MailmanDave
17 Years Experience
Long Island, NY
Male, 43
I am a City Letter Carrier for the US Postal Service in NY. I've been a city letter carrier for over 17 years and it is the best job I've ever had. I mostly work 5 days per week (sometimes includes a Saturday) and often have the opportunity for overtime, which is usually voluntary. The route I deliver has about 350 homes and I walk to each of their doors to deliver the mail. Please keep in mind that I don't have authority to speak for the USPS, so all opinions are solely mine, not my employer.
A letter mailed on a Monday from CA to GA should be received in about 3 days. If there is severe weather or other transportation issues that keep the mail from moving, its possible it could take longer. I wouldn't be too concerned that the Easter Card hasn't arrived. I hope it will arrive in a couple of more days.
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It is possible you've been lied to as your name suggests which I find to be very bad. Unfortunately I can't confirm if this is the case or not. I don't know of any rules either way as to why the postman would automatically return any mail that doesn't have the hostels name included in the address. It is pretty common for people to receive mail or packages at a hotel or some type of short-term stay facility. A woman who I work next to has a Comfort Inn that is part of her delivery route. I'm pretty sure she delivers any mail with the hotel's street address on it. It's then up to the hotel to notify the recipient that mail has arrived and then return any mail which may be for someone who is no longer there. I think that the letter carrier will accept any returned mail from the hotel and mark it "refused" or "attempted, not known" and it should go back to the sender. You ask "is this possible?" It certainly is possible as nothing surprises me about what happens at the USPS because the consistency of service among the employees and offices is not good in my opinion. I think we should deliver the mail as addressed (especially to a hotel, hostel, Airbnb, etc) and not worry about the names on the mail and let the receiving office decide whether to keep it, return it, or discard. Individual mail cannot be forwarded from a hotel or any business. In the future, if you want something mailed to a hostel, I'd recommend putting both your name and the name of the property you are staying at.
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As much as I hate hearing stories like this I know it all too much to be true. We have many employees who don't care about delivering mail properly or accurately or have an attitude. Unfortunately I don't know how effective complaining about a letter carrier is. Our management often is indifferent or powerless to effect major changes in someone's work ethic. I know this sounds damning of many co-workers but I just get that feeling at times. I don't mean to sidestep your question but wanted to explain that none of this surprises me. I'd start by contacting your local post office and ask to speak with a delivery supervisor or manager. Tell them your story but don't exaggerate it. If your service continues to be poor or you don't think you're getting mail that you're supposed to or that items you mailed aren't getting to their destination, I suppose the next step would be to contact the USPS Consumer Affairs division. I honestly don't know how effective any of this is, but worth a try. Hopefully I'm wrong in the not-so-rosy picture I painted. If you visit www.usps.com maybe there will be information on how to contact your local PO with a complaint because it's not always so easy to find the phone number of your local PO. Linda, thank you for your question.
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I think many letter carriers would just leave it because they may notice right away that there is no address on it or stamp. I can't speak for all letter carriers because there are many of us who don't pay attention and just take what's in the mailbox as outgoing mail. I don't think this good for them to do but some of my co-workers are clueless or are possibly paying attention to their smart phone vs. paying attention to the task at hand. To be honest, the mailbox should only be used for US Mail. My advice would be to not leave this letter in someone's mailbox to guard against the above scenario happening. To sum up my answer in one word: maybe.
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I don't know much about transferring between locations as I've never tried myself but I've seen it done quite a bit both into and out of my office. I believe you need to be off probation and maybe worked for a certain amt of time before being eligible to transfer. Also, whether or not a transfer is granted could depend on the staffing levels of the office you'd be leaving and/or the one you are requesting to transfer to. Usually transfers result in you losing local seniority so you go to the bottom of the list for carries as far as vacation requests and work assignment choices. With regards to your other questions, I'd never call anyone one slaves at the USPS? If you are implying the CCAs have to cover the routes for call offs, it depends on the managements and the staffing needs. As a regular carrier I usually fill in to do parts of routes that need coverage on any particular day and will be paid overtime to do this after finishing my own route. So when you say slave nobody is being forced to do this job. In my particular post office the staffing is perpetually not that good so both the CCA (of which we have very few) and the regular letter carriers fill in as needed. One main difference is that as a regular letter carrier you would rarely be forced to do overtime work if you choose not to and are not on the OTDL (overtime desired list).
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Cathy, in my opinion that is a tricky situation. I think it technically can be up to the carrier to decide whether or not they feel safe delivering mail to the house with the dog or not. On the flip side, I encounter that situation a couple of times per day and don't think twice about delivering to houses where I know the storm door is latched and strong enough to contain the dog. This is coming from a carrier (me) who isn't too comfortable with dogs overall and have never owned one. It is a very rare situation (almost zero) that I've refused to deliver mail to a house with a dog inside the front door. If the door looks a bit ajar I might put my foot by the front door while delivering the mail. I'm not sure any of this helps. I think the basic mantra is if we don't feel comfortable delivering to a house we don't have to. It seems a bit too gray though because someone could take that to an extreme. I feel it's always easier to deliver the mail then to have to bring it back and then attempt 2x the amount on the next delivery day.
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I believe I have been asked this exact same question before with the same wording on this website. Anyhow, if this happened, I'd proceed with caution. When I felt it was safe to do so, I'd park the vehicle and walk around it to make sure everything looked okay. If I was in an unsafe area, I may think that it's some kind of setup to get my vehicle to stop and I'd just keep driving. Your scenario doesn't seem like it would happen very often and I don't usually pay attention to the actual other motorists gestures. I have driven a few times without the back tailgate being properly latched down which could make for a hazardous situation. I probably would be glad if someone had pointed that out to me.
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