A year and a half after resigning in disgrace as the Vice President for Public Affairs for the US Postal Service, Azeezaly Jaffer is hanging out his shingle as a PR expert. Jaffer’s performance as a USPS spokesman moved the Federal Times to write:

“[Postmaster General] Potter and the leadership of the Postal Service have a choice to make now. The IG report documents a strong case, depicting a public official who ran amok with his official credit card, sexually harassed fellow employees and abused his trusted position. If Potter doesn’t think that merits criminal or other punitive action, perhaps it is time for a new leadership team to take charge of the U.S. Postal Service.

Details of the Jaffer scandal are available in the OIG report that prompted his sudden resignation. In September 2006, the Washington Post summarized the findings:

The June IG report accuses Jaffer, who managed a staff of 160 and a $20 million budget, of, among other things: drinking at a work function until he passed out; running up $8,000 in extra hotel room charges so he could qualify for a suite with a bathtub for two; and following a female colleague into her hotel room, propositioning her, then passing out.

Jaffer was not held responsible for over forty six thousand dollars in alcohol, expensive hotel suites and dinners for friends and families, and it turned out that even months after he “resigned”, he was still on the USPS payroll. As the Post put it:

All summer, federal-dom has been abuzz over a steamy U.S. Postal Service Inspector General’s report accusing the agency’s former public affairs chief of heavy drinking, expense account chicanery and sexual harassment. But who knew that the subject of the report, Azeezaly S. Jaffer, has spent the season on vacation, courtesy of the Postal Service? Jaffer’s taxpayers’ holiday bears witness, a Postal Service spokesman said, “to how hardworking he is.”

So what does Jaffer want to do for you and your company? Well, according to his LinkedIn page, he has experience and expertise in such things as “crisis communications”, “talent relations”, “executive coaching”, etc. He also claims to be the person who “Aggressively increased annual revenues 400 percent” for the USPS by “conducting innovative promotion and publicity campaigns”.

The LinkedIn page says Jaffer started his PR company, “globalPRpros LLC” in August 2007. (The page doesn’t account for the year that had elapsed since his postal resignation/sabbatical.) The company is described as “A full service communications company specializing in media relations”. Although Jaffer registered the company’s domain name in August of last year, four months later, its web site still consists of a generic “parked domain” page currently offering custom searches on “Umbilical Stem Cells, Equipment, Cheap Advertising, Global Overpopulation, and Tee Times”. Surprisingly, for someone supposedly skilled in corporate relations, is Jaffer’s email address: globalprpros@yahoo.com. Free anonymous email accounts aren’t generally seen as “professional”, especially when they’re used as the main point of contact for a firm. For a “full service” firm, Jaffer’s seems quite small- it’s listed on LinkedIn as having “1-10″ employees, and so may actually consist of Jaffer himself.

First we had the USPS PR guy in Oregon who responded to the report that a lucrative delivery contract had been awarded to the son of a PO supervisor with this: “We all have relatives that work in different facets of the post office,” Jeffrey says. “There’s an old joke about providing full-family employment.”

Now we have a nice story about a letter carrier who went out of his way to accomodate an elderly, legally blind woman on his route, and what does the local PR person have to say about it?

“It’s rare to see a carrier like Mike take initiative like that,” Thomas said. “Usually, it’s instigated by the customer.”

Oh. Thanks for clearing that up- wouldn’t want to give people the wrong impression, would we?

A columnist for the Spokane Spokesman-Review tells the story of an Idaho sculptor who claims the postal service is reneging on its obligation to reimburse him for a sculpture that was damaged in the mail. And what is the “brick wall” the USPS has supposedly put in the customer’s path? It’s asking for an “independent cost estimate”. That’s a “brick wall”?

I’ve been lucky enough to have avoided having to file many insurance claims in my life, but on those few occasions when I’ve had to, I’ve always had to get an estimate to justify my claim. Suppose the sculpture had been stolen from the sculptor’s house? Would our columnist be upset with the insurance company when it asked for proof that the item had been stolen, and that it was actually worth $5,000?

Post Office Gives Vet Bad Break

I’m not sure exactly what our PR strategy is in the plant consolidation process, but it’s consistent at least- from the story on Bryan Texas:

“The United States Postal Service is deciding if Bryan’s processing facility should be consolidated with North Houston’s… The post office is not saying what else could come out of the survey, if anything.”

“The Bryan Post office refuses to comment on the issue. While USPS hasn’t released any information on whether there will be job cuts or what delay Brazos Valley residents should expect.”

Personally, I don’t think we have anything to hide- so why do we go out of our way to make it look like we do?

KBTX | Postal Service Conducting Survey in Bryan

Nothing illustrates the PR problems the Postal Service faces better than this story about breaking ground for a new post office in Connecticut.

The Postal Service gets blamed for closing small Post Offices, even though it rarely happens, and even when the ‘town’ served has a dozen residents. When the Postal Service does something that the public (and the local media) actually want us to do, do we get credit for it? Not often.

“5th District U.S. Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, a Republican, and U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, a Democrat, helped push the project along on the federal level, and Johnson was on hand Wednesday to help break ground.

If there was anyone from the Postal Service present, the reporter failed to notice them, never mind ask for their comments.

“’It takes a strong team to move the federal bureaucracy when they don’t want to move,’ Johnson said. ‘Every project like this reminds me only a strong team wins. This isn’t about party.’” 

No, it isn’t about party- it’s about politicians taking credit for a project they didn’t pay for, vote on, or really do anything for, except possibly to remind the Postal Service that their votes might be needed when the next postal reform bill comes up for a vote.

What a way to run a business.

When I first saw the headline on today’s Sioux City Journal story, “Lawmakers stress openness in postal decision”, I thought, yeah, right, let’s hear another politician tell us again how you can’t possibly cancel mail 50 miles away from where it was sent, and expect it to be delivered on time! As if the mail was transported on mule trains or something.

But then I read the article, and it occurred to me that the politicians’ proposals weren’t all that unreasonable. What they’re saying is, “we don’t understand why you need to move these jobs out of Sioux City- show us the numbers, and give us the opportunity to make a counter-proposal”. 

That is not unreasonable. Now I don’t for a minute think that the politicians, or their constitutents, understand the full complexity of moving the mail, or the costs and other implications of processing it in Sioux City as opposed to Sioux Falls, or anywhere else. But that’s not their job. It’s the job of the Postal Service. And that means it is also the job of the Postal Service to educate the politicians, and more importantly, the people, about all those nasty details. We haven’t done that.

So here’s a suggestion- invite all the interested parties along on a field trip to see how mail is processed now, and how it would be processed under the AMP proposal.

Then ask the opponents to submit their counter-proposal under exactly the same conditions as the USPS AMP proposal was submitted- machine productivity targets, non-personnel costs, service, etc…

And then- yes, determine which proposal makes the most economic sense.

Understand what that means though- much of the politicians arguments have to do with the impact on the local economy if jobs move elsewhere. That’s a reasonable political consideration, but it has nothing to do with moving the mail. If Tom Harkin, or the APWU want to prop up the local economy with postal jobs, they need to either show why those positions make economic sense for the USPS, or they need to come up with the money to pay for them from somewhere else (and admit that it’s a political subsidy).

That, folks, is openness.