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.
You are the first person to ever say the term "dark net markets" to me. I don't most of my fellow letter carriers know anything about this unless they are involved in that dealing which I would hope they aren't. We are trained very little at work about drugs in the mail. I've never come across anything suspicious re: drugs or I am just oblivious.
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Dee, it has been so many years since I was hired so I can't say for sure what the drug testing policy is. I can, however, give you my experience. As far as I've ever heard or seen, you are drug tested once and that is pre-hiring. I have never heard of a random drug test being administered to letter carriers during their career. I'll just state the obvious and say keep clean and you'll have nothing to be concerned about. Good luck to you in your job/career with USPS.
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I don't know much about transferring between locations as I've never tried myself but I've seen it done quite a bit both into and out of my office. I believe you need to be off probation and maybe worked for a certain amt of time before being eligible to transfer. Also, whether or not a transfer is granted could depend on the staffing levels of the office you'd be leaving and/or the one you are requesting to transfer to. Usually transfers result in you losing local seniority so you go to the bottom of the list for carries as far as vacation requests and work assignment choices. With regards to your other questions, I'd never call anyone one slaves at the USPS? If you are implying the CCAs have to cover the routes for call offs, it depends on the managements and the staffing needs. As a regular carrier I usually fill in to do parts of routes that need coverage on any particular day and will be paid overtime to do this after finishing my own route. So when you say slave nobody is being forced to do this job. In my particular post office the staffing is perpetually not that good so both the CCA (of which we have very few) and the regular letter carriers fill in as needed. One main difference is that as a regular letter carrier you would rarely be forced to do overtime work if you choose not to and are not on the OTDL (overtime desired list).
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Cathy, in my opinion that is a tricky situation. I think it technically can be up to the carrier to decide whether or not they feel safe delivering mail to the house with the dog or not. On the flip side, I encounter that situation a couple of times per day and don't think twice about delivering to houses where I know the storm door is latched and strong enough to contain the dog. This is coming from a carrier (me) who isn't too comfortable with dogs overall and have never owned one. It is a very rare situation (almost zero) that I've refused to deliver mail to a house with a dog inside the front door. If the door looks a bit ajar I might put my foot by the front door while delivering the mail. I'm not sure any of this helps. I think the basic mantra is if we don't feel comfortable delivering to a house we don't have to. It seems a bit too gray though because someone could take that to an extreme. I feel it's always easier to deliver the mail then to have to bring it back and then attempt 2x the amount on the next delivery day.
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I think many letter carriers would just leave it because they may notice right away that there is no address on it or stamp. I can't speak for all letter carriers because there are many of us who don't pay attention and just take what's in the mailbox as outgoing mail. I don't think this good for them to do but some of my co-workers are clueless or are possibly paying attention to their smart phone vs. paying attention to the task at hand. To be honest, the mailbox should only be used for US Mail. My advice would be to not leave this letter in someone's mailbox to guard against the above scenario happening. To sum up my answer in one word: maybe.
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You virtually answered your own question with the "but do you". Every morning we are given 5 minutes before our break to inspect our postal delivery vehicles. Most of us at least turn on the engine to make sure it will start. We are supposed to do a walk around and look for any body damage, flat/low tires, leaks, and more. I mostly just turn the engine on and look at the fuel gauge to see if I need to stop at a gas station on the way to the route. At the end of the day, I empty out all of the contents of the vehicle and park and lock it. I don't do any further inspection at the end of the day. I know I don't do the full inspection walk around that we are supposed to, but so far it hasn't come back to hurt me. I use the same vehicle almost every day. If I were to use a different vehicle I may do a more thorough check to see if all of the signals and lights work.
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Generally, if we had a postal route where we drive a USPS vehicle (as opposed to urban routes where carriers may just walk out from the local post office and pick up mail from relay boxes along the way), we should have no problem handling multiple packages in one day even if they are different sizes. It's common for a recipient to get large and small items in the same day. I generally put them all together and leave them on the ground near the front door or mailbox. I would treat this situation just like I would getting lots of packages domestically. The items may have a tracking bar code that I'd scan as delivered once I delivered the items. I hope your experience is just as I've described.
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