7/10/24 – Wednesday “Wendy” Johnson was 51 years old when she died at Cape Fear Valley Hospital in June.
Family members said her death was heat-related and she began to feel weary on a hot day while working her job with the U.S. Postal Service. Johnson, who lived in Sanford, worked for the service for more than 20 years.
Weeks later, her children are still grieving and absorbing the shock from their sudden loss on June 6.
“When I would think of my mom, I would think of my own community because I didn’t need nobody else but her,” said daughter Sa’ni Johnson.
Her son, Deandre Johnson, said Wendy was riding in the back of a postal truck on a 95-degree day. Wendy worked as a supervisor and would sometimes help with deliveries. On this day, she began to have complications.
Postal workers said she was eventually found unconscious in the bathroom of a Fayetteville post office on Raeford Road. She was a supervisor at the post office on Southern Avenue.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is investigating the death as heat-related.
The vehicles used by the office do not have air conditioning. One postal worker who didn’t want to be on camera said they call the postal trucks “easy bake ovens.” Read full article at WRAL.
They pick the summer months to do there “ evaluation “because they know that’s when we get less mail, so that way they can comeback and tell us that our route is under. If they go out with us in the fall when mail volume increases they can’t say that our routes are under anymore quite the contrary that is over.
Thanks. They have been doing that for years and years. I retired in 2007 after 35 years and they did that same thing almost my entire career. Rick @ PEN
As a postal carrier, I fully expect this to become a “flavor of the month rule” that is enforced for 3-6 months before it is forgotten, as are many rules and procedures. The internal rumors going around our own spaces are that the supervisor was doing a ridealong (implying they were not delivering mail).
Management frequently gives us boiler plate advice on how to not die of hot, while simultaneously pressuring us to meet tighter and tighter deadlines on our work. “Don’t die and be back in 8 hours.”
My managers weren’t there for it, so it doesn’t matter to them. It’s just an order to have a standup talk about it coming from upper management. They’ll pass out bottles of water like that will justify being assholes to us.
The people who don’t want power and/or authority are the people most suited to having it. The majority of our managers got there because they wanted it.
Very sorry for a loss of a life but after a 31 yr career as a 2 ton truck driver mostly in downtown Boston where temperatures would reach 120 % plus in the middle of the summer the bigger issue I have is HOW can a member of mgmt be delivering mail ?
also, the USPS upper level managers madndate that during the summer months that supervisors ride the routes during the summer months to prepare for evaluations. Supervisors are not acclimated to those temperatures in those environments adding the additional heat from the LLVs only make it worse. These issues have been reported consistently, but they mandate this insane order. there are 8 other months routes could be rode, but they wait until the summer to punish them.