Your team needs to unload a large delivery truck within a tight two-hour window. One coworker appears to be working much more slowly than expected. How do you handle this?

This scenario tests TEAMWORK, COMMUNICATION, and PROFESSIONALISM — core competencies for mail handler roles. The best approach BALANCES several competing priorities:

Maintaining team performance: unloading within the deadline is a legitimate business need and your team's responsibility.

Peer support: the coworker may be struggling with something legitimate — an injury, illness, confusion about the task, or a personal issue; a brief check-in shows team orientation and may identify a fixable problem.

Maintaining your own performance: don't slow your own pace to match a slower worker — your job is to maintain your best safe effort.

Appropriate escalation: if the team is genuinely at risk of missing the deadline, the supervisor needs to know so they can provide additional resources, adjust expectations, or reassign tasks — this is information management needs; avoiding escalation that could embarrass or punish a struggling coworker unnecessarily.

What not to do: immediately escalate to supervisor with accusations ('they're being lazy') — you don't know why they're slow; this is not teamwork and may be inaccurate; slow your own pace — this hurts the team and doesn't solve the problem; work in complete isolation without communicating — mail handling is a team environment; communication is essential.

Vea principle: USPS values workers who support team success, communicate appropriately, maintain their own performance, and know when to involve supervision — not workers who either ignore problems or rush to report coworkers.