For the last four years, Janet Norfleet may have been one of the most glared-at women in the city.
Since 1987, a black-and-white portrait of Norfleet has gazed beneficently upon patrons chafing in line to buy stamps or mail packages at Chicago post offices.
Norfleet retired as Chicago`s field division general manger/postmaster in December. (Her replacement hasn`t been announced.) The lifelong Chicagoan had risen in 32 years from being a substitute mail sorter who worked the midnight shift to overseeing the administration of more than 18,000 employees and a budget of $770 million.
Norfleet, 57, dresses in bright colors and is solidly upbeat and plainspoken. She talks more like a coach than a former clerk. More humorous and thoughtful than the anecdotal drab postal bureaucrat, she says she retired so the newspapers wouldn`t print a headline announcing, ”Postmaster dies.”
And contrary to what impatient customers may think, she believes the U.S. Postal Service does a fine job.
She takes jokes about sluggish postal clerks with good cheer, but she says one of the problems she struggled with during her tenure as postmaster was employees` low self-esteem.
To deal with it, she had the dingy 3.2-million-square-foot downtown postal office cleaned and brightened, landscaped its surroundings and started sending newsletters and words of encouragement to the employees at their homes. The employees called her ”coach.” Today, when she passes a mail truck or an employee on the expressway, she invariably gets a honk or a wave.
Under her leadership, the city`s postal district rose from last to first in an internal ranking of the 15 Midwestern postal districts conducted annually by the Postal Service. The ranking is based on financial performance, employee productivity and service.
”One thing I tried to instill in the employees was to never hold back on saying they work for the post office,” she said. ”I told them, `You ought to be proud of that. You work for the finest organization in the world.` ”
Norfleet grew up near 31st Street and King Drive, in an area that has been demolished and rebuilt since she was a child. The only building left standing from the earlier days is her church, she says.
Norfleet took her first job in the post office simply because she needed work. She took the test and was hired two weeks later-a relatively short wait because her score was high. She was put to work sorting mail manually in the basement of the same building where she eventually worked as postmaster.
She worked the midnight shift for six years and finally became a supervisor in 1971. During the 1970s, she watched as the post office become automated, and then computerized. Later, she worked in the post office`s customer relations office, dealing primarily with large, institutional and corporate mailers in the Chicago area.
In the 1980s, Norfleet was picked to manage the north suburban postal region; then she was moved to the south suburban district headquartered in Bedford Park. She was at that office when the Postal Service asked her to take over the Chicago post. She turned the job down twice before agreeing to become Chicago`s 39th postmaster, and the first woman to hold the job.
”I preferred to stay in the suburban area because we were doing so well. We were ranked No. 2, and I believe in a winning team.”
Instead, she took over the helm of the beleaguered Chicago office.
Among the problems were high employee absenteeism and severe over-budget problems. Within a year, the office had moved from 15th to 9th in the Midwest region; by 1988, it was first.
Norfleet said she succeeded mainly by listening to her employees.
”I think the most important thing in a bad situation like that is communicating with the employees, telling them how things are going to change and why,” she said.
”In most corporations, because you (as an executive) have the power, maybe you say you`re just going to do this or that. Well, you may have the power, but isn`t it simpler to go in and tell the employees why you`re making the change? Just because you have a higher position doesn`t mean you`re any better than the lowest on the ladder, who also has a responsibility and a job to do.
”When I got to the (postmaster) job, morale was low. But how can people accomplish goals if they don`t know what the goals are? If you don`t have any idea what is expected of you tomorrow, how do you do a good job?
”I talked to them. I don`t use elephant words. I try to communicate openly so people understand that I`m very goal-oriented and that we can`t afford to make mistakes. I mailed the district rankings directly to each of their (employees`) homes. And I think the goals I had became imbedded in their minds.”
In revamping the office, Norfleet said, she did not fire anyone. She spent 12-to-14-hour days traveling to stations around the division as well as visiting with the 8,000 employees within the cavernous postal building that straddles the Eisenhower Expressway at 433 W. Van Buren St. Postal employees got especially worried in `89, she recalled, when the idea of privatizing the Postal Service was being bandied about. Norfleet had to calm their fears. She thought the proposition a bad idea.
”We have the cheapest rate system in the world,” she said. ”We are a kind of society that doesn`t know a bird in the hand is worth nine in the bush. This is a beautiful means of communication for all people. If it were privatized, what you and I would have to pay to send a letter would be ridiculous.”
Norfleet said she was struck anew by the importance of the mail just before she retired. She was visiting one of the postal stations, making sure that all the mail trucks were off the street by 3:30 p.m., when she noticed an elderly man waiting outside his house. As she walked past, he asked if she had seen the mail carrier.
”I told him I was the postmaster and that I was looking for the mail carrier, too. He shook my hand then said, `It`s 20 to 4, and my wife and I are waiting for our checks so we can cash them at the bank before 5.` Then it dawned on me that it was Social Security day and he was waiting for his check. ”So I walked a few more blocks and sure enough, the carrier delivering the mail that day wasn`t the regular carrier. I went up to him and told him to put a little pep in his step, because people were waiting. And when I walked back to the car, it really hit me how important that carrier is. Here was a man waiting for him, maybe so he could eat that night. We take these things for granted. We don`t live from check to check.
”I loved that. It was like God showing me how important the organization is to people all over. I always told the carriers how important they were. Here`s some elderly person and here comes a card of cheer or a check. You bring hope to them. Sometimes, you`re the only person they see all day.”
Norfleet calls her success within the Postal Service ”a Cinderella story.” When she first arrived at the post office, ”the opportunities were not there for blacks and women,” she said. But she found a mentor in the late Fletcher Acord, former regional postmaster who appointed her to her first managerial posts.
Despite the lack of early opportunities, Norfleet said she never experienced discrimination in any of her jobs. ”If there was discrimination, they never showed it,” she said. ”I had an almost completely male top staff, and I couldn`t have asked for better respect.”
Norfleet said she got her persevering habits from her parents, who she described as ”common people, just beautiful people, who brought us up with a lot of common sense.”
Her father supported the family of five children on wages from his job as a wringer man in a laundry. ”When I graduated from grammar school, I had him sign my autograph book, and instead of writing about roses are red, he wrote: `Be determined and true. Those are the ones that are found at the top.` My father`s been dead some years now, but I still think about that.”
Norfleet, who has a grown son and is a grandmother, said her husband, Junious, who she met at church, was supportive throughout her career. ”I call him my rock,” she said. ”I`d get tired and he`d lift my spirits. I was very fortunate. If your mate is not supportive, it can cause a lot of problems. We are used to a man being in the position of overseeing millions of dollars and the woman sitting back and encouraging, but in my case my husband gave me a lot of support.”
Norfleet took her husband by surprise when she decided to retire. ”He didn`t think I`d do it,” she said. She decided to leave when she saw that the Chicago postal district had been ranked No. 1 in the Midwest region for the second year in a row in November.
”I said to myself, I`m going to leave while I`m on top,” she said.
”They`re a team now. All they have to do is maintain. What better way to go?”
Norfleet is keeping her options for the future open. During her tenure as postmaster, she often gave speeches to church and community groups, working to upgrade the image of the U.S. mail and motivate people as well. She thinks she might do more motivational speaking.
”People tell me all the time that I motivate them,” she said. ”People need to feel better about themselves, to feel that, yes, they can do it. First you think highly of yourself; then you accelerate. I think the entire country needs the quality of excellence that people get when they strive to do things right the first time. Once we start acting with that type of integrity, everything else will follow.”
In the meantime, however, Norfleet is reveling in the fact that for the first time in more than two decades she doesn`t have to get up at 5:30 a.m. on weekdays. On her first Monday off, she slept until 9:30 a.m., when the phone rang. ”I love the idea of `Postmaster retires` as a headline,” she said.
”But I believe that God has something else for me to do. I say, here I am;
use me.”
