Riding

Yesterday, I got to go riding on my TMAX for the first time in over a week. Thanks to it warming up and raining Saturday, a lot of the snow and ice we got slammed with 2 Saturdays ago had melted. It was nice to get back on the road and ride the bike. It continues to impress me with its acceleration and power. It has no problem doing 80 or 85 mph. I rode by Baltimore Washington International Airport. I have the travel itch real bad and, I wanted to see some airplanes. Sadly, it's still over 150 days before I get to go on my future Globus Ireland tour. After that tour, as long as I don't buy anything major, I should be able to do 2 tours in 2011. That would be seriously awesome.

After checking out the airport, I rode home. Later, I spoke with my friend Harvey. He has the travel itch as bad as I do and like me, he can't afford to do any major travelling either. I hope to ride down to Richmond once things get slower at the post office where I work and show him my TMAX. The ride to Richmond is about 130 miles and should take about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It'll be my longest ride. It should be interesting to see how it goes. Hopefully, I'll be able to do the ride soon. Even a ride down to Richmond would make me feel like I got away from here for a little bit. We'll see. Cheers all!

Stress

I'd forgotten how stressful the Christmas season can be at the post office where I work. It's our busiest time of the year. People mail lots of Christmas cards and send various presents to their family and friends. The packages are the biggest pain as you can't stuff one of those in a mailbox normally. They fill the mail truck up rapidly and, it is a challenge to keep them in order so you don't accidentally fail to deliver one at an address. If you do, you have two choices. You can take it back to the post office and try to deliver it again the next day which means you have to mess with the package a 2nd time or, you can drive back to the residence and drop it off. Either choice costs you time and, the day is long enough already.

If things weren't stressful enough, we have subs who decide to make it more stressful. How do they do that? They do that by not showing up for work. They know they can't be fired and, they apparently decide they want to take time off before Christmas. If they properly requested the time off, they know the request would be turned down. This is one of the prime times when regular carriers want to take time off so they can spend more time with their families or travel to see members of their extended family. So, they call out. As every post office is equally swamped, there is little chance we can use subs from other post offices at this time to cover for them. So, those of us who are already swamped on the routes we're already assigned to have to take on the extra work the subs who called out didn't take. For me, this was a back breaker Tuesday. I had to case my assigned route and then, I had to case an auxiliary route we have. Then, I had to pull down the mail for both routes, somehow keep the 2 different route's mail and packages separate in my truck and deliver it. To make matters worse, the auxiliary hadn't been delivered Saturday (because of snow) or Monday (the regular sub assigned to it called out). That means I had 4 days of mail for it. Then, there is the snow. While the roads become more passable every day since the huge snow fall we had Saturday, people haven't cleared away the snow from their boxes. That means that the carrier has to get out of their truck and slog through foot deep snow to get to their box. It really slows you down.

To add to the burden, we are getting a LOT of late Express Mails. What are late Express Mails? Late Express Mails are items mailed Express Mail that arrive so late that it is impossible to deliver them by Noon like we normally would. However, we still have to deliver these the same day they arrive. So, we get more of these that we have to deliver in addition to everything else. I got tagged with 2 of them which cost me another 30 minutes.

So, I was seriously overloaded Tuesday. To compound matters, my boss gets on me about how long I'm taking. I'm fully aware of how long it's taking. I very much want to get the job done and go home. I very much am cursing the damn subs who called out who caused me to have to take all this extra mail. At one point, I'm ready to drive my mail truck back to the post office, unload it, leave and tell them I'll see them after Christmas. After all, I can always claim to not feeling well which would be true as I'm seriously stressing. Plus, if they can't fire the other craps, they shouldn't be able to fire me. Instead, I grit my teeth and keep slogging away. I end up racking up over 12 hours (my 2nd in a row) and go in early the next day to try to get a jump on the stuff. I end up working my 3rd 12 hour day. (groan) The only good thing about this whole mess is I will get a nice paycheck.

Thankfully, Christmas is tomorrow. The mail volume will start dropping and continue to drop through the summer. Also, I'm keeping my fingers crossed we get the 7 additional subs my boss requested. If we get those, the other subs who don't want to work can do so and, it won't affect me i.e. I won't have to pick up their slack. I look forward to the Christmas season winding down and getting a couple days off. I can seriously use them. Cheers all!

Snow!

Yesterday, the weatherman was predicting we were going to get royally clobbered snow wise today. They were predicting as much as 26 inches of snow. It turned out they got their predictions right. When I walked out to my car at 5:45 a.m., we already had at least 5 inches of the white stuff. Everyone at the Post Office wondered if we would get sent home. The weather predictions said it was only going to get worse. Worse still, the person who was supposed to put the chains on our mail trucks for some reason didn't. While a number of the trucks had good tires on them with good tread, it wasn't nearly enough to handle 8 plus inches of snow. Upper management decided we would try to deliver some of the mail and so, we were sent out with our automated sorted mail i.e. DPS mail. It turned out to be a fruitless attempt. The snow fall went from 2 inches an hour to 4! With already nearly a foot of snow on the ground, there was no way the trucks could get through it. As soon as the trucks were sent out, a number of them became stuck. In my personal case, I tried hard to get through and deliver my mail but, a number of the roads I had to deliver mail to weren't plowed. It was impossible to get through them. After getting royally stuck and only able to get free thanks to 2 awesome strangers who helped get my truck free, I gave up and very carefully made me way back to the post office where I work. All of the carriers both city and rural were called back. By Monday, the roads should be more passable and, we'll have to play catch up mail wise. The current snow fall is supposed to continue through tonight. It may look pretty but, it has made it impossible to get any where. Stay tuned for more updates. Cheers all!

Payraise

The word that those of us who work rural postal routes were going to be a payraise was confirmed today. I found out in my paycheck that my pay went up to $18.50 an hour. The payraise was part of the last contract the rural carriers union had negotiated with the Postal Service. The raise was 1.5% which in the case of substitute carriers worked out to 26 cents an hour. I was delighted to get any kind of raise at all. It'll help me pay off my bike, top up my IRA and pay off the future trip to Ireland I hope to do that much sooner.

Disgusted

Almost 2 weeks ago, we had a sub throw away mail. If there is anything you can't do at the Postal Service, that should've been it. The sub should've been fired. Did the sub get fired? Nope! The sub got a 2 week suspension without pay. I couldn't believe it. I told my boss you can get away with anything at the Post Office. My boss mumbled that if the sub messes up again, the sub will face even greater punishment and, this was the sub's first offense. This should've been the sub's first and LAST offense considering what the sub did. As far as greater punishment, big whoop! We've got a sub that has walked off the job 3 TIMES and, the sub is still there! We've got other subs that have been giving lines for months about childcare and, they're still getting away with it. I'm totally disgusted at this point. I feel like a total schmuck for trying to doing a good job and going the extra mile. I'm definitely not going to go the extra mile anymore. It isn't worth it. And, I'm not going to take anymore bumps after doing a route. That'll probably get me cut to 1 day a week. Fine! At least, I won't be the SCHMUCK who is out there at 7:30 in the evening delivering mail. They can find another dummy to do it. Plus, after every thing I've seen, I'm not terribly worried about getting fired. That seems next to impossible to do. Cheers all!