Postmaster Says Rampage Reaction Hurts

San Diego County Postmaster Margaret Sellers said Friday that last week’s shooting rampage in which an Escondido postal worker killed his wife and two fellow employees before fatally wounding himself was “the saddest experience of my professional life” and one that has caused her “great personal stress.”

Sellers said she has been “surprised and hurt” by the reaction since the massacre, with postal workers seeming to direct their anger not at John Merlin Taylor, the gunman, but at her and the U.S. Postal Service.

“The incident in Escondido has served as a vehicle for a lot of people to air feelings of frustration and unhappiness,” Sellers said. “They didn’t know who to be mad at, and I can understand that. John was such a wonderful employee. So, what better target to direct your anger at than a big, bureaucratic organization like the Postal Service . . . or the person in charge?”

Sellers spent part of Friday conducting half-hour interviews with members of the media in her office at the main post office, on Midway Drive. Reporters were asked to refrain from “personal questions.”

By the end of the day, Sellers appeared tired and said she felt “war-weary” from the discussions with employees and interviews with the media since Taylor walked into the Orange Glen substation Aug. 10, wielding a semiautomatic handgun.

One of the men Taylor killed was Ron Williams, said to be one of his closest friends, with whom he often shared coffee and cigarettes before the start of the day’s work.

‘Twinkle in His Eye’

“The incident hit me especially hard because I knew Ron and knew him well,” Sellers said. “I had known him for about 10 years. He was always so funny. . . . He had that little twinkle in his eye. You never knew if he was joking or not, but at the last minute, you’d catch that twinkle in his eye and then you could tell.”

Despite four suicides and two murders among San Diego County postal workers in 1989, Sellers said the 6,600 employees she oversees in the county are “generally happy” and would give her “a vote of confidence.”

“I believe each of those deaths was unique,” she said. “I don’t believe it’s fair to lump them together like that. We have spots of unhappiness and concern, but you have those in any organization.”

Sellers, 56, became postmaster in 1979. Her territory also covers San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties. She administers a $450-million annual budget and more than 11,000 employees in 244 postal facilities throughout the four counties.

A native of North Carolina and a graduate of William and Mary College, Sellers speaks with a distinct Southern accent. She began her career as a clerk and said she has “a special feel” for the clerks, letter carriers and package handlers.

In the days since the rampage, however, postal employees have complained of abusive supervisors, poor working conditions and mismanagement in meeting such phenomena as automation, outside competition and the population boom in San Diego County.

Coming Up With Magic

“There’s all this pressure on employees to come up with magic on a daily basis,” said John Worthy, vice president of the La Mesa branch of the National Assn. of Letter Carriers. Worthy’s union is one of three with which Sellers negotiates and one of four postal unions nationwide.

“Every day, we have to deliver X amount of mail in X number of hours,” he said. “The time that we’re allotted never changes, but the volume of mail keeps growing and growing. Sooner or later, it just reaches a breaking point.”

Worthy said of Sellers in particular: “Margaret Sellers is a capable, intelligent individual out of touch with reality. That’s about all I can say within the shield of protection I have with the union.”

Worthy said about $5 million had been spent in the Western region on “back-pay awards, time spent for lost time in bad grievances and so on. That’s money the post office has had to pay out for bad labor relations.”

He and others have said that grievances among postal workers in San Diego County are high. Sellers said they’re low.

Post Office spokesman Mike Cannone, who sat near Sellers during Friday’s interview, said 350 grievances were filed in the county in fiscal 1988 and only 158 have been filed in fiscal 1989, which ends Oct. 1.

“They’re all Step 3 grievances, mostly having to do with overtime pay,” Sellers said.

Slashed Grievances

Cannone said Step 3 grievances occur after disputes cannot be settled within a specific postal station (Step 1) or at a labor office (Step 2). Postmaster General Anthony Frank has slashed grievances in half since taking his job in 1988, he said, and San Diego County has conformed to the national average.

Asked to characterize her relationship with postal unions, Sellers sighed and said, “We’ve tried to be cooperative.” But she was sensitive to criticism that the routes of letter carriers have not been adjusted to reflect explosive growth.

“We go through every route in every city and adjust them accordingly every year,” she said. “We do interim adjustments. I don’t know of any route that hasn’t shown a suitable adjustment. Our contract (with postal unions) mandates that we stick to certain guidelines. I certainly haven’t heard that we’re in violation of anything.”

Sellers acknowledged that dissension had recently plagued the El Cajon post office, at which she conducted a “quality circle” on Monday night. She said such meetings will occur periodically at postal outlets around the county as a way of tackling worker dissatisfaction head-on.

She said there were “rocky relations” in El Cajon because of a supervisor who has since been moved to a different job and is now on leave.

Worthy, of the letter carriers union, said workers in El Cajon had been critical of that city’s postmaster, John Caraveo, whose brother, Joe Caraveo, is Sellers’ boss and the head of the Western region. He said workers had been troubled since the July suicide of retiree William Camp, a mail carrier in El Cajon.

‘Gross Mismanagement’

“We think Margaret promoted John (to his position in El Cajon) to provide a cushion between herself and the region boss,” Worthy said. “They’ve been guilty of gross mismanagement in the El Cajon office.”

Reached at his office, John Caraveo refused to comment on Worthy’s criticisms and referred all questions to postal spokesman Cannone, who answered for Sellers.

“I deny those charges emphatically,” Cannone said. “ Gross mismanagement is a pretty big term.”

Sellers said she feels that the major source of stress among postal workers is the advent of automation. She called it “the challenge of a lifetime” and said it constitutes “a multimillion-dollar capital investment.” Postal workers are “threatened” by it, she said, because they fear it could render them useless, but she laughed when asked if any are in danger of losing their jobs.

“We have trouble keeping up with the load as it is,” she said.