Crazy Week at the Post Office

It has been a crazy week at the Post Office where I work. One of the problems my Post Office has is we need more substitute carriers. We have a number of subs who can only work 1 day a week. That causes real problems when carriers start calling out sick like this past week. We had 2 regulars do that. Another problem that causes is that we have to use subs from other Post Offices to cover the routes. This is always iffy because if their Post Office needs them on short notice, we're screwed. That very thing happened this past Friday. A sub was scheduled to do a route for us and at the last minute his Post Office called him and told him they needed him to work. So, we had to break up one route because of that. What breaking up a route means is that the subs working that day split the route and deliver those parts in addition to the full route they're doing already. This makes for a long day obviously. Another problem being short subs causes is when one gets unexpectedly sick. A regular was supposed to work his route Friday and then he remembered it was his birthday. He wanted to take the day off for that. We called the sub in and initially, he was able to case the mail. Then, he started throwing up. So, we had to break up a second route because we didn't have any subs who could carry the entire thing.

Our sub problem won't get better because the Postal Service is in massive limbo. If Congress approves us going to a 5-day delivery week, we won't need a lot of the subs we have. If it doesn't, we'll need more subs. Until the decision is made on this, the Postal Service won't hire any new subs. That makes sense as it doesn't want to hire people and then have to let them go shortly afterwards. But, it leaves us in a real bind. The good thing of sorts for me is it means I'll get more hours which will help with the bills. I say of sorts because, there are weeks when I'd rather have a day off instead. This week, I'm not scheduled to work Wednesday but, I won't be surprised if I get called in. I've learned repeatedly that just because you're not scheduled doesn't mean you won't end up working. We'll see what happens with the continuing saga at my Post Office. Cheers all!