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.
Congratulations Mr. fulltime. That's a clever name. As far as any tips or advice I have a few. First, you are there to serve the residents or businesses on the routes, not the regular carrier who normally does the route. This means you don't have to do any favors or anything that the regular asks you to do for the customers. Please just be conscientious about delivering the mail properly and accurately. I'd recommend not going too fast just to get the route done. It's best to go at a consistent moderate pace and don't waste time on your cell phone texting and talking to people when you should be focused on working safely and efficiently. If you aren't sure about a certain delivery or maybe how to do a route, you can ask the regular carrier and hopefully they will help you. I have a route which I deliver daily, but when I have a non-scheduled day, the T6 delivers it. I give my "floater" or "comp person" the information they'd need re: houses where there are vacancies or forwards or dogs to be aware of. If the regular carrier comes in for his non-scheduled day for OT, it's possible (depending on how your office operates) you could be "bumped" off that assigned route for the day and deliver another route in the office. My advice would also be to try to stay out of any office politics if possible. Having the same route to deliver daily, I don't need to know much about what else is happening at the PO. Good luck to you, sir!
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Jonas, I am no legal expert to cite which laws may or may not have been broken. I am pretty sure that this isn’t an appropriate action on behalf of your husband’s friend. In fact, I’m very disturbed to hear this story. You are completely correct that our job is to deliver the mail, NOT ask any q’s or comment about the mail destination or be a private detective. You need not answer him at all or you could take it a step further and say “Do not ask me anything about my mail”. I’m not so sure I’d threaten to report the letter carrier for his actions but you’d be within your rights to do so if the problem continued. I hope this issue doesn’t continue for you.
On a related note, I definitely do pay attention to where mail is going to or coming from. I would never comment on it to a customer or talk about it with someone else. We should be trusted employees and have an obligation to keep all information confidential.
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It's very common for people not to check their mailbox daily (me included). If there is mail in there from previous days I generally wouldn't look for any outgoing mail. Outgoing mail should have uncanceled postage and be clearly visible when you open the mailbox. Sometimes people leave the lid open or place the letters vertically to show that they have outgoing mail. If the item has no postage I just leave it there. Other people or companies aren't supposed to leave items in a mailbox but it's common and I just ignore it. Landscapers or oil delivery companies sometimes leave an invoice in the mailbox. Every now and again I forget to take someone's outgoing mail, but not often. Some mailboxes may have a red plastic flag that is put in the "up" position to notify the letter carrier that there may be outgoing mail. Upon collection of the mail, the letter carrier should put the flag in the "down" position. These flags are more common in a rural or suburban delivery environment.
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Harris, for last couple of years the number of catalogs and magazines we deliver has decreased quite a bit so they generally aren't a pain at all. Some weekly circulars have loose ads that are oversize or fall out of the main circular and those can be messy, but in the whole scheme of things aren't too bad. Some people love to complain about anything so I'm sure if you poll my coworkers you'll get different answers. Just this past week, IKEA distributed their yearly catalog to many residents where I deliver mail. These are pretty thick, but since that day didn't have a lot of other catalogs or circulars it ran smoothly. It was a heavier than usual load due to the IKEA catalogs, but we only get them yearly and I can't think of another catalog mailers that puts out such thick catalogs in such quantities. In case you missed it, Victoria's Secret ceased mailing any catalogs earlier this year and they were a large mailer of catalogs in the past, I'm sure other catalog companies are following suit as they realize many consumers prefer to browse online. This is a great question. I feel the future for print advertising will continue to decline, but it may not be too precipitous. Another big catalog mailer is Bed, Bath, and Beyond though their ads are very thin so don't add much weight.
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McDonald's Manager
Did you have to deal with a lot of disrespectful customers? What would they say?
Professional Poker Player
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Help Desk Technician
Does it get aggravating answering people's dumb questions all day long?
Van, I'm sorry that I don't have any secret tips about casing quickly. By shadow day I guess that means you watch someone while they do their job. I admit when you first see a carrier case with so many addresses and then you have some so much mail to put in the case it is overwhelming. My advice is to not get distracted by outside music or your cellphone. Try to remember where a particular street is on the case. I've found that when you are put in front of a new carrier case it is intimidating, but the more you do it the easier it should become. Do not give up easily as you are just starting your job now at the USPS. I've found it to be a worthwhile career.
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I don't know the minimum distance that one must have a car from a curbside (mounted) delivery mailbox. Normally as long as the postal delivery vehicle can access the mailbox without the letter carrier needing to leave the vehicle to make the delivery that should be sufficient. We are supposed to minimize the amount of times that we put our vehicle in reverse so the letter carrier may also need clearance in front of the mailbox so he may safely drive to the next delivery point. It also may depend on the personality of the letter carrier. They are allowed to refuse delivering of the mail to any address where they need to exit the vehicle but for many letter carriers it may be easier to just leave the vehicle and walk a few feet to the mailbox rather than having to "flag the house", bring the mail back to the PO, and reattempt delivery on the next delivery day. I suppose if it's a chronic problem or they would need to get out for each stop due to vehicle blockage it would be time consuming and the management may even tell the carrier not to do that. I don't have any curbside deliveries on the route I deliver. If I'm helping out on another route which does have curbside deliveries I tend to get out where necessary and deliver the mail. I don't like to bring back any mail to the PO that should've been delivered. Again, all of this is my opinion and I don't know the actual rules which govern your question except, as stated above, the carrier should be able to approach and leave your mailbox without having to get out of their delivery vehicle.
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I don't think you'd get in trouble for that. The recipient may question why the mail and documents look water damaged but I don't know that they could pinpoint it was you who sent it in that condition. Mail is often wet when I deliver it in the rain. It's difficult during downpours to keep it dry and to be honest I don't try that hard to keep it completely dry. The bottom of my mail satchel gets wet very easily so when I carry mail in it the edge of the mail will often get wet. If the recipient has an issue with the condition their mail came in they may just ask you to resubmit the documents if that is possible. Thanks for the question and I hope I helped you.
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