision of Postal Inspector General Karla Corcoran, civil servants have been paid to emit animal sounds, embark on treasure hunts, dress in cat costumes and seek the counsel of make-believe wizards, magicians and mad scientists at mass gatherings of the workforce.
They've been jetting into the capital from 15 field offices around the nation for "annual recognition conferences" that celebrate the organization and its values. The tab for the last three confabs: $3.6 million, including planning and salary costs.
At one such event, at the Renaissance Washington D.C. Hotel in January 2002, a blindfolded and barefoot Corcoran was swaddled in a blue blanket and hoisted into the air above a hotel ballroom on colored ropes and strings manipulated by some 500 of her 725 employees.
The point of lifting the boss skyward: To show that by working together as a team, they could accomplish a task that would have been impossible to perform alone.
$117 million
Who foots the bill for these shenanigans? You do. Every penny of the IG's $117 million annual budget comes from the stamp-buying public.
"Each time your Aunt Minnie sticks a 37-cent stamp on an envelope, she's funding an agency that's off track, off message, off mission — and off its rocker," said Leslie Paige, vice president of Citizens Against Government Waste, which tracks the misspending of public funds.
So much agency time, energy and money has been consumed in retreats, conferences, picnics, parties and game-playing, team-building outings that the mandate to ferret out USPS ineptitude has taken a back seat, a dozen current and former employees told The News.
"Touchy-feely bonding exercises, management retreats at first-class hotels and annual celebratory events all divert resources that could be better invested in audits and investigations," said Debra Ritt, the agency's former No. 1 auditor.
After some 50 past and present staffers approached Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley with allegations of waste and mismanagement, the Iowa Republican launched a probe of Corcoran's six-year tenure as IG.
"I question whether spending tens of thousands of dollars for an afternoon of treasure hunting sets the gold standard for prudence," Grassley told The News. The President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which polices the federal inspector-general community, also is probing the allegations.
Keeping mum
Corcoran, who has run the office since it was created in 1997, refused interview requests over a three-week period. It would be "inappropriate" to comment, a spokeswoman said, while the investigation is going on.
The $142,500-a-year IG — a veteran of former Vice President Al Gore's reinventing government initiative — serves at the pleasure of the USPS Board of Governors and is in the last year of a seven-year term.
In written responses to questions, the agency said its audits and probes of postal operations have identified $2.2 billion in potential, projected and actual savings during the past six years.
Its team-and-leadership development programs mirror those offered by corporate giants and consume only minimal resources, officials claim. They help workers learn more about each other, and themselves, so they can discover novel ways to think and work together.
The exercises also teach acceptance of five core workplace values that the agency instills in all staffers: teamwork, leadership, communication, creativity and conceptualization — better known in IG parlance as "TLC3."
Wrapping people in toilet paper, for instance, displayed teamwork; building sandcastles showed creativity; mimicking animals involved conceptualization. Besides, said agency spokeswoman Laura Whitaker, when "fun and humor" are integrated into the workplace, people become more productive and creative and absenteeism and downtime plummet.
Fun and humor, however, is not how ex-employees such as John Rooney, a former special assistant to Corcoran, describe the organization.
"We were forced to play silly games, build gingerbread houses and sing songs praising Karla, and I found the whole thing humiliating, demoralizing and nonproductive," Rooney said.
Adds Ritt, "Auditors tend to be private, analytical and conservative. Making them sing to large groups, orate and give testimonials shows a lack of respect for their professionalism."
As for "TLC3," employees say it's an agency obsession. In E-mail messages obtained by The News, they've been told to play a "values game" and embark on a "values journey" that uses zany clues to test their TLC3 IQ.
"We never really focused on how we could make the Postal Service better because we were always focused on how much we loved TLC3," said Billy Sauls, the agency's former top investigator.
Among the games the office of inspector general plays:
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What is TLC3?
TLC3 is a five year national project that is providing quality, early learning programs. We are dedicated to discovering the kinds of programs that work best with children in different settings. Our learning's will fill an important gap.
We've learned a lot about brain development & how children's minds grow
A new-born baby enters this world with 100 billion brain cells. However, only those for basic functions such as heart rate and breathing are well developed. Over the next fours years the cells link up in a web of connections. These connections largely determine social, emotional and cognitive development. The strength of each part of the web depends on how it is stimulated. Thus, these are the most critical years in a child's development. Providing a child with care and stimulation will bring huge rewards. Neglect or abuse can lead to anxiety, abnormal behaviour and decreased capacity to learn. The kind of care we provide to children ---all children---in their first four years is crucial to their building a solid intellectual, emotional and social foundation.
We need to learn more about what kind of care and stimulation works best
I personally in a 6 month series of team building exercises had to draw what animal I was most like, had to carry a bag around with me for 90 days that had all "prejudices" on it including religious affiliation and answsers to certain personal questions, I had to build a structure from PVC while blindfolded, had to learn the Macarena, and had to march through a hotel lobby wearing hats we made while trying to avoid the curious stares of onlookers. I also had to procure at taxpayer expense meals for the working lunch. When lunch arrived several people refused to work while eating so it essentially was a paid for non-working lunch. This was supposed to make as work as a well oiled machine, but it divided the group.
Disagreement was not tolerated. For instance we were told to make a list of all the reasons why moving employees 50 miles away was a good thing, while not being permitted to make the case why it was not a good deal.
After deciding I had had enough, I took a job elsewhere and subsequently every problem that has occurred over the last three years was attributed to me.
On the link I read this, among MANY goofy things the postal employees where instructed to do, "let the phone ring an extra time before answering it." Gee at my post office they take the phone off the hook - all day, every day. We have the laziest postmaster anywhere.
Hope Senator Grassley rattles their cage, big time.
One of our Cub Scout mothers works in a large postal sorting facility, here in Sydney. The mail is sorted electronically, with scanners reading postcodes on the envelopes. She told us that, due to the fall in mail volumes caused by the popularity of e-mail, some nights the same mail is put through the machines six times; in order, to make it appear that everyone's still busy. I'll bet that scam's happening Stateside, too. Post, take note?
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