Also check out this occupational description by the government of Postal Clerks and Mail Carriers.
I am a city letter carrier in Columbus, Ohio. I work at a station on the north side which is considered to have high mail volume. My route has Sundays and one other rotating day off per week, which is normal for city routes. My schedule looks like this:
Since our week ends on Friday and begins on Saturday, when we go from week one to week two I'll get Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off in a row. But then I have to come back and work a six day week, Monday through Saturday, although since I'm off the following Monday I kind of have a mini weekend.
A small percentage of routes in our area have 2 fixed days off, such as Saturday and Sunday, but such routes are rare. Having a rotating day off means that the 1st week of the rotation I am off Monday, the second week Tuesday, etc. Because the postal work week starts on Saturday, when I reach the week of Friday off, I get the immediately following Saturday off, which makes for a nice 3 day weekend. I make up for it though, by working the next 6 days in a row; Monday through Saturday. People often can't figure out when I'm going to be off, because they figure if I was of last Tuesday, I should be of Tuesday this week, and it doesn't work that way for us carriers!
My route covers a fixed territory for which I deliver all the addresses which get mail that day. When I clock in at 7:00 AM the first thing I do is go over to my "carrier case" and begin to sort mail. We letter carriers call this process casing mail or throwing mail, probably just to confuse outsiders. This mail comes from a number of sources. Most of the mail at my case in the morning is bulk business mail which was brought around the previous afternoon. The lion's share of this is catalogs. There will be a small amount of first class mail at my case at 7:00 AM, but most of the first class mail will be brought in later. This is because it takes the mail processors downtown that long to get all the first class mail worked up. They usually don't get a start on it until 8 or so the previous evening, and they've worked all night just to get it separated by route.
I'll usually spend my first 3 to 4 hours in the office getting the mail prepared for delivery. My route gets 3 or 4 thousand pieces of mail every day which I have to sort by hand, one at a time. After I've got it all sorted into the case, I have to take it out of the case. The case is set up in the delivery order of the route so, if I've done my "casing" well, the mail will be in order when I pull it out of the case.
When I've gotten all this done, I load it all up on a nutting truck and cart it out to the dock. On my way out to the dock, I'll pick up an additional 1000 to 1500 letters which have been put in order by machine. We call this mail DPS mail (that stands for Delivery Point Sequence).
With any luck I can get all my mail in the truck and be making deliveries by 11:30. Of course, when I get out on the street depends on how much mail I had to sort. Typically the summer months are lighter, and I can get our quicker. The day after a non-delivery day (Sunday or a Holiday) is typically very heavy. Many times mail carriers will start early on those days to get a jump on things.
Well, all that work and I haven't even delivered anything yet! If there is any express mail for my route, I will probably have to deliver them first because they have to be delivered by noon. Otherwise I'll just go to the first delivery on my route and go through until lunchtime. I get 1/2 hour for lunch, for which I'm not paid. If I work over 6 hours, the time clock automatically deducts this 1/2 hour, whether I take the time or not. I'll then resume delivery until I've completed the route. My route takes about 5 hours of delivery time, plus 1/2 hour for lunch, plus 2 ten minute breaks, plus a little bit of time to go to the bathroom and travel to and from the route. A little arithmetic will show that if I start at 7, I usually get back to the station between 4 and 5 o'clock PM.
My route is set up according to strick guidelines that are laid out for me in a handbook given to all carriers. I am supposed to set up my route so that I don't have to skip over parts of my route and then come back. I'm supposed to start and finish my route as close to the station as practicable. I'm supposed to deliver the heaviest part of my route first (typically that will be the business deliveries).
I don't usually have much work to do when I get back to the station. Typically I just turn in the mail I've collected from customers and turn in my truck keys and carrier keys (you know, the ones you've seen dangling from Cliffie's belt in "Cheers"). Sometimes I'll stay late and case some bulk mail that has either been brought in in the afternoon or that I didn't have time to case that morning.
Here are some questions that I am frequently asked as a postal worker:
Q: How come I never know when I'm going to get my mail when my regular carrier is off?
A: Lots of reasons. The substitute they put on my route may not be familiar with the case. My route has about 500 deliveries. Imagine stepping up to a case with 500 slots on in and trying to figure out where all those letters go.
Sometimes they may not have a spare sub to put on my route, so they'll split the route up into 5 "hours", giving an hour to each of 5 regular carriers. Typically those carriers will carry their route first, and then deliver my route last. That way people that normally get their mail at 11:30 may not get it until 5:00. Or maybe the regular carrier will deliver my route first. That way people that normally get their mail at 4:00 may get it at 11:30!
Q: For years we used to get our mail in the morning and now all of a sudden we don't get it until the afternoon. Why would this happen?
A: Either the delivery sequence of the route got changed for some reason, or the territory you live on got shifted to a different route.
Q: Why do we often get mail for people that don't live at our address anymore?
A: We are required as letter carriers to deliver the mail according to the known wishes of the addressee. If we don't know what the addressee wants, we have to deliver the mail to the address on the letter. More simply, if we don't know for sure the person has moved, we have to deliver the letter. This goes for each individual mail carrier that carries your mail, including subs that have never done the route before.
Q: I used to get a whole bunch of mail. Then I moved, and all of a sudden I'm hardly getting anything.
A: Only a small percentage of mail is actually forwarded. Almost no bulk rate (circulars, ads, catalogs) is forwarded, and even first class mail is often returned to the sender with your new address so that the mailer can update their mailing list instead of being forwarded.
Q: Why do we sometimes get mail that has our right street number, but goes to the next street over?
A: This is just human error. Carrier cases have a street number on each slot to sort mail into, but not every slot has the street name. Its easy just to match the number while sorting without paying enough attention to the street name. The more familiar a carrier is with the case, the less likely it is that this will happen.
Q: I keep hearing that postal workers are upset about automation. Isn't automation a good thing?
A: Of course automation should be a good thing if implemented correctly. I can't speak for other postal workers, but I can say that as a carrier, the way the Postal Service has implemented the automation system has not made my job at all easier, but has complicated it. I think most people imagine that carriers have everybody's mail separated out into one bundle per person and all they have to do is reach into their bag and pull it out. In fact carriers carry bundles of mail which is presequenced in delivery order for the route, but they must look at each piece to determine where to deliver it. Prior to the current automation program, carriers typically carried two bundles of mail, one bundle of letters and one of larger sized pieces such as magazines. On days with unaddressed circulars carriers carried three bundles, the circulars being an additional bundle. As the carrier walks along, he/she would peel off the letters for the next address, then the large pieces, and, if necessary, grab one circular.
With the advent of automation, the postal service introduced yet another bundle: letters which have been pre-sequenced by the automation machine. Carriers felt and still feel that the best way to handle this additional bundle would be to collate it with the letters that cannot be automated. Of course the post office could give carriers time to do this, however the Postal Service feels that this is a waste of time and requires carriers to carry these automated letters as a separate bundle. Originally the Post Office required that carriers deliver four bundles: automated letters, non-automated letters, large pieces, and unaddressed circulars. Imagine walking from one house to the next juggling four bundles with one hand and using the other hand to try and sort off the mail for the next house! In addition, the automated bundle of letters has many more mistakes in it than mail which is hand sorted, including missorted mail and letters for people who have moved.
After a couple of years dealing with this situation, carriers finally got some relief when an arbitrator determined that the post office could no longer require carriers to carry four bundles of mail. Carriers were hopeful that the postal service would now allow them to sort the automated letters. Unfortunately in most cases the post office does not. Instead they require that carrier collate the unaddressed flats with addressed ones or the non-automatable letters with the larger pieces. Both of these methods still result in additional time spent in the office and also in unwieldy bundles which are difficult to handle. Carriers feel that the way USPS has implemented automation has made their job much more difficult and are asking for a significant salary increase during current contract negotiations.
Q: How can I get a job at the post office?
A: Career workers in the post office are hired from a list of names which is generated by test scores from the postal examination. Those who score the highest are called first. Veterans are given preference in the form of extra points on their score. No one actually starts in the post office as a full-time worker. Instead, workers are hired as "career employees: part-time flexibles." What this means is that new hires are considered available for flexible hours, including nights, weekends, holidays, etc. In addition they are only guaranteed 4 hours per week. This doesn't sound so great but in actuality most "part-time flexibles" end up working more hours than the regular carriers.
After being called in for an initial interview, prospective employees may have to take additional tests in order to qualify for a postal position. As a carrier, I had to take and pass an extensive driving exam before I was actually hired.
Each area gives the postal exam at different times, typically every few years or as they need a fresh list of prospective hires. The last time Columbus gave the postal exam I posted the text of the notice on my site. If you're interested you can view it here
I'm amazed at how many postal workers just assume that everybody knows how the postal system works. I hired into the Postal Service 13 years ago with no idea of how the mail got to where it was supposed to go. The system is humongous, and having been in the PO for 13 years, I still only have a tiny view of the whole system. Hopefully this page has clarified some things about the postal system to those who have never been behind the scene at the Post Office.
If you have any questions you would like to ask me about what mail carriers do, please e-mail me!
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