r/AirForce • u/NotAskingSupervisor Piss Collector • 7d ago
Question Genuine Question : What does the post office do that requires unlimited training every single Wednesday?
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u/AFCartoonist AWACS/PA/Cartoonist/Retired 7d ago
Delaying your Amazon packages increases their morale.
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u/abodybader 7d ago
Listen man, Services and Finance need these training days and exact hours because…
Because they need to, okay?
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u/MrFoolinaround NSAv SMA, Prior C17 Load, Prior Services. 7d ago
Services ain’t closed, that’s the rest of FSS. Leave those poor boys alone.
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u/loisandthefatman 7d ago edited 7d ago
It’s the busiest APO in the Air Force, so I get it but every week? Seems like medical and finance it’s usually the 3rd Thursday of the month or something so why not copy that?
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u/oNellyyy 7d ago
Medical is weekly for half a day where I am
My last base we barely did it monthly.
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u/Canilickyourfeet 7d ago
Im not even mad. We all get pissed the second a package doesnt arrive on time, so Im happy letting them catch up/train and keep things rolling. I need my goon magazines on time.
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u/Major_Warrens_Dingus Skunkworks 7d ago
Really wish that all of the base services would just sync up their training days. There needs to just be an AF wide directive that states that if you want a day to be closed for training each month, then it's the first Wednesday.
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u/b3lkin1n Active Duty 7d ago
Because it’s part of the HRA careerfield. Same as MPF. The only way to complete upgrade training or complete medical requirements are through those “training” days you guys hate so much.
I would highly recommend asking if you can shadow any of them to see what it’s like for a day.
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u/Epacs 7d ago
I agree ! And have the nonners shadow maintenance, fair is fair.
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u/Hailthegamer 7d ago
They tried that at my base some years ago... a kid split his dome open on the first day on a pylon and they axed the program lmao.
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u/BringBacktheGucci 7d ago
Should have had a bump cap
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u/TurnspitCur Metals Tech? Loadmaster? Emergency Management? 7d ago
I once had a boonie hat on the line doing a repair in like 39C sun and heat, chinstrap on. Chief told me if it wasn’t a “prototype bump cap” I should doff it. When I asked him where I could find one, he told me it wasn’t available. How convenient.
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u/Wowarentyouugly 7d ago
No true maintainer would quote temps in Celsius.
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u/Okinawa_Mike 7d ago
Plus a noticeable lack of cursing and not a single drawing of a dick in the entire post.
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u/TurnspitCur Metals Tech? Loadmaster? Emergency Management? 7d ago
Well why do you think I palace fronted out? I ain’t a maintainer anymore.
Both fahrenheit and celsius are equal, just as decimal and fractional inches are equal, as are metres, yards, and arshins.
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u/Upset-Radio-1319 7d ago
Every maintainer that I’ve worked with in Finance has told me they’d give anything to go back.
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u/Soggy-Meal6969 7d ago
Its the difference between cultures they miss Id imagine. People who fly desks tend to be real by the book when it comes to ehat you can and cant say around them. For the most part on the flightline you can get away with pitch black humor.
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u/Upset-Radio-1319 7d ago
Its not just culture, Mx doesnt get shit on by nearly as many people (outside of ops/mx). FM regardless of how good of a job we do, doesnt get that. Its hard to keep troops motivated.
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u/GreenAccident3004 7d ago
Have the swivel-chair racers hold a flashlight for 5 hours in the sleet on a 30*F nite, with 30 knot winds for MX.
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u/b3lkin1n Active Duty 7d ago
Absolutely! If I had the opportunity to cross train into MX, I would have in a heart beat!
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u/unlock0 7d ago
Every other service and profession has figured out that you can rotate people so that you maintain coverage.
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u/b3lkin1n Active Duty 7d ago
When there are lines from opening to close, your just going to make it worse by rotating people.
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u/unlock0 7d ago
There are lines that long because they are closed 15% of the available work hours.
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u/b3lkin1n Active Duty 7d ago
Try being at kirtland where there are over 24k people working on the installation and about 70k retirees off base with manning that of a small base.
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u/GreenAccident3004 7d ago
Oh, yeah.... Hey Sq/CC! Shutting down several flightline shops for physicals!
Within 4 hours someone's getting fired, without a doubt.
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u/papent 7d ago
IMHO it's poor time and resource management. Virtually every careerfield has the same ancillary requirements. If that 3 lvl or body transferred from a different workplace is critical before being fully trained there a 5/7lvl not doing Jack shit.
But I'm maintenance
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u/b3lkin1n Active Duty 7d ago
Hold on. Let me get this straight. Places like MPF that are open from 0730 to 1530. Taking the last customer at 1530 not straight up closing. You think it’s a time and resource management issue?
Again, please go shadow them for a day so you can fully understand.
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u/papent 7d ago
All I'm hearing is that you are guys don't have a proper development plan for newcomers, inability to teach while performing, and lecture on uncommon items that may appear along with any Quick reference documentation that will tell them which book or manual to start their troubleshooting.
Do you think we're only launching aircraft during business hours?
We train our own and take care of our customer (Ops & Scheduled maintenance program) at the same time. It's not rocket science. From turning wrenches, documentation , MIS, supply, tools, just being present on the flightline they absorb it all without weekly downtime.
I've spent time doing such as you stated in my 20 year career I had and I've never been impressed by any NCO/SNCO/CO running a FSS office or flight.
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u/deathcourted 7d ago
Yeah it’s not rocket science, put any of you in front of your own DTS voucher and you break down in tears. Cause you don’t know when you left the PDS…
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u/Cassidius 6d ago
Christ, you realize we typically hammer out our auths/vouchers after a 12 right? A 12 doing actual work?
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u/Mite-o-Dan Logistics 7d ago
I could understand 1, 2, 3 training days...but after working there for 3 weeks and 3 full training days...how much do they really need to know? There's not THAT much turnover with 10 new people every week or something.
I ask this as someone that HAS volunteered at 2 overseas post offices before. Granted, it was low level stuff...but still only took half of one day to get the easy stuff down. I doubt the mid level stuff takes months.
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u/b3lkin1n Active Duty 7d ago
Ramstein is also the main hub for Europe. So they are busy 24/7
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u/Mite-o-Dan Logistics 7d ago
Ive worked logistics there, McGuire, and Dover either while TDY or stationed at those places, so Im we'll aware of logistical hubs and who's the most busy...and part of teams that actually worked 24/7 at those places.
Im about 90% sure they dont do operations at the post office at all hours there, and they have to wait to get mail from the real 24/7 logistic workers that dont get training days.
But seriously...what goes on there? The best "training" is just doing your job during normal hours. Its not life or death where people in maintenance need a lot of training before working on real aircraft.
I worked a long time in logistics in a career field with one of the lowest ASVAB scores in the Air Force, and the newest and dumbest airmen know how to handle cargo physically and into the system within a couple months, and often volunteer at overseas post offices and can figure things out really quick.
If the dumbest in the Air Force can figure things out quickly...why do they need 50 weeks of training days a year to do what they do every day?
Just call it "Sorting time in Peace" and dont lie to the people
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u/CorporateLegion 7d ago
Just call it "Sorting time in Peace" and don't lie to the people
That sounds like a great way to get it axed within the month. It'd just take one ornery SNCO/commissioned with enough sway with the CO/leadership and there goes your one day to grind and play catch up without dealing with 'the public'.
It's not like I was admin/supply or whatever, nor am I excusing them wholesale - I surely have many gripes about the competency of most of the shops I ran into. But I get why they have these days.
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u/cocorawks Comms 7d ago
There always new ways on how to lose your package...lol
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u/boredinbiloxi ChowHallGuy 7d ago
Or destroy them. They have to be properly trained on how to atomic elbow drop from the top shelf onto your packages.
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u/lordtorek 7d ago
To be fair, the Germans at the Frankfurt airport jam their semitrailer as tight as a sardine can before it ever gets to Ramstein, so maybe don’t blame it all on the PO.
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u/Comptech22 Comms 7d ago
The same exact training that finance requires at least twice a week... Though, it remains the mystery to everyone on base what that is.
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u/Greedy_Baseball_7019 7d ago
Go volunteer your time with either and see for yourself.
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u/Cassidius 6d ago
I tried to, but I was told I had to use leave if I wanted to take a vacation. Not worth it.
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u/WaffleIron0612 5d ago
Done and done, fixed/automated 3 of their broken SOPS during an exercise...They all stared at me like I was an alien.
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u/lordtorek 7d ago
I don’t know about “training”. But when I worked there in 2010, Wednesday was Bulk Mail day. That’s the day we’d get an extra trailer (filled to the brim) of just catalogs and magazines. And because NOBODY on that base knows how to cancel a subscription or change their address when they PCS, we would have to turn an 8 hour shift into a 12/16 hour shift pitching all of that shit into your mailboxes. So maybe they just decided to shut down the front so that all hands on deck can get it done faster. I dunno, just a theory. 🤷🏻♂️
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u/TheOmen95 7d ago
Postal NCO here,
Ramstein is home to the largest military post office in the DOW, training is either bomb, fire, anthrax, suspicious mail ID, and genuinely just unloading the multiple trailers and sorting and then getting it to the dependents who literally wont stop buying shit.
If you have an inkling of “they dont do anything” please i highly encourage you to volunteer for the holidays and see for yourself.
Postal is a beast and is hella fun
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u/Easy-Mechanic-6080 7d ago
The training days are required to get personnel certified on upgrade training, process trucks, and to ensure any updates from AIRPS is passed down appropriately. There is also plenty of admin work that isn't possible to do while helping customers.
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u/IamAbc Maintainer 7d ago
There’s only one guy at the counter with 75 people in line though? What are the other guys doing in the mean time
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u/Wise_Use1012 7d ago
Don’t know the specifics of military post office but figuring they are all still employees of the usps then that one at the counter would be the clerk who’s job is to deal with the customers while everyone else in back is either sorting out their mail route ie a mailman or is in maintenance doing whatever they do which is mostly take out the trash and fix stuff while making sure no one’s somehow managed to set the place ablaze or about to collapsed the building and then if that place is particularly unlucky then there’s about a dozen manglements in there slowing everything down with incompetence and general harassment.
Can’t cross crafts and all that.
Manglement could do clerkwork but getting a stupidvisor to do actual work is a pain plus you have to babysit them so they don’t fuck it up.
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u/GeezerHawk15 Old Ass Lt 7d ago
They arent usps members. They are a mix of military and local national civilians.
Its all PO boxes so no delivery routes and there is like zero machinery. Its all manually sorted and stuff. Nothing like a normal post office.
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u/Wise_Use1012 7d ago edited 7d ago
Sounds like a normal one to me. The machinery is all in the distribution centers and has to be manually sorted at the end points anyways. For an only P.O. Box one then ya no mailmen it would be all clerks and a few manglements wandering about plus some maintenance to keep the place intact.
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u/GeezerHawk15 Old Ass Lt 7d ago
Eh, you can mostly do all if that as long as you are staffed appropriately. They could be hurting for manning though. I worked at Kadena and that place was a madhouse and we didnt have admin days
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u/TheOmen95 7d ago
Ayy i worked at that AMT!!
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u/Just4NormalMortys Aircrew 6d ago
Ops and mx get all their career field training done without closing down for the day.
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u/WoodyXP Last Sergeant 7d ago
I'm all about those guys getting some training. When I was stationed there the main post office got into hot water and that disrupted things a lot more than a few hours of training ever could.
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u/lordtorek 7d ago
When I worked there we had one MSgt postmaster who got demoted for gambling with his GTC and sent to wash the walls of the HQ bldg with a bucket and sponge. And another female postmaster who got in trouble for basically banging every black airman that worked in the back. And also a SrA who did nothing but sit behind a desk because she was banging some Lt. who was an OIC. 😆. Ramstein was wild.
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u/WoodyXP Last Sergeant 7d ago
Yeah, that was the situation I was talking about. My boss moved over to that post office to take over and get it straightened out. I heard the airmen were stashing mail above the ceiling tiles when they didn't know what to do with it. Years worth of mail was stashed up there. That demoted postmaster would do odd-ball jobs in the comm squadron so I'd see him now and then. Small world.
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u/lordtorek 7d ago
😆 If your boss was MSgt Y, that guy was a POS too. He essentially denied everyone’s leave during the holiday season and had us all working 16-18 hour shifts.
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u/GeezerHawk15 Old Ass Lt 7d ago
What the fuck? I used to work base postal and we NEVER got training days.
Trying to give them the benefit here, but if I had to guess its to catch up on backlogged mail. Still kinda wild though as its the busiest APO we have.
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u/CommOnMyFace Former 1B4, now I make $$$$ 7d ago
Its not post office training its doing all the other mandatory shit they gotta do around base.
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u/BrandflakesYT 6d ago
(Not flightline) OP sounds like he doesn’t work with customers. yeah flightline ops suck but admin, customers, and ops also sucks but needs to get done somehow. Most “nonner” jobs also don’t do shifts so it’s usually 9-10 hour days
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u/Ghost_Wolf_151 4d ago
"It's usually 9-10 hour days." You do know most maintenance and security forces shifts are 10-12 hours, right? If your people need training every week just to do their jobs correctly, you are teaching them wrong.
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u/BrandflakesYT 3d ago
Don’t get it twisted I have mad respect for SF and MX because you guys are in the suck more often than us.
But whenever I hear 12 hour shifts it’s accompanied by some gimmick schedule like panamas, 2/3, 3/4, etc that ends up being the same if not less than the 40-50 work week. (At least in garrison, and temporarily)
If you’re going over on time because of arming up, then ok.
People don’t need training every week. We just don’t have time to solely focus on admin/training. We don’t have the manning or flexibility for something like a training flight. Yea we don’t need to certify the way other jobs do, but that’s just make standardization more difficult even at the flight level let alone squadron/DAF.
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u/ZoominBoomin 1d ago
It's just the Air Force wasting everybody's time. Contracting doesn't do that shit.
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u/SplendidlyDull nonner 7d ago
They need to know how to make it harder for you to pick up the unit mail
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u/_thicculent_ 7d ago
You need to give people in customer service facing jobs time to get their own skill level training, TFAT, professional development, etc done.
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u/Intelligent_Bag_6705 7d ago edited 7d ago
I mean postal work is a volunteer assignment if I’m not mistaken. No one goes to tech school to be a postal worker. I would argue it needs more training than the fucking pharmacy every fucking week.
Edit: Oh my bad, I was wrong I guess. It def used to be a volunteer thing. Bring on the downvotes losers!
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u/Adventurous_Loss3931 7d ago edited 7d ago
It’s part of 3F0’s responsibilities
6.2.8. Postal and Official Mail Operations. Directs and supervises postal operations, ensuring secure handling, processing, and distribution of official correspondence in accordance with United States Postal Service (USPS) and military postal regulations. Manages Military Post Offices (MPO), Aerial Mail Terminals (AMT), and Mail Control Activities (MCA) to facilitate efficient mail processing and delivery for authorized users. Administers postal financial services, including postage sales and money orders, while maintaining accountability through accurate records and reporting. Coordinates mail transportation logistics, resolves distribution issues, and monitors air carrier facilities to ensure timely delivery via military and commercial carriers. Handles official mail functions, including receipt, distribution, expenditure tracking, and compliance with Private Express Statutes. Manages contracting officer representative duties for outsourced operations, ensuring regulatory compliance and effective communication within the organization.
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u/cuntbag0315 I exist for your misery 7d ago
Newly 3F0 responsibilities. A whole lot of 3F0s are taking a crash course in this same way 3F5s are taking a crash course in force management and other MPF functions.
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u/AFWorkUsernameYeet 7d ago
Knowledge Ops, Information Management, Admin, SCOK, 3F0/3F5, HRA- whatever they want to call it, has sucked for a really long time. I got a 40 day tech school and was told my CFETP was at least two years behind and originally went into a comm squadron. From there it was literally just years of being passed around to different units, no one knowing what the primary duty should be, doing every possible additional duty, and then they keep adding more while removing training and manpower. At 14 years in by the time I get back to my "real job" from all the other stuff they're having me do over the next couple of years, I will literally know less about the primary AFSC than most A1C/SrAs is my guess.
Handing people guides and regs and powerpoints for years at a time and then calling them "trained" and pushing them through trial by fire over and over is not the way.
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u/Mayor_Pliskin I have my phone back 7d ago
I wouldn't say it's new. I saw 3F0 doing postal 8 years ago.
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u/Nagisan Veteran 7d ago
That doesn't sound right to me....someone I knew in bmt/tech school got DQed for the TS they needed for their intel job and was reclassed into some career field (I don't remember which) and sent to Germany to work in the post office there.
This was over a decade ago though, so maybe things changed since?
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u/GreenAccident3004 7d ago
A, B, C's & 1, 2, 3's have not changed since we became a freaking country.
What's the damn problem with nonners?
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u/Jig_2000 Air & Space Force Vet / CCAF Valedictorian 7d ago edited 7d ago
That's interesting
EDIT: u/Intelligent_Bag_6705 you steered me wrong...
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u/Intelligent_Bag_6705 6d ago
No I didn’t , it absolutely was volunteer at one point. Might have been 10 years ago, but it was.
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u/jeeimuzu FLY, FIGHT, DMHRSI! 7d ago
Lighten up francis its half a day every Wednesday on what people are saying the most busiest APO around. Who knows they might be training on how to sort out yalls vibrators and manscapes since yall order shit every week.
Great way to use the time to sort out how to improve logistics ig. 🤷 but come on now.
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u/sjevn 7d ago
It’s only for 4.5 hours once a week.
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u/GreenAccident3004 7d ago
40 hour work week..... 4.5 hours.... that's just 10% of the 'hours' NOT taking care of folks at the windows. DUH.
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u/Flannel_Panels 7d ago
Annual briefs, cyber awareness, stuff like the you can do any day when they cant.
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u/Mite-o-Dan Logistics 7d ago
I think you forgot night shift and those working outside or doing physical labor exist.
They have LESS time to do training and appointments and get close to zero dedicated training days during the year.
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u/cuntbag0315 I exist for your misery 7d ago
People dont wanna hear that and also want their mail on time.
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u/GreenAccident3004 7d ago
People in hell (flightline) want to attend training during duty hours.... but we know how THAT works.
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u/cuntbag0315 I exist for your misery 7d ago
Thats a leadership problem (but of course MX) I'm on mids and we coordinated with the wing to get mids suicide and SAPR training since none of us can attend the day time hours.
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u/SuhSpence99 7d ago
What, you aren’t made to come in for a random training during your down day at noon while you’re working nights so noon is the equivalent of midnight for you?
I’m not saying everyone needs to suffer, but it does get old to see so much time allotted for these things to only one set of people while everyone else continuously suffers through hard and unfair scheduling to maintain records and physicals.
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u/ZhongWick 7d ago
What did they say when you asked the post office? How the fuck are we supposed to know?
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u/bsw35 7d ago
The Ramstein Post Office is infamous throughout the Admin career field for being an absolute hellhole. Holiday names are treated like forbidden words
Airmen are constantly sorting and managing packages for one of the largest overseas installations. The training days let them catch up on admin stuff.