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.
Mischa, I deleted one of your questions because it came up as a duplicate on this website. When we return from our routes, we put all of the outgoing (collected) mail in a dispatch area usually divided into flat, letters, parcels, priority, metered, stamped, etc. With regards to the prepaid shipping labels which is usually called Parcel Select Return Service I put the item in a separate area and our dispatch clerk knows what to do with it. I don't know when it is scanned at our post office. I would suspect that the package would be scanned at least in 1-2 days. Some packages which are being sent back as a return are transported by a 3rd party company that picks up those packages at our post office. Other packages are transported by the USPS back to the company where the package is being returned. I know when I pick it up from a customer as an outgoing return package I do not scan the item at all. I hope this helps but please keep checking USPS.com to track your package for any scans.
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I don't believe you have any obligation ever to retrieve your mail. After awhile the mailbox will fill up and then the letter carrier will probably do the following: stop delivering any future mail and return any first class or periodical mail or mail sent by a mailer requesting return if undeliverable with the endorsement "Box Full". I have never encountered this situation but I understand people not caring about their mail deliveries these days especially when so much of it is advertising. Please be advised, however, that if your mailbox is full that you may not receive even one piece of mail that could be important. If you are so sure you don't want anything delivered by US Mail, then feel free to let your mailbox fill up or you could even take it down if you aren't a cluster box. I am sure this is a growing sentiment since most business and communication can be done electronically. Thanks for writing.
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Thanks for participating in the q and forum at jobstr. When I first started answering the questions, I had no idea it would be this popular. Some q's I receive are about doing the job and others are customer service issues that I can't specifically solve. I enjoy doing this but will admit if the quantity of questions got to be really high, I probably couldn't keep up with it. The amount of q's I receive now, I can easily handle. I try not to stay up late at all answering questions, but I like to give a thorough answer to each one and like to have minimal backlog. As far as my wife goes, I don't have one so its a non-issue. I have a girlfriend and she is very understanding and supportive and what I do. For her profession she is my own jobstr answer woman. Believe me that I ask her about her job all of the time to the point where she says "let's talk about something else", and I oblige.
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I don't know about the legality of keeping the package when it has already been scanned "delivered", but it certainly is bad as far as data integrity goes. The letter carrier may have scanned many of their parcels "delivered" earlier on in the day which is completely wrong (I can't say illegal) so they don't forget later on. Your example is a great reason why we aren't supposed to scan an item as "delivered" until we actually deliver it. Now if you approached him/her and asked about it, they should then give you the package. If this happened to you more than once I would speak to a delivery supervisor about this because it is very much against our rules to scan a package "delivered" when it wasn't. It is also misrepresenting the shipping status to our customers on both the sending and receiving end. It is also strange that the package has a 9:25 PM delivery time. I can't say it's impossible but I've rarely heard of the USPS out on a Saturday night delivering parcels.
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Great question and you are correct about having to use the bathroom during the course of the delivery day. We don't have a bathroom in the postal vehicle, though that would be a nice touch. When I need to use a bathroom, I usually drive to an office building, gas station, or library near the route where I deliver. I also deliver mail to a dentist's office so I can use their toilet when the office is open. The next method some will find gross, but I wouldn't necessarily agree. Some males carry around bottles with them and will discreetly urinate in them and then dump out the contents when they get a chance. It's pretty easy to do in the environment I work as there aren't many people around and one can go inside the back of the postal vehicle for privacy. It's also a good idea to carry hand sanitizer or handi-wipes for use after urinating. As far as what woman do, I'm pretty sure it's not that simple and they must usually find a facility to use.
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I have to tell you that I don't know what recourse you have in this situation since the woman who says she doesn't have it probably can't be held accountable for actually having it. How does the super know it went to the wrong address? I'm just curious since I'm not sure how this whole chain of events can be verified. I'm sorry that I can't help you further and it is very difficult to get an item back that is misdelivered if the actual recipient doesn't admit to having it. Even if you called a local post office to file some type of complaint about this, I don't know what help they would be.
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There is a good chance that the letter may actually continue to its destination without being returned. I find the USPS very poor in catching items mailed with insufficient postage. I try to capture it because that is our source of revenue and how we stay in business. I hate the "I don't care attitude" that I perceive in some co-workers. I'm sure this is common in many professions. But, to answer your question, a Forever stamp is currently valued at .49 . The minimum rate for an international letter is $1.15 but it varies by country of destination. If you don't receive the letter back within a week or so, I'd suspect that it will make it to the destination. Please always remember to include a return address, though I suspect you did. Thank you for writing.
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