A Week at the Post Office

I survived working five very long days at the Post Office this week. The primary carrier for route 10 decided to take 4 days off and I did my usual sub for route 2 today. By accident, I got to do all of route 10 by myself Monday. It took me almost 13 hours to sort, case, and deliver all the mail and packages. At the end of the day, I was having to strain to read the names on the boxes as it was getting dark outside. Management wasn't thrilled about how long it took me and sent me help on the route every day afterwards. As I kept working the route, I gradually got faster and believe I would've gotten it done Thursday in 11 and 1/2 hours. The reason route 10 takes so long is first, there are a lot of addresses to deliver mail to (729 if everyone received mail). Second, route 10 requires two sorts vice one on route 2. You do an initial sort at the Post Office then, you do a second sort into the individual boxes when you arrive at the multi-mail box. Since route 10 has a lot of apartments which people move into and out (route 2 has a lot of homes where people tend to stay put more), I found I'd have to do a third sort of all the undeliverable mail. All first class and periodicals would be forwarded whereas all standard mail is discarded. Lastly, I've had a hard time finding some of the apartments or row homes on route 10 which has further slowed me down. I think it's just going to take time.

One encouraging sign job wise is that I done route 2 three times by myself and twice I've gotten back to the Post Office before 5:30 p.m. For those of you who don't know, all outgoing mail must be in by 6 p.m. so it can be put on the truck that will take it to the processing and distribution center in Capitol Heights, Maryland. If a carrier arrives back late, the mail may fail to make the truck and not get out till the next morning. I suspect such late mail hurts the Post Office's stats as far as to how much of their outgoing mail they get out on time.

Overall, I'm pleased that I'm making progress and getting better. I can't wait to see the check I'll get for this week. I'll get paid according to how many hours it's been assessed that it takes to do the two different routes I did, not how many I actually worked. In the case of route 10, it's been assessed that it takes 9 hours to do the route. Route 2 takes 8 hours. So, I'll get paid for 36 hours (four days) for route 10 and 8 hours for route 2. If I understand it right, I may get 4 hours of overtime which would really be sweet as that would be $24 plus an hour. We'll see.