Misuse of Time

• A Postal Service employee must use official time in an honest effort to perform postal duties.
• You may not use official time to perform work for an outside employer, even if such work would take a small amount of time
• You may not ask a subordinate employee to use official time to perform any activities other than postal work.

Giving the Postal Service an honest day’s work for a day’s pay contributes to our productivity and the bottom line.

And that’s smart business.

Contact the Ethics Office (ethics.help@usps.gov) for more guidance.

To Solicit or Not to Solicit

As a USPS employee, you can’t request or accept free lunches, massages or any other type of donation from local businesses for any purpose! Not even for employee appreciation days, Post Office dedication ceremonies or Postmaster installations.

Why? It violates the gifts from outside sources regulations. Accepting donations from a local business also can create the appearance to the public that the Postal Service endorses the outside business. The same goes for allowing a business on postal property to peddle its wares.

Declining donations from local businesses is not only the law, it’s also smart business!