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 deliver my own mail because I reside in Queens, NY and Stony Brook, NY but don't work at either of those post offices. If a letter carrier does reside in the town that they work in, it is possible that they deliver their own mail. We have a few carriers at my PO that live and work in this town, but none of them have assignments that include their own residence on a daily basis.
I am not sure how you would get the full name of your postman. I read that he won't give you his last name. I have no idea whether or not he has any obligation to do so. I gladly would give it out, if asked. It is also on my ID badge that I wear. I feel that it should be available to the public, but I am sure you will find great disagreement among my colleagues. If you were to call the PO and ask them, I have a feeling they wouldn't give it to you either. Some people get very private about certain matters, yet they will join Facebook and broadcast a lot about their personal lives. That's about all of the insight I have on this subject. Thanks for writing.
I know this response is likely too late to help you out for today, but I'll let you know my opinion. If all the scanning of the package is done properly, then the package should have been on some delivery vehicle (not necessarily the regular mail delivery) to bring the package to your address by the end of the deilvery day (apprx 5PM local time.) I hope you have received it. I make the qualifier "if the scanning of the package was done properly" because there are times where the information as to where the package is or "attempted" but wasn't really, comes up when you use the tracking number. That brings down the integrity of the scanning data. For the most part I believe the USPS does a very good job of giving the correct tracking information on packages, but I've heard stories to the contrary at times. Thanks for writing.
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.
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I don't know the answer to this question. Maybe you can renew the PO Box via check or credit card. The USPS main customer service phone # is 800-275-8777. If you can manage to get a human on the phone, maybe they can help you further or send a msg. to the PO where your PO Box is located to say you are out of town and will renew it upon return. There is probably a small grace period, but I can't say for sure. If you don't get in contact with the PO and don't renew the PO Box rent, any accumulated mail will likely be returned to the sender with a label stating "Box Closed, No Forwarding Order".
I am not really sure of the procedure that your letter carrier is supposed to follow if your specific mail slot becomes full. I understand that they probably didn't want to bring it back to the PO where it can be held usually up to 30 days before being sent back to the senders due to a full mailbox. The carrier probably felt that it was a safe environment to leave it in the junk cubby even though that area was possibly accessible to anybody. I hope that no mail was missing that you can tell. You made no mention of that so I presume you think it was all there. Technically the letter carrier should have been on the safe side and brought the mail back to the PO since you live in a multi-unit building, but I often have the "no harm, no foul" attitude meaning it's no big deal as long as nothing looks as if it was tampered with. I know that others will disagree with me on this comment. It is similar with packages to be delivered. In the area I work in, it seems to be a very safe suburban environment so parcels are left when nobody is home as long as there is no signature required. In other areas where mail/package theft may be an issue the USPS may require somebody at an address in order to release a package.
Mischa, I deleted one of your questions because it came up as a duplicate on this website. When we return from our routes, we put all of the outgoing (collected) mail in a dispatch area usually divided into flat, letters, parcels, priority, metered, stamped, etc. With regards to the prepaid shipping labels which is usually called Parcel Select Return Service I put the item in a separate area and our dispatch clerk knows what to do with it. I don't know when it is scanned at our post office. I would suspect that the package would be scanned at least in 1-2 days. Some packages which are being sent back as a return are transported by a 3rd party company that picks up those packages at our post office. Other packages are transported by the USPS back to the company where the package is being returned. I know when I pick it up from a customer as an outgoing return package I do not scan the item at all. I hope this helps but please keep checking USPS.com to track your package for any scans.
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