Nah, as someone who has worked both union and non-union jobs, there have been plenty of times I've had to just suck up abuse, and it's ok by me if a union worker wants to give someone a hard time for abusive behavior. It's like free education provided by the government!

It honestly depends. Sometimes humans do things in the heat of the moment. But the fact that she delayed her time to look for the postmaster might’ve seemed childish to you, but the customer, who couldn’t even wait for a couple of minutes to get their mail, in my opinion, is much More childish.

I probably would not have behaved that way if I were the employee, but the postmaster wasn't there anyway. The customer would have waited the same amount of time if he had insisted on speaking with the postmaster even if he wasn't there. And judging by the attitude of the customer, I am not even sure if he actually would have believed the employee when she told him that he wasn't there. The entire situation sucked, and if the customer was having a bad day, then so was the injured employee. And as a disabled person who dreads having to stand in line to pick up something from the post office because it is painful for me to stand for any length of time, I would not consider a whole THREE minutes to be a long time!

While you have a point, it also keeps you from having to put up with abuse from your supervisors/managers. In a non-union workplace you just have to put up with everything or risk getting fired. The really great thing about unions is that they set BOUNDARIES.

It's not only the union, it's also the monopolies the USPS has on certain services, and don't forget, a postmaster who has his people's back.