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.
Lol. Not me. The Postmaster General of the United States used to be in the line of succession for the Presidency. I believe that to no longer be the case since 1970 when the position was removed from the Cabinet of the President. That is around the same time that the USPS was created. Prior to that, the organization was the US Post Office Department which was an executive branch agency. When I looked on Wikipedia for Presidential Line of Succession, the Postmaster General was nowhere to be found on the list.
It’s either a supervisor doing a periodic check of the route and the carrier delivering it or there may be a trainee being shown how to do the job.
This question is being asked during the 2020 Covid19 pandemic. I think you are asking if we will close due to this and not just close in general. Also, this question was asked 2x so I deleted one of them. As I write this, the USPS is operating as best as we can under the circumstances we are faced with. We are considered and essential service so no state order can close us. Another reason that a state order can’t close us is that we are tied to the federal government and I believe only the Postmaster General (and possibly the President) could close the USPS.
In a practical sense, our mail workload will likely decrease during a time when many businesses across the country are temporarily shuttered. We have seen an increase in online package deliveries but hasn’t been a huge amt for my office to handle. Amazon is mostly delivered by a private contract courier in the area I work.
I know I haven’t answered your question yet, but here is my thought. We would probably be closed if a large number of our workforce were infected by Covid19. It’s possible a local facility could suffer staffing shortages and be unable to operate as normal. I don’t foresee a nationwide USPS shutdown, but with the situation changing daily, I feel that anything is possible. Stay safe and help Flatten the curve by doing your part.
Fortunately, no. The only thing I’ve ever seen in my office was a package that may have smelled like marijuana. I don’t know what ever became of it. We are trained to be on the lookout for suspicious packages.
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Fortunately I’ve never had this happen to me and I do work in a generally peaceful and safe area. If it were to happen I would probably call the police, secure my vehicle, and maybe walk away if i could. I would never engage a violent or vandal-driven protestors. We have not been given any guidance on what to do. (May, 2020). I tend to be a de-escalator of situations whenever possible. Stay safe.
No. Fortunately, that would be a super rare event. In all of my years working at the Postal Service the only issue I ever had to deal with was the 2001 anthrax attacks where we were concerned with exposure to anthrax that was being sent in the mail, 2001. There were 5 fatalities (2 of them were USPS employees) according to Wikipedia.
I am copying and pasting my reply to another post of the same subject. Thanks for your inquiry.
I believe there has been a lot of doubt purposely introduced into the voting-by-mail process by President Trump. My opinion is that voting by mail is very safe and reliable. There are a few important points I’d like to make:
If you vote by mail, please follow the instructions given on the absentee/mail-in ballot regarding deadlines and signing your ballot. Also, voter fraud via mail or in person is quite rare. Several states have been doing almost full vote-by-mail for a number of years with minimal issues.
I plan to either vote by mail or vote early this year in NY State. If you are concerned about a mail-in ballot being received by your local election authority, I recommend dropping it off at a ballot collection box. I don’t believe there should be any issue as to how the USPS processes election mail. I think of it as just like having another couple of pieces of mail per address to deliver. We absolutely have the capacity to handle this in my opinion.
My bottom line—have confidence in the USPS in handling election mail for this coming 2020 General Election.
Thanks for your interest. This is a very important issue in the year of COVID-19 where mail voting will be utilized more than ever.
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