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.
Okay, I believe it. The contract is only as good as the mgmt and the workforce and shop stewards agree to enforce it. I see things that happen in my office which may not be the correct thing if the contract were followed to the letter, but they seem like rational solutions. It's a tricky balance in our office due to chronic short staffing and incompetence of both supervisors and coworkers. Some workers are very dedicated and do the job well. They don't need to be superstars. Others seem to purposefully work against the system and try to make everything as difficult and slow and crappy as possible. They often tend to the loudest, least mature, and least educated.
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I think it would be great if you scored well on any exams you take for employment with the USPS. Many new hires today are hired as CCA (city carrier assistant) which is a letter carrier position. I think you apply for certain positions so you may have a choice to be a CCA or PSE (Postal Support Employee). A PSE is a position where you generally work inside doing mail processing, distribution, or retail sales and service. Most, if not all, of the letter carriers who I work with were hired as carriers first. I don't, however, have any more insight to the hiring practices except what I posted here. I know I'd always like to see motivated and competent individuals hired by the USPS.
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The letter carrier shouldn't be putting your former neighbors mail in your mailbox just because they moved out without putting in a forwarding request. After all, it's not your mail and you have nothing to do with it. After awhile, the letter carrier should empty the mailbox, discard any standard mail (advertising mail of a certain class) and return any first and second class mail as "unable to forward" to the sender. At the PO, that address or unit should be marked as "vacant" so no mail is left there unless a new tenant or homeowner moves in. We shouldn't be delivering mail to addresses known to be vacant. You may leave a note note mailbox saying something to the effect "please don't leave any mail for (insert your neighbors name and/or address) in my mailbox. Thank you." If that doesn't work, you may contact your post office and mention this to a manager or delivery supervisor. From what you've described , the letter carrier(s) serving your area is quite unprofessional and doesn't care to address the issue of the mailbox overflowing.
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Great question John. There are 2 main answers I can think of as to why you don't see letter carriers in uniform anymore. 1) There are many CCAs hired. These are non-career employees who generally don't get uniforms or a uniform allowance during the first few months of employment. CCA stands for City Carrier Assistant and are very common in urban areas that may have more turnover than suburban offices. 2) Some regular full-time letter carriers don't choose to wear a proper uniform (or any uniform at all) and the management doesn't enforce the uniform policy. In my opinion, everyone who is eligible to wear a uniform should do so and do it proudly. I wear my proper uniform daily where the one flaw would be is that they aren't too clean because it's hard to get some of the shoulder stains out from wearing a mail satchel and sweating a lot. I guess some workers don't care about looking professional and the management does nothing about it, my office included. Thanks for bringing up a good point.
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As long as you've passed the 90-day probationary period, you'd be eligible to become a career employee once a position becomes available. They usually convert CCA to Regular "career" employees in the order which the CCAs were hired. Depending on how quickly older workers retire or other workers transfer or leave the USPS will often decide how long it takes to be converted. Where I work, it has been usually less than 18 months to be converted but your mileage may vary greatly. It is very good to become a career employee because you have guaranteed number of hours you'll work each week, plus you get health insurance coverage.
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That is unfortunate that you need to move because of nosey neighbors. Your mailman should not be giving any information whatsoever to the nosey neighbors as to where you moved to. I don't have access to the new address when someone moves. I mean there is probably a way for a clerk or supervisor to access the computerized forwarding system and find out someone's new address but in general the letter carrier isn't given this information. In our office the letter carrier just gets notification via a white sticker given to us by a clerk that a certain person or family has moved as of such date and to begin submitting their mail for forwarding. I can't say for sure there is anyway to prevent your very sweet and friendly mailman from trying to internally find out that information but they shouldn't be doing that and it is a violation of our rules to be giving out that confidential information.
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In my opinion you can ask a letter carrier anything you want but you may get a whole variety of replies that run the gamut from helpful to not being interested. I don't know any rules on what they can and can't help you with but the letter carrier should always protect the confidentiality of the customer and any mail they receive. That is pretty sacred. To give you a personal answer, nobody has ever approached me about getting leads about anything except maybe real estate agents. To be fair, I wouldn't be interested in helping anybody get potential leads for anything. I feel it is entirely unprofessional to do. A real estate agent may say to me I'll give you a referral commission if I know of anybody selling their house. I may accept their business card but not do anything else. To sum up, I don't know what you can and can't ask a letter carrier, but I feel it's unprofessional and possibly unethical to assist salespeople working in the area.
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