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!