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.
Pablo, you can definitely have tattoos (visible or not) to be a letter carrier. Co-workers have had them since I have started working at the USPS 15 years ago. You can be hired with only a HS diploma if you do well on the test. It isn't true that you have to wait until someone retires before being hired. To become a full time employee this may be true but new hires are CCA which is City Carrier Assistant which is position requiring your flexibility in work hours and no guarantee of more than a few hours per week. I don't know the exact number of hours and the CCAs where I work have plenty of hours to work, including some Sundays delivering parcels.
Sorry to say that we can't guarantee arrival of a birthday card on a specific date when mailed via regular class mail. We do, however, have a decent record of getting most letters delivered the next day when mailed from the same city, and 2-3 days when mailed from further away. To play it safe I'd mail the card 2 days in advance and, if you prefer, you can write "Do Not Open Until Your Birthday" on the outside of it. You are a thoughtful friend. Good Luck!
If you live on a college campus, they probably already have established a standard method of delivery to the dormitories. They probably don't deliver it to your room. It is likely that the dormitory has central delivery boxes in the lobby area or in a mailroom. Other campuses might have all the student mail come to a central mailroom or student center which has individual mailboxes for each student. You can contact the student life office or office of residential life for more information. Thank you for writing.
Albert, your message posted 2x so I will answer it once and then copy and paste it. I currently work 7 hours a day as I am on a limited schedule for personal reasons. A regular city letter carrier can expect to work 8 hours per day (plus 30 min. unpaid lunch), 5 days per week. The 5 days may not be consecutive since mail is delivered 6 days per week. As a new hire, you will likely be a CCA (city carrier assistant) who has a very varied schedule and I'm not sure they are guaranteed any hours. I believe starting pay is about $16/hour for a CCA, with very few benefits, if any. Once you are promoted to a regular city carrier, the salary increasea to about $23/hour and tops out at about $28.50/hr after a certain amt. of years. These salaries are set in accordance with a labor agreement between the USPS and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), which is our union. You also get benefits once you become a regular city letter carrier as opposed to a CCA. If you visit the website www.nalc.org they have pay charts listed or you can probably just do a google search or look on www.glassdoor.com. Good luck in what is a pretty good career in my opinion.
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Disgruntled workers abound at the USPS but I can't say it's better or worse than other companies. I don't feel that our immediate supervisors and our postmaster are that kind to us but I'm sure it could be a lot worse. Overall our union has done a good job protecting our work rights and negotiating for a fair wage and benefits, but you will have complainers and unhappy workers no matter what. Years ago, veterans were given 5 pts preference on Federal Civil Service exams and 10 pts if you were a disabled veteran. I don't know if that still applies and if it also is in effect for exams at other levels of government. It's hard to say what makes a veteran disabled, but I'm sure Post Traumatic Stress Disorder qualifies in certain cases. Thanks for writing.
Most of the time I would say the mailman could find a house without a house number, but it is highly recommended that you have the number posted somewhere on the house, painted on the curb, or on the mailbox. I would never assume that the house could be found without a visible number posted. I rarely come across the situation where I can't find a house number, but if I did the method I would use would be to find an adjacent house (and hopefully that has a number visible) and then add or subtract 2 (the normal interval) to figure out the house number without a visible number. Now that I think of it you may have been asking if I have a name of a resident plus a street name, but no street number, could I find the house. The answer would be "possibly". If the mailman was familiar with the names on the street they could probably deliver the mail to the right house. Again, I would never assume that mail will get to the correct destination without a complete and proper address. Thanks for writing in.
You bad bad person Aila! Seeing that you were just 6 years old and you returned it all, there are worse crimes you could have committed. I am glad you know by now not to touch any mail or mailboxes that aren't yours. It is horrible to think of mail being taken out of mailboxes illegally. I consider it sacred, even if, in all honesty, it's not so important to a lot of people today and has been replaced a lot by technology. With regard to how it works for mailmen, I'm not sure what you mean. I have never been involved with a mail theft incident during my career. If I did I would likely tell my supervisor about it and follow their directives. Thanks for writing And stay away from those mailboxes ;-)
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