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 don't know the legal answer to your question about whether or not the letter carrier was allowed to remove your mail after 5 days of piling up or not. Hopefully it wasn't returned to the sender and is just being held at the PO. I would contact the PO either by going to it or calling and advising them you are still residing at your address. I don't think I'd empty out a mailbox after just 5 days of nobody collecting the mail. I have never been at situation but I think I may just return any future mail (after a box is full) back to the sender with the endorsement "box full". I don't know that this is even a valid endorsement so I'd have to investigate further. In the future, please note that if you go away for several days or more (up to 30 days), we will hold your mail at the post office free of charge. Upon your return, you have the option of having the mail delivered to you or going to pick it up at the PO that delivers your mail. This service is available online at www.usps.com or going to the post office and completing a yellow "Authorization To Hold Mail" form.
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Nicolette, I am not sure why the mailman would have done so if there was no mail for William. The reason I would do something similar is if I had a piece of mail for a surname that I wasn't familiar with and wanted to ask the resident if this name received mail at this address. More often than not, however, I will just put a question mark next to the name on the envelope that I'm not sure is valid at a particular address. If the name is invalid, the residents at that address might then leave the letter out the next day written on it "person doesn't live here" and then it will be returned to the sender "attempted, not known." Thanks for the question.
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When I am asked to fill in for other neighborhoods or parts of of other routes we aren't usually trained on that route. We are often just given a map and sometimes some notes about the route, such as park points, or which parts of the route we can deliver right from our postal vehicle (rural routes are almost always delivered from a vehicle and not walking routes with a mail satchel.) When I was first hired, I went out for a few days with a carrier who showed me how to deliver the mail, but we were on their route and that didn't train us for the specifics of doing another postal route. Do you have a smart phone with a GPS application or an atlas/map you could use? That would be my advice, but the mgmt, or another carrier should at least give you some basic notes about what you are being asked to deliver, especially if there are some mailboxes/streets which aren't so easy to find. You do learn a lot on this job by actually doing it, but that doesn't make it any easier at the beginning. I wish you well JimK.
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I don't deliver my own mail because I reside in Queens, NY and Stony Brook, NY but don't work at either of those post offices. If a letter carrier does reside in the town that they work in, it is possible that they deliver their own mail. We have a few carriers at my PO that live and work in this town, but none of them have assignments that include their own residence on a daily basis.
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You may want to give it some time if it is a recent occurrence. If the sender put the correct ZIP code on the package, but the USPS delivered it incorrectly, it may wind up being delivered to you. If there was an incorrecr ZIP code on the package and the USPS can't find the proper address, the package could be returned to the sender. It is hard to say what will actually happen to your package that was ordered or what the USPS response will be, if any.
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If a certified letter is mailed and goes unclaimed and is returned to the sender, I don't believe it proves much except that the sender tried contacting a certain recipient. The addressee may or may not live where you sent the certified mail. They might choose not to be available when delivery is attempted and then not claim the letter later on. I believe the letter is returned to the sender 15 days after the initial delivery attempt. Regarding the second question, if a letter carrier is conscientious and knows the names that belong to a certain address, they might only deliver those names. If I'm not sure a name matches an address, I often leave the letter at the address on the envelope and write a question mark next to the name to indicate I'm not sure this letter belongs to that address. I think this is the logical procedure but don't know what the official procedure is, if any. Thanks for writing.
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Albert, your message posted 2x so I will answer it once and then copy and paste it. I currently work 7 hours a day as I am on a limited schedule for personal reasons. A regular city letter carrier can expect to work 8 hours per day (plus 30 min. unpaid lunch), 5 days per week. The 5 days may not be consecutive since mail is delivered 6 days per week. As a new hire, you will likely be a CCA (city carrier assistant) who has a very varied schedule and I'm not sure they are guaranteed any hours. I believe starting pay is about $16/hour for a CCA, with very few benefits, if any. Once you are promoted to a regular city carrier, the salary increasea to about $23/hour and tops out at about $28.50/hr after a certain amt. of years. These salaries are set in accordance with a labor agreement between the USPS and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), which is our union. You also get benefits once you become a regular city letter carrier as opposed to a CCA. If you visit the website www.nalc.org they have pay charts listed or you can probably just do a google search or look on www.glassdoor.com. Good luck in what is a pretty good career in my opinion.
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