|
|
|
Cliffe Browning's U.S.P.S. Career While in Brownwood working for Higginbotham Bros. & Co. as Sales and Draftsman Cliffe was called for an interview at the Brownwood Police Department and the Ft. Worth Post Office with-in a week of each other. Both presented a acceptance of employment, now came decision time. Stay in Brownwood and wear a pistol and a badge (not many bad guys but always the chance), or move the family to Ft. Worth and carry mail (consider the dogs - but would have pepper spray). After talking it over with Regina (kids were too young to know which) it was decided "Ft. Worth here we come". March 10, 1968 Cliffe began his career with the United States Postal Service, Ft Worth Office. Went through a week of training with a trainer over his shoulder all the time. In South Ft Worth mail trucks collected mail and dropped off mail to green boxes for the carrier - it was all walking. Bus to and from the route or at least within a few blocks of the route. Then it was time to go out on a route all alone, great! That morning the last winter rain decided to move in, rained all day, and cold. The rain coat turned out to not be a rain coat but a non-weather proof non water-proof trench coat. Keeping the mail dry was a chore but the leather pouch was designed for such a thing. By the end of the extra long day, soaked from head to toe, and with many thoughts of checking it to them, the route was finished. Busses were running every 45 min and the last one had just gone past. In Cliffe's head thoughts of how to word his resignation were turning over and over. Once on the warm bus, and the 20 min ride back to the Post Office, the comfort and warmth also warmed the spirit and soon thoughts of quitting were a distant memory. For almost 2 years Cliffe carried the mail in the South part of Ft Worth from the Main Office then moved to the Polytectnic area where they had motorized routes as well as walking routes. After nearly 3 years there (and only one dog bite from a toy poodle) Cliffe entered the supervisory training program and went back to the Main Office Mail Processing December 1, 1976. Now there was a culture shock, going from delivery to processing and at the beginning of the heaviest mail volume season of the year. Promoted to Supervisor October 1973. Working on Tour III (2:45 pm to 11:15 pm) supervising the Bulk mail processing area first part of the work day and moved over to First Class for the second half -flats area (flats are the manila size envelopes). During the next 2 years Cliffe supervised all manual and mechanized areas. In 1975 was promoted to Multiple Position Letter Sorting Machine (MPLSM) Supervisor and was asssigned to MPLSM Crew working from 6:00 pm to 2:30 am. May 2, 1981 Cliff was promoted to General Supervisor and assigned to Tour I (10:45 pm to 6:15 am). and eventually moved back to Tour III as General Supervisor. Automation was starting up in the Ft Worth Office early in 1985 and testing was being done on a new Optical Character Reader (OCR) It was a bulky thing and jammed more than it processed mail. It would only run standard size letters and if one was a little off it would stop. It only lasted a couple of months when E-systems, and Burroughs each designed a state of the art OCR and Hewett Packard and Pitney Bowles had developed a Bar Code Sorter (BCS). Two of these machines, an OCR and a BCS, working together with 4 people could process as much mail as a MPLSM with 16 people. Ft Worth received two Burroughs OCRs and two HP BCSs in November 1985. Cliffe was was promoted to Automation Coordinator Jan.2, 1986. The Mail Condition Reporting System (MCRS) was started around the time the first Automation was being tested. Originally the information was input on a DEC Writer; one character too many or too few or out of place and the entire report had to be redone - real head ache. Ft. Worth didn't run it until Automation was put in the Office. It was a rough system and basically reported the numbers to the National Office and took about 2 hours to pull a usable report at the Regional or Local level. At the time Cliffe had no idea how that rough reporting system would effect his career. He began trying to design a program using c-basic to input and capture the information locally, on a small portable computer (about 3/4 the size of today's desk top). and print out a report that could be used to input the information on the MCRS. Then Ft Worth received a Flat Sorting Machine which was placed under the Automation purview. The program had to be modified to accept that. In Feb of 1986 the MCRS was upgraded based on the program Cliffe wrote and was now on an IBM computer. Local reports could be exracted from the IBM but Headquarters and Regional Office still had to down load and build the report manually using a Lotus spread sheet June 1986 Mail Processing started moving to a new facility across town.. The first equipment and personnel to be moved was the Automation and the Flat Sorting Machine. An additional BCS and flat sorter were installed in the new building and Cliffe with three supervisors, 18 workers and 7 machines moved to the new building. Mail was culled and cancelled at the old office and trucked to the new building. The Automation and FSMs would sort it and dispatch it back to the Old office to be sent on it's way. Next to arrive were the dumping and culling machines - state of the art equipment all new. Six MPLSMs were then accessed from other offices and moved in. The old MPLSMs (4) were reconditioned and sent to other offices. Over one week end all the manual cases were brought in and set up and the rest of the processing team started early Monday. Over all it took three weeks to completely move Ft. Worth Mail Processing to the new building. Cliffe kept the road hot going from one site to another. Working all three tours and coordinating the equipment move. In 1987 Cliffe talked the Computer Systems Manager to let him work on the WANG area computer system. After much convincing it was allowed and Cliff proceeded to write an attendance program and set up several automatic daily forms programs mail entry point reporting. The attendance program, with many rewrites from COBOL to MS-Basic, to Visual Basic to Web application ASP, was used over the years until after his retirement and is still presently used in the Ft. Worth Office under the Visual Basic application. In May of 1988 a team from Headquarters came to look at the Ft. Worth operation. During the time they were here they were interested in the OCR's and BCS's - by now Ft Worth had two E-System OCRs as well as the Burroughs and added two more BCSs. The leader of the team asked Cliffe if he might be interested in working with the Headquarters project the Distribution Information System housed in Kansas City. Thinking nothing of it Cliffe said it sounded interesting. A month later June 2, 1988 he was called to come to Kansas City for an interview. The following Monday Cliffe was commuting from Ft. Worth to Kansas City for the next nine months. During that year I traveled from coast to coast setting up a national Automation tracking system. Two by two our six member Distribution Information Systems (DIS) team covered the nation. before I did By January of 1989 the DIS project had developed a Mail Tracking System , Automatic scheme loading for OCRs and BCSs from a national data base, based on density which was calculated from a DIS program, Delivery Point Sorting on the automation Machines. Mail Volume and employee tracking to plan ahead personnel movement to be in place when the mail arrived. Cliffe was instrumental in decoding the OCR and FSM memory banks to be able to set up the automatic scheme download. The DIS project was scheduled to be closed out by May of 1988. Feb 22, 1989 Cliffe filled out an application for a Regional Office position with a closing date of March 10, 1989 and sent it to Ft. Worth for the Tour Superintendent to evaluate and send to the Regional office. He sat on the application and didn't send it until the week after the job request had closed. Cliffe figured that was a lost cause. Tuesday March 14, 1989, Cliff flew from Kansas City to St. Louis to set up the DIS project in the St. Louis Post Office when he received word to report for an interview in Memphis on Wednesday the 15th. Cliffe had to fly to Memphis for the interview at 1:30 pm. and after the interview he flew back to St Louis, finished the install and returned home. - By then he had put the Southern Region out of his mind and never expected to get it due to the high competition . Monday when Cliffe walked into the Kansas City project headquarters everyone congratulated him. Everyone knew he had the job before he did. Reenter the Mail Condition Reporting System (MCRS). Cliffe's first assignment when he started working as Operations Systems Analysis (OSA) in the USPS Southern Region Office was to streamline the MCRS reports. The person who had been dong it took about 4 to 5 hours to get the information in its raw reporting form on papper, and enter it manually into a spread sheet. Working with the then San Bruno main frame technicians and one of their programmers Cliffe found that he had to learn another programming language called FOCUS - Being well versed in Basic, C-Basic, MS-Basic, Cobal, Fortran Pascal, and some C, learning the new language came easy. Jumping in with both feet (which tends to get you in over our head) he started tackling the MCRS data base. The programmer told Cliffe that a Sam Mateo OSA had been inquiring about the same thing just that week. They got on a conference call and started comparing notes and developing a system to down load the information rather than simply getting a printed report. Someone from Headquarters heard about what was going on and contacted both of them to see how the programming was working and set up a meeting in Foster City California. At that meeting representatives from all four Regions were invited. Matt and Cliff explained to them how the program worked and how the data could be brought into a spreadsheet without manually inputting it. This began the National Mail Condition Reporting System Group. Cliff continued to work with the reporting and eventually wrote several macros in the spreadsheet that would take the downloaded information and enter it into the spreadsheet then print out a customized report. MCRS reporting time went from 4 hours to 45 minutes and most of that was getting the offices to report on time and checking the figures to make sure there were no input errors From that report Cliffe could see what each of the Mail Processing Offices in the Southern Region were doing and where they were failing. He was responsible for seeing that each office with problems were contacted and remedies reported on how to correct the problem. If an office failed three days in a row Cliffe was responsible for getting a team together and investigating the office to find out the source of the problem. The Mail Condition Reporting grew nation wide. Enter "Carving" Marvin Runyon, Postmaster General, May 1992 - . Reorganization hit the fan in August, no one knew if they had a job or if they did where they would go. Mega high stress time. Regina had had a heart attack a little over a year before ( see http://www.halieus.net/Wake_up.htm) and the stress was showing up on her big time. Mid August Cliffe's boss was sent to Dallas to take reigns of the Mail Processing division of the new Area Office established there. The four Regional Offices were effectively shut down except for reorganization support. Mid September,. no one was for sure what was going to happen. Thursday around 4:30 PM just as Cliffe was ending the day, he received a call from his old boss. "Be in Dallas Monday morning". Only two of his boss' former staff of 9 were brought with him the other one had gone to Dallas two weeks before, so Cliffe did not imagine he would be called . Cliffe called home, Regina was still at the Church where she ran the food closet every Thursday. He wouldn't normally get to see her until around 6:30.pm, since he road the bus. When Cliffe got home, Regina still wasn't there. He called the church - she had left 15 min before. Of all days she decided to stop off at the store to pick up supper. When she walked in the door Cliffe asked her if she was packed yet? ....."WHAT!!! MONDAY!!!! HOW?!!!" - Cliffe packed up his office Friday and shipped equipment and files out Express Mail. Saturday Cliffe and Regina packed clothes enough for two weeks and flew to Dallas Sunday right after Church and lunch.
Cliffe's job became permanent while he was in the hospital and they began planning the final move from Memphis. Three months later Cliffe and Regina bought a house in De Soto with move in date of April 1. On the way with Graybel movers behind them - well one week behind - they were home but no furniture. After reorganization there were 9 Areas origonally established with representatives from each in the MCRS Group. .Cliffe was a key player on the National Mail Condition Reporting System Group from the 4 Regional offices to the original 9 Area Offices and finally to what is now 11 Area Offices. The MCRS Group made policy, standardized reports, rewrote reporting items, standardized reporting information by meeting once a quarter. By 1997 Cliffe had put his Attendance Reporting System on the Intranet for use by any office who wanted to use it. Employee data was automatically downloaded every two weeks and attendance records could be either downloaded on demand or manually input. From this application the National MCRS Group was convinced that this would be the way to go with the MCRS. Cliff wrote a prototype and presented it to the Group it was accepted with changes and by September of 1999 the MCRS was set up on the Internet. Cliffe worked for the USPS Southwest Area Office until he retired effective December 31, 1999. He still consults with them on some programs that they are still using that he wrote.
|