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.
Chris, to answer your second question first,we are definitely supposed to walk through yards and across lawns unless a resident or property owner specifically tells us not to. It is the most efficient way to get from house to house without having to walk to the street unless there are fences between houses in their front yards. As far as dog poop situation, I don't know what is legal and not with regards to refusing mail delivery. I would speculate that if there is a chance the letter carrier may walk through it then maybe the note is warranted. On the other hand if the dog feces is on the lawn and you request the carrier not to walk on your lawn as he may step in it that should be a fair compromise. The carrier could also write a carrier alert card for your address which is sorted in your mail daily so when a letter carrier comes upon your house they could be alert for any possible dog poop. The alert card isn't delivered to your house. Instead the letter carrier takes it back to the PO to be used on the next delivery day as a warning card again for your address.
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Jvitto58, I don’t know what our manuals say about this situation. I always feel we are given such little guidance on when to drop off a parcel on a relay. I know you are going to have route inspections soon. I don’t have much of a memory of what they are like so I can’t give you my experience. If a parcel doesn’t fit in my satchel, I will generally deliver it when I pass the address. This may be before of after I deliver the relay depending on where the park point is for a particular relay. I don’t flag the mail for addresses that have a parcel. I deliver the mail as I normally would and then deliver the parcel before or after the relay. To be honest, I have a geographically compact route so I often deliver most of my larger parcels before I even begin delivering mail for the day. I know you didn’t ask me this and I definitely don’t recommend doing it on an inspection as it can be considered inefficient or time-wasting. I just like to get the larger items out of my postal delivery vehicle. I try not to circle back with the truck if I can avoid it, but to me there are no absolutes and each day has some different nuances when it comes to parcel delivery. Regarding your route inspection, just try to give a fair effort. Don’t hurry, but don’t be a turtle either. I truly don’t have any great guidance because I’ve rarely, if ever, been involved in one.
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I don't know the answer to this. Most of the time we deliver all of the mail each day that is in our building unless we get backed up with volume or are short on staffing. This may not be the case in the office that delivers your mail. If there is a merchant that you want to go to with a coupon but it arrived late, you could ask the merchant to honor the offer or the business could contact the post office to inquire why their mailing was delivered late. I'm just speculating, but I would think any 3rd Class Mail (the new official term for this will be USPS Marketing Mail) should be delivered within a few days of it being received at the Post Office. Having answered many questions on jobstr, I can see that service consistency varies greatly from office to office and even among the letter carriers in that office.
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It seems I’m now a personal advice column. It doesn’t bother me but if you knew me, I’m probably the last person to ask about relationship advice. I’m not sure what advice to give that you don’t already know. I believe you have his text number or other way of messaging him. If you read this question I can’t tell who is older. That shouldn’t matter. Basically if you like him and he says he likes you and you’re not too worried about his girlfriend, (not that you need be) then it’s worth pursuing him for a date perhaps. It’s possible though that the relationship could get complicated if he stays with his girlfriend but has a relationship with you at the same time. I think as long as you acknowledge the pitfalls of this and could deal with potential conflict or disappointment (not that I wish that upon you), then go for it.
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Congratulations and good luck to you in your postal career. I'm glad you love it so far. Despite some personal hurdles I've had along the way, I absolutely love it most days and feel very fortunate to have this career. I don't know Powerade but I'm assuming it's an energy drink. I see Gatorade is the main competitor. The main criticism of those types of drinks is the high sugar content. My advice (with no scientific background) is to just drink 1-2 day at most and then hydrate with water. I mostly d non-sugar naturally flavored sparkling water beverages. I drink it quite a bit on hot days and it seems to help so much. I've avoided the Powerade type drinks mainly because I don't want to ingest so much sugar that could hurt my teeth and body. Moderation is my advice. Thanks for writing.
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It does sound pretty bad that the office restroom smells from this letter carrier. Could you put a can of air freshener in there to be used? If it was just an odor, I may actually defend what the carrier is doing because it’s a bodily function that we all do. I think that the fact that he is inconsiderate and makes a mess, it’s understandable that you don’t want him to use the restroom. You are certainly alllowed to request that he not use the restroom but it may be a bit of an awkward situation. We have no right to use any private bathrooms even though most offices do extend us the courtesy.
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Deee, I don’t know the answer to this question. On the NALC website there is a CCA resource guide. In a section I looked at it didn’t seem to mention anything about the number of consecutive days you could be scheduled to work. We have several CCA in our office and I’m pretty sure they try to give them off one day per week, but I don’t know if it’s mandated or not. During the busy time they may work more than 7 days/week. If you have a shop steward that you could contact they may have the proper answer for you.
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