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 answer for sure about this. It may depend on the actual carrier who comes to empty out the blue collection box as I am not sure of the rules that cover this. I know if I were the carrier who was emptying out the box and you could prove who you were and it matched a return address, I would likely return it to you. If there was no return address but you could still somehow prove it belonged to you, I also would likely give it back. But just to reiterate, I don't know the rules that cover this and it may also be up to the direction of the letter carrier.
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Rob, congratulations on being hired as a CCA. I am guessing it is either Hcksville or Plainview. The PROs may be that you will have many people to meet, many opportunities for filling vacancies, and large neighborhoods to get to know. A con may be that if they are short-staffed, the mgmt can ask you to fill in and do parts of several routes in one day which may be exhausting. The positive part to that is that you are paid for all of your time work including Overtime pay. I believe you can refuse to use your own vehicle to deliver mail, however, they may not then be obligated to give you a govt vehicle to deliver the mail. If that is the case, you may have a reduced opportunity to earn a paycheck. Try to be as polite as possible when given assignments and if it turns out to be too much, speak up and advise the supervisor how much extra time you may need. Always make sure to work safely as well. Try not to get too involved with any office gossip or politics. Good luck and continue asking if you have more qs.
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I have no idea why that happened. I assume you mailed the envelope to their old address because you wanted their new address. You probably also assumed that the USPS would return the envelope to you with the new address of the person who just moved instead of forarding the letter because you endorsed the letter "return service requested". I'm sorry I have no further information and I don't know that your local PO would know a lot about this either. As a letter carrier we are taught close to nothing about what that endorsment means, except that it can be processed through the CFS (Comuterized Forwarding System) which handles forwardable/returnable mail. Normally, Standard Class mail without an endorsment can be discarded if the addressee has moved. If the class of mail has the enodrsment, then the CFS processes the said item, though I don't really know what happens to it exactly.
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I apologize that I don't really know what further action for you to take. Were you able to contact your rural carrier to see if they recall where they put the international express item? Did they, in fact, remember putting it into your neighbor's box (and why)? If your neighbor claims that they didn't receive the item, I don't know what else you can do to prove that they did. I suppose this is one of the risks of allowing a rural carrier to sign for certain mail items.
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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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Not necessarily. Did you put the right name of your community but the wrong ZIP? If so, there is a good chance that the PO at the wrong ZIP city will cross it out and then the package will be sent to your community where it will then be delivered. If the name of the town and ZIP is incorrect on the package, and nobody at the receiving PO recognizes the address as belonging to your community then they may return the package to the sender as "NSS" meaning No Such Street or "NSN" meaning No Such Number. A lot may also depend on how savvy or caring the personnel is at the PO that originally receives the package to have it rerouted to your town where you could then get it delivered. I hope it works out for you. in the future, please remember that a correct ZIP is very important in an address. Thanks for writing!
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I believe it is permissible to spell out the single-digit number of a street adddress as given in your example.
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