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’m not sure what the hardest part of the job js. Most challenges are surmountable. I like most aspects of being a letter carrier. I would say working in the snow or dark is the most difficult part to do. If one has the proper cold weather gear and lighting for working in the dark, these challenges are much more manageable. Most of the time I’m able to work during daylight hours but in the fall/winter the sun may set at 1700 which could easily result in us working in the dark. Our vehicles perform quite poorly in the snow so it is sometimes hard to safely drive them. Dealing with a difficult supervisor or manager is sometimes hard as well. They are known to be unreasonable at times in their requests for being on time. That ebbs and flows. Sometimes there are weeks of “civility” followed by several days of nastiness and what feels like disparate treatment. Most of the time I let in roll of my back and don’t escalate a situation. In general, I am very organized so delivering mail is quite an easy job and goes somewhat smoothly on a daily basis.
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I have a feeling that you might be correct about this. I have been thinking about that in the past but never decided to look into it. Maybe one day this whole site will disappear and my nearly 1200 questions answered will be for nothing. I never hear from the the siren operatoes though it never really concerned me. The sire never seems updated. I just checked their twitter account. The last posting or retweet was from 6 years ago. I certainly feel like a bit of a sucker to have continued here for so long. I’d probably have reached more people by doing a Reddit AMA. Thanks for bringing up this subject.
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He has normalized lying and not taking responsibility for anything he may have done wrong. He spread so many lies about the 2020 Presidential election being stolen from him when they couldn’t be further from the truth. He incited a riot which was disrupting a peaceful transfer of power.
When he was first elected in 2016, I said let’s give him a chance. I quickly realized he was all about himself and didn’t care much for the common man. He also mishandled the pandemic response in 2020 showing awful leadership when hundreds of thousands of Americans died.
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Not to my knowledge. I don’t know what the correct procedure is for parcel delivery in multi-unit buildings. I live in a similar sized apt bldng with no doorman to accept parcels and no parcel lockers. The letter carrier usually will leave the parcels near each unit door or in the lobby of the bldng or near the mailboxes. Package theft in our bldng hasn’t been a huge issue, but has occurred occasionally. If package theft is an issue, I believe the letter carrier will attempt delivery but then leave a notice that delivery was attempted and nobody was home to securely receive an item. At this point, a resident may sign the notice for redelivery or retrieve the package at a nearby PO as stated on the PS Form 3849. Package lockers are a great convenience but I know of no requirement that a landlord install them. Thank you for your question.
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i haven’t heard of those stories and I believe they are few and far between. Also, I have no idea how people could get their hands on ballots and what they would actually do with them. I believe many absentee ballots need to be signed by the voter. The signature would then be (in theory) be matched against the signature on file for when the voter registered. I have full faith in the USPS role in voting by mail. There is about one month to go before the 2020 general election. It’s a bit early of course but I haven’t heard of too many major issues. The GOP, specifically President Trump, is trying to fan the flames of doubt for mail-in ballots. It is a false narrative. Voter fraud in general is rare. Multiple independent research has indicated this.
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Maybe I have a boring existence or work in a pretty quiet area but I have never had that scenario ever happened to me whatsoever. The closest thing I’ve ever seen (which I was not impressed by) is an older man who likes to walk around the house in his underwear. He is creepy to begin with and I try not to have much of a conversation with him anyway. I don’t know what I’d do if that scenario presented itself. I could just carry in with business as usual. Seeing someone naked doesn’t totally phase me as I’ve seen topless women on beaches or even in NY City or San Francisco. I do feel it is inappropriate for someone to come to the door naked but I probably would not make a big deal of it.
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Mike, I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, but I’ve never heard of a USPS vehicle being pulled over by a police officer for missing a license plate. Each vehicle has an ID number and I think that suffices as a license plate. I imagine if I rcvd a ticket for that I would give it to my supervisor and let them deal with it. That being said, I wouldn’t mind if we got held to the same driving standards as everyone else and were pulled over for moving violations. I don’t even hear of that happening too often. I drive the USPS just as I do with my own vehicle. That means obeying all traffic rules, driving defensively, and courteously. Fortunately, I’ve never been involved in an MVA while at work, but it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Nobody is above the law or above making an error.
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