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.
I've never worked in an urban environment to deliver mail so I can't speak from experience. While it's true you may not have the advertising circulars that you deliver so much of in the suburbs you could have a larger route even though the mail volume per house is lower. Some cities have routes where you use a pushcart and don't have a vehicle to seek shelter in when the weather gets very bad. Is it possible the streets are crowded so it's not always easy to find parking for your postal vehicle if you even have one? Please also consider that you will likely lose your bidding seniority if you switch offices. This may not be important to you of haven't been at the USPS very long. Living closer to work may be a valid convenience for transferring. I'm quite happy working in the suberbs. The neighborhood where my route is can be pretty quiet at times which is what I enjoy. There are probably pros and cons to each work environment and if I was originally hired to work in a more urban environment I may have been fine with that. The decision you make is personal. I hope you feel you make the right move whichever action you choose to (or not to) make.
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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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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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I use an LLV built by the Grumman corporation in the mid 1990s. Our office mostly has LLVs but more recently some carriers use a Dodge ProMaster which has a lot more capacity but isn't appropriate for curbside (mounted) delivery or dismount deliveries because it's a left hand drive vehicle (what most vehicles in the US are). We also have 2-ton USPS vehicles which are used by our mail collectors and parcel post drivers. I am only trained to drive an LLV of the 3 vehicles I mentioned. I feel most comfortable because it's also the smallest and most maneuverable. The main drawback is that in snowy or icy conditions it's very hard to control the vehicle safely.
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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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Matt, I'm a city letter carrier so I believe we have different work rules and leave usage policies. I don't know how it works for rural route carriers and working on your scheduled day off for extra pay. It doesn't seem to me that rural route carriers get paid OT or extra days pay too often in my office, but again I admit I'm not familiar with the rules that govern rural routes. You could contact a union rep from the NRLCA and maybe they can give you that info or even ask your supervisor or manager. As a city carrier this scenario happens all of the time. A city carrier will request a vacation day and then another city carrier will work on their scheduled day off for a minimum of 8 hrs OT pay.
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I don't know what advice to give you except that there seems to be a procedural error somewhere for this type of conflict to arise. I'd recommend a shop steward to assist you with this, but I sometimes don't have a great deal of confidence in their integrity to be objective if they have a closer personal relationship with the person who was of higher seniority. There has to be more to the story as to why you were awarded a route based on the bidding process and then told at a later time that something wasn't done properly and that you can't keep that route or your old route.
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