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 saw this on the internet and heard about it on the radio. Unfortunately, the USPS sometimes has employees that don’t quite understand the sanctity of the mail and that they can’t throw it away. According to the article he employees was a new hire. Maybe he was overwhelmed with his work assignment, though that is no excuse for discarding mail into a dumpster. I’d hope that he gets in a lot of trouble criminally, but I don’t think they often do. Either way, it looks horrible when we want the country to be able to trust us with their ballots for the upcoming election. I don’t believe the employee was purposely discarding ballots as a lot of other mail was also discovered. I believe it was nearly 1900 pieces of mail.
Thanks for the heads up, Jessica. Trolls are the bain of the Internet.
Lol. Not me. The Postmaster General of the United States used to be in the line of succession for the Presidency. I believe that to no longer be the case since 1970 when the position was removed from the Cabinet of the President. That is around the same time that the USPS was created. Prior to that, the organization was the US Post Office Department which was an executive branch agency. When I looked on Wikipedia for Presidential Line of Succession, the Postmaster General was nowhere to be found on the list.
I am not sure if you’re referring to this forum or out while I’m delivering mail. Either way, the answer would be the same. I am very patient and I don’t get annoyed by questions. I triy to put myself in the shoes of the person asking it and if I can I will educate them. I deliver mail on the same route each day so I know most of the residents. There usually aren’t many questions and most of the time I don’t see a lot of people during the delivery day. I admit I get annoyed if people just want to talk in general because I don’t have the time to do that on my postal route and sometimes you are just a person that they want to talk to and you could be anybody. While I am friendly it is not my job to be a social worker. Fortunately, I don’t have many incessant talkers that I deliver mail to. I either avoid them if possible or just walk away after maybe giving them a minute or two of my time.
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I don’t know for sure but they would likely put on emergency placement leave which means no more USPS vehicle driving privileges until the issue is resolved. I don’t personally know of it happening to anyone but I’m sure it has. If a court of law found them guilty of driving under the influence or intoxicated, I wouldn’t mind seeing the offender losing their job. I have no sympathy for somebody doing that on the job. I don’t know that they would lose their job and our union (the NALC) would likely file a grievance to have them keep their job. I do know if 2 situations where coworkers had DUI outside of work and temporarily lost their state driver license. They were not able to drive a postal vehicle so the USPS gave them alternate duties or had another coworker drive them on their route. Both workers eventually got their licenses restored and were back to full duty but I know it costs them a huge sum of money in fees, courses, increased insurance premium plus the possible loss of their vehicle.
I’m not sure why some people use a personal vehicle. Usually those are rural letter carriers who are compensated for using their own vehicle and have an amber light to warn you that it’s a slow moving vehicle and will make frequent stops. When I was first hired we sometimes have to use our own vehicle and could get some type of reimbursement for it. There was one regular carrier who would use his own vehicle each day because he preferred to. I don’t have a choice I have to use an LLV which is fine as I would prefer not to use my own vehicle and I do not have the capacity either to handle the parcel load. On some city routes, a carrier may use their own vehicle to get themselves from the office to their route. A parcel post carrier brings their relays of mail to boxes along the route. This would happen in offices where there are not a sufficient quantity of vehicles for each carrier. Our office has one vehicle available per route and a couple of spares.
I don’t know for sure what would happen if a letter carrier was caught stealing or snooping through someone’s mail. If the postal inspectors are involved, they could have the employee arrested and then have a prosecutor charge them with a crime. To me, this is the same as discarding mail that you don’t want to deliver. I would like to think that most of the time, the letter carrier would be fired from the USPS, but our union often fights a termination and the employee may keep their job. I do wish we were more punitive when a postal employee tampers with the mail at all, but they sometimes just get warnings and are back on the job.
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