Suitably Flip

USPS: Gluttons for Anthrax

When a letter burst open in a California mail processing center, emitting a cloud of mysterious white powder and revealing a menacing note inside, one intrepid insipid supervisor stepped up to handle the situation.

The employees claim a top supervisor at the Postal Service's facility responded to the Aug. 3 incident by testing the powder with her bare fingers before concluding it was flour and ordering employees back to work.
...
Post office protocol is clear in the aftermath of a deadly spate of anthrax attacks in late 2001. Supervisors are expected to immediately cordon off an area that comes into contact with suspicious material and contact off-site postal inspectors.

It's one thing to lock the door after the horse is out of the barn - after 9/11, we reinforced cockpit doors; after the London bombings, we started inspecting bags on subways (supposedly); after the jetliner bombing plot was thwarted, we banned airborne liquids.

But in this case, not only is the horse out of the barn, but we've gone to Home Depot and bought a really strong, really expensive barn lock, we stuck it on a shelf in the closet, and we resumed our nap, while horse poachers are lurking behind the hay bales waiting to nab more horses.

Okay, it's a tortured metaphor (especially since anthrax is found naturally in cows, not horses).  Still, the "This ain't sugar" method may look cool in cop movies, but it seems foolish when it comes to lethal biological weapons.

[A] handful of workers at the plant, which sorts about 4.5 million pieces of mail daily, are vehement in charging that supervisors jeopardized everyone's safety with a botched initial response.

Then, employees say, top brass at the 1,500-employee facility tried to sweep the incident under the rug.
...
"Management never said a thing after that day because they know they screwed up big time," Redmond said. "They downplayed the whole thing in hopes of nobody outside finding out about how they screwed up responding to something that could have been very serious."

Employees say protocol was ignored. They say inspectors were not initially called and that the order to reopen the area was given by the top supervisor within 30 minutes of the incident.

"We do have a very serious procedural path we follow when suspicious materials appear in the mail, particularly since the anthrax scare," Cannone said, adding that millions have been spent in installing anthrax detection technologies.

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USPS: Gluttons for Anthrax

When a letter burst open in a California mail processing center, emitting a cloud of mysterious white powder and revealing a menacing note inside, one intrepid insipid supervisor stepped up to handle the situation.

The employees claim a top supervisor at the Postal Service's facility responded to the Aug. 3 incident by testing the powder with her bare fingers before concluding it was flour and ordering employees back to work.
...
Post office protocol is clear in the aftermath of a deadly spate of anthrax attacks in late 2001. Supervisors are expected to immediately cordon off an area that comes into contact with suspicious material and contact off-site postal inspectors.

It's one thing to lock the door after the horse is out of the barn - after 9/11, we reinforced cockpit doors; after the London bombings, we started inspecting bags on subways (supposedly); after the jetliner bombing plot was thwarted, we banned airborne liquids.

But in this case, not only is the horse out of the barn, but we've gone to Home Depot and bought a really strong, really expensive barn lock, we stuck it on a shelf in the closet, and we resumed our nap, while horse poachers are lurking behind the hay bales waiting to nab more horses.

Okay, it's a tortured metaphor (especially since anthrax is found naturally in cows, not horses).  Still, the "This ain't sugar" method may look cool in cop movies, but it seems foolish when it comes to lethal biological weapons.

[A] handful of workers at the plant, which sorts about 4.5 million pieces of mail daily, are vehement in charging that supervisors jeopardized everyone's safety with a botched initial response.

Then, employees say, top brass at the 1,500-employee facility tried to sweep the incident under the rug.
...
"Management never said a thing after that day because they know they screwed up big time," Redmond said. "They downplayed the whole thing in hopes of nobody outside finding out about how they screwed up responding to something that could have been very serious."

Employees say protocol was ignored. They say inspectors were not initially called and that the order to reopen the area was given by the top supervisor within 30 minutes of the incident.

"We do have a very serious procedural path we follow when suspicious materials appear in the mail, particularly since the anthrax scare," Cannone said, adding that millions have been spent in installing anthrax detection technologies.