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 have deleted one version of this question because it was posted twice. It is a very good question and I will try to be as clear as I can with the how and why of bidding for routes. Firstly, we bid for routes (or assignments, as it isn't always an actual mail delivery route) so that we are doing the same assignment every day in accordance with a collective bargaining agreement between the USPS and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC). It allows carriers to choose what assignment (delivery route, collection route, parcel post route, floater route (which fills in for carriers on 5 routes on their days off and pays a slightly higher wage)) they would like to work. It is based on seniority at a specific installation, not necessarily when you were hired by the USPS. For example, if you transfer from an office in Maryland to an office in Florida, you will likely lose your local seniority putting you at the bottom of the list with regards to bidding on vacant assignments. There are probably some exceptions to this rule and often in cities there may be several delivery stations that you can bid between and not lose seniority if you bid from one station to another. I am no expert in this as I have always worked in the same post office my entire career. I think it is the fairest system around and am a big advocate of seniority based assignments. The airline industry uses it for Pilots and Flight Attendants to choose what equipment they would like to fly, what routes, what cities they would like to be based in, etc. Anyhow, back to the USPS. I am sure there is a process of online bidding, but for vacant assignments in my local post office that are put up for bid, here is how it works. Management will post a sheet a paper called a Notice of Vacancy of an Assignment. The notice will specify the assignment (usually the route #), the specifics of the shift times and days off. The notice will also specify the dates that bidding is open. It is usually a 10-day period. The supervisor will have a locked box on their desk and pink bid cards (blank) available for regular carriers to fill out to bid on the assignment and put the bid in the box. Once the bidding period has expired, the supervisor and union shop steward will open the bid box and sort all of the valid bids by seniority date. The top 3 bidders based on seniority are then announced. The winner then has 3 workdays to try the new assignment and then can decide to keep it or not. If they decide not to keep it, the 2nd and 3rd place bidders can then try out the assignment. It rarely goes past the 2nd place bidder in my experience. I hope this answers your question and thank you for writing.
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Unfortunatley, you are probably stuck with the new carrier. Do you know the reason that there was a change in postal carriers? Some of the reasons are: a change in the territory that makes up a route, a carrier chooses to leave their route for another one, or a carrier retires or transfers to another office. When this happens, the route often goes up for "bid", and the most senior carrier who desires to do the route that includes your street gets that assignment. It is not based on how friendly, efficient, or safe that this carrier works. There are plenty of letter carriers at the USPS who won't win congeniality awards or hard worker accolades. There is very little corrective action that can be taken as long as the carrier shows up for work and doesn't get into any motor vehicle accidents. I don't know how you would feel about calling the delivery supervisor to voice your concerns about the new carrier and the safety of their driving as well as them forgetting mail, but you could do that. I don't know what kind of response you will get or if it will change anything, but I don't think it would hurt to mention it. Those qualities are very unprofessional and unsafe in a letter carrier. There are some of these carriers at the office where I work as well. I try to have as little as possible to do with them whatsoever. I'm sure this problem isn't uncommon in the USPS and most other companies. Thanks for writing to jobstr for advice.
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Arlene, as far as I know full postage must be paid when mailing used clothing domestically. You can mail the item via USPS Parcel Post which is less expensive than Priority Mail. You can often donate used clothing to local organizations like Goodwill or The Salvation Army. I would recommend doing a web search in your area to see if it's possible to donate the clothing without having to use the USPS and pay postage.
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ST, I'm not sure what happened in your situation. Some USPS carriers may be trained or take it upon themselves to do things differently than others. If the letter carrier saw the one letter in your mailbox but the rest of the mail taken in (by you), they might think it's mail for a person no longer living there and return it to the sender "Attempted, Not Known" or "Unable to Forward" or something else. It seems likely that this is what happened and the letter wasn't stolen though I can't says for sure.
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I'm not sure of the answer to this. I think you have to pay postage if the mail was sent to you at a rate called presort Standard. The reason is because if you just leave that type of mail in your box for the carrier to take back they can refuse to take it, or, if they do take it back, it will likely just be discarded into a recycling bin at the PO. That type of mail is called NOVM (No Obvious Value Mail). There will be no effect on you continuing to get that type of mail in the future because the mailer has no notification that you want to be taken off their mailing list. The most effective way to have these mailings cease would likely be to call the mailer or email them to be removed from their mailing list. I have found this effective for reputable emailers but have never tried it with traditional paper mailers. Thanks for your question.
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I'm sure each Post Office has a slightly different dispatch schedule for mail being sent off to a P&DC (Processing and Distribution Center). I think that our Post Office dispatches the mail 2-3 times per day. I don't think that something mailed in the morning gets to its destination sooner than a letter which is collected prior to our final dispatch which is usually around 6PM. We have service levels which basically say if a letter or parcel is mailed on a certain date (before a final dispatch) that it should reach its destination by a certain date. This is usually 1-3 days depending on the distance between the origination and destination Post Office and the class of mail that is being sent (1st Class, Priority, Express, Parcel Post, etc).
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I don't know the answer to this for sure. I believe the mail would be delivered to the building in one bundle with the other businesses mail mixed in if there are no specific suite #'s. For you to have your mail delivered separately, I believe you would need to have a specific address which is different from the rest of the building (i.e. the same street address, but a suite # associated with it). You could consider renting a PO Box, but that would have a cost plus would require a trip to your local PO to retrieve your mail. Most of the mail that we deliver is sorted by a machine into delivery order so if your address doesn't have a separate suite number, a letter carrier probably wouldn't segregate your mail just because you have a box with your business name on it. It's my pleasure to assist you on this forum and thank you for writing.
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