Staff and traits
You hire from the Staff tab once a town road is connected. Floor clerks and carriers can be union or contractor. Managers, the postmaster, janitors, and maintenance are outside both unions.
Roles
| Role | What they do |
|---|---|
| Clerk | Sorts, runs the counter, passport, and cage window, and can haul. A licensed clerk on a day or split shift can also run an express van. |
| Carrier | Cases mail and walks or drives a street route. Carriers are day shift only. |
| Postmaster | Unique. A facility-wide supervisor. Does not touch mail. |
| Clerk Manager, Carrier Manager, Facilities Manager | Supervise their craft. They do not sort, case, or haul mail themselves. Facilities Manager covers janitors and maintenance. |
| Janitor | Fire, dirt, ash, and burst-pipe puddles. Not equipment repair. |
| Maintenance | Installs what you painted and fully repairs worn gear. See Durability and repair. |
Postal Inspector, Firefighter, and Bomb Squad are not hire-menu roles. You do not hire a Clerk Union Boss or a Carrier Union Boss. Those seats are elected.
Base daily pay in the wage table: clerk 80, carrier 90, janitor 60, maintenance 75, facilities manager 130, clerk manager 140, carrier manager 150, postmaster 220. Union floor staff are paid 1.15 times the craft base. Contractors are paid 0.7 times. The HUD shows that in your currency. Overtime hours use the overtime wage multiplier. Sunday is always off. The postmaster also has Saturday off. Union floor staff may pick one extra unpaid day off. Split shifts are for contractors, not union clerks.
Needs
Needs can be turned off in sandbox settings. The meters are bladder, hunger, fatigue (there is no separate energy bar), stress, morale, darkness, and cleanliness. Smokers also have nicotine.
Ignored needs slow work, down to 0.15 past a collapse at 90. A forced unmet need that is not yet on break caps speed at 0.70. Soft seek starts at 50, forced at 70. Toilets need privacy: alone in a wall-and-door stall. A 1 by 1 stall with a door is enough. Hunger, fatigue, and stress recover in the break room. Smoking never uses the break room.
Traits
New hires roll 1 to 4 traits. Each extra slot has a 0.55 chance to fill. Some traits are union-only, clerk-only, or carrier-only. Salaried staff do not roll mail-handling traits.
The full set in the trait list: Speedy, Sloppy, Night Owl, Union Firebrand, Soft Hands, Meticulous, Chatty, Loner, Early Bird, Caffeine Fiend, Pack Mule, Fragile, Cheerful, Grumpy, Neat Freak, Lazy, Workaholic, Sticky Fingers (rumor), Route Rat, Desk Jockey, Driver's license, Clumsy, Handy. The lines below are the ones this page is here to explain. The others apply the stat weights stored with that trait (speed, accuracy, night shift, and so on) and are not re-listed number by number.
Clumsy
Breaks fixtures and machines faster when using them. Wear from each use is multiplied by 2.75. That covers stations, props, coffee, and doors.
Handy
When idle or on break, patches nearby broken fixtures just enough to work. Slower than Maintenance.
- Any role except Maintenance can patch. Maintenance staff do the full repair job instead.
- Patch speed is 8 per second, and it stops at durability 31 (one point above the broken line). The object works again. It is not restored to 100.
- Idle patch looks within 320 pixels and repairs within 96. The person must be on duty, idle, not pathing, not player-controlled, not due at the time clock, and not in an urgent toilet emergency.
- On a rest or coffee break the search is 160 pixels. Smoke breaks and other break kinds do not patch.
Smokers
Smoker is not a trait id. It is a separate hire flag, with a 0.35 chance. The in-game label is Smoker: they need a smoke break when nicotine runs low.
Nicotine is a comfort meter from 0 to 100 (100 is satisfied). Urge is 100 minus nicotine, on the same 50 / 70 bands as other needs. It falls by 0.7 per second while working and 0.3 while idle, and it only rises in a Smoke Area. Smokers reserve one side of an ash tray (north, east, south, or west) or queue beside the zone. They do not fall back to the break room. A smoke break is held for 2.8 seconds and nicotine climbs by 14.5 per second during it, plus the zone's own ash-tray gain while they stand on the reserved slot.
Coffee drinking and liking overtime are the same kind of soft habit, not trait ids.
Unions and the five-member rule
There are two bargaining units: the clerk union and the carrier union. Janitors, maintenance, and managers are outside both. The player is management (the postmaster). Hire never grants a boss seat.
Each craft elects one boss once it has at least 5 eligible members and nobody is already seated. Five is enough. The crafts do not share a count.
An eligible member is a union clerk or union carrier of that craft (not a contractor), not an emergency unit. Off duty still counts toward the five. Voters walk to a spaced ring in a break room, not a pile on one tile. The election break is 2.5 seconds with the attendable members in the room. The winner is the highest performance score, then the earlier hire day, then the name.
The boss keeps the clerk or carrier job and gains the title Clerk Union Boss or Carrier Union Boss. They still handle mail. They also give their craft a facility-wide morale bonus of 0.2. While relations are under 100 and a boss is seated, relations rise by 0.35 per second, or 1.4 times that if both crafts have a boss.
If membership later drops under 5, the boss stays. The seat ends when that person leaves the roster.
There are no union dues in the game.
Relations, work-to-rule, and strike
Relations under 50 is work-to-rule: union floor staff work at 0.55 speed. Relations under 25 is a strike: the same people keep working, at 0.40 speed. They do not walk out. Managers, the postmaster, janitors, and contractors are not slowed by the strike.
A seated boss (either craft) can file a facility grievance about break coverage. Refusing it hits relations. A person's own schedule grievance is separate: an angry reaction to an HR edit of shift, days off, or duty preference reverts the terms and locks them for 2 days, and it does not need a steward.
Customer walkouts (someone leaving the lobby unhappy) are a different counter. Staff do not have a walkout action.