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.
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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I'm sorry to hear about your mail being stolen. I don't know about moving the location of your mailbox. I am just speculating, but if you live in a circle where the mailbox sits at the street and is serviced by a letter carrier from their vehicle where they just stick their arm out and you want to move the box to a location where the same process can still be accomplished, I don't see why it would be a problem. Does the carrier drive by your house anyway, or do they not come in the circle because all of the mailboxes are at an area where they can avoid coming into the circle. If that's the case, I am not sure it would be allowed to be moved "inside the circle". It's important that the approach to the mailbox is not blocked on any regular basis so the carrier doesn't have to "dismount" from their vehicle to put the mail in the mailbox. I'm not saying they wouldn't dismount to deliver the mail, but the general idea of mailboxes at the street is so the mail can be delivered directly from the postal vehicle. For further clarification, I'd recommend calling or visiting your local post office and speaking with a delivery supervisor.
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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 would recommend that you leave it in your mailbox the next day preferably with either a post-it note on it saying "delivered to wrong address" or writing it on the letter directly if you don't have post-it note or piece of paper to clip to it saying "delivered in error". Please return it somehow to your letter carrier or the PO as you'd probably want the same done if a letter addressed to you was delivered in error somewhere else.
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I have deleted one version of this question because it was posted twice. It is a very good question and I will try to be as clear as I can with the how and why of bidding for routes. Firstly, we bid for routes (or assignments, as it isn't always an actual mail delivery route) so that we are doing the same assignment every day in accordance with a collective bargaining agreement between the USPS and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC). It allows carriers to choose what assignment (delivery route, collection route, parcel post route, floater route (which fills in for carriers on 5 routes on their days off and pays a slightly higher wage)) they would like to work. It is based on seniority at a specific installation, not necessarily when you were hired by the USPS. For example, if you transfer from an office in Maryland to an office in Florida, you will likely lose your local seniority putting you at the bottom of the list with regards to bidding on vacant assignments. There are probably some exceptions to this rule and often in cities there may be several delivery stations that you can bid between and not lose seniority if you bid from one station to another. I am no expert in this as I have always worked in the same post office my entire career. I think it is the fairest system around and am a big advocate of seniority based assignments. The airline industry uses it for Pilots and Flight Attendants to choose what equipment they would like to fly, what routes, what cities they would like to be based in, etc. Anyhow, back to the USPS. I am sure there is a process of online bidding, but for vacant assignments in my local post office that are put up for bid, here is how it works. Management will post a sheet a paper called a Notice of Vacancy of an Assignment. The notice will specify the assignment (usually the route #), the specifics of the shift times and days off. The notice will also specify the dates that bidding is open. It is usually a 10-day period. The supervisor will have a locked box on their desk and pink bid cards (blank) available for regular carriers to fill out to bid on the assignment and put the bid in the box. Once the bidding period has expired, the supervisor and union shop steward will open the bid box and sort all of the valid bids by seniority date. The top 3 bidders based on seniority are then announced. The winner then has 3 workdays to try the new assignment and then can decide to keep it or not. If they decide not to keep it, the 2nd and 3rd place bidders can then try out the assignment. It rarely goes past the 2nd place bidder in my experience. I hope this answers your question and thank you for writing.
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Congratulations on your being employed with the USPS. It depends on the staffing of a particular office as to whether you will get a set route right away or varying hours. If the office is shorthanded, it's possible you can be assigned a route to daily and that will become your route until further notice. More often than not, new hires fill in where needed to cover carriers who are on vacation or sick leave or to deliver "pieces" on routes which one carrier may not be able to complete in their workday. At a certain time, usually after probation is over, you can bid to "hold down" a route or assignment of rotating routes when a carrier is out on vacation or extended sick leave. If you "hold down" an assignment this entitles you to do that route daily and you can only be "bumped off" that route under certain circumstances which are covered in the labor/mgmt or local agreement.
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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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