Problem Sub

One of our problem subs got me again. This sub is known for calling out on Mondays or the day after a holiday. I don't know whether it's because they don't want to deal with the higher amount of mail i.e. laziness or they are hungover from their partying i.e. excessive debauchery. Whatever the reason, I wasn't thrilled to get contacted at 5:30 this morning that I was needed to do their route. Grrrrrr! I wanted big time to do the same back but, it wouldn't have hurt the sub who called out. So, I went in and did the route. One blessing of sorts is that I got added for 2 more days on another route which means I'll hit my 40 hours this week and get paid for every thing I worked. On days after a holiday, it's impossible to hit the accessed time and, you end giving the Postal Service some free hours unless you hit your 40.

Postal Service Issues T-Shirts

Yesterday, I got to work for the first time in 3 days. I was delighted to have 3 whole days off. I needed them after working 7 weeks in a row of overtime. While casing the mail for the route I was assigned to, my boss comes over and asks my shirt size. I told him and wondered why he needed it. It turned out the Postal Service issued everyone t-shirts promoting the flat rate priority boxes they're pushing. All carriers have been ordered to wear the t-shirts on Wednesdays. I have no idea why the Postal Service picked Wednesday. This is the first clothing item the Postal Service has ever issued me. Rural carriers don't have uniforms and so aren't issued any clothing items. I bought myself all the t-shirts I wear at work saying rural carrier as well as my Postal Service hat. The only thing we have that identifies us with the Postal Service is our badge. I find it a trip. So, I'll be wearing my new official Postal Service t-shirt next Wednesday. I'll have to write myself a note on my dry erase board so I don't forget to wear it. Cheers all!

$20 An Hour

I got floored by something today. My Postmaster called everyone together for a short meeting. He announced that they were going to hire 5 new temporary city substitute carriers. These 5 were out of 10 that showed up for interviews. That's no big deal. What is astonishing is that 25 people were scheduled for interviews. You say what's so big about that. This is for a job that requires no prior experience, no degree, you'll get on the job training and get paid during that training and it pays $20 an hour! I haven't seen too many jobs out that pay that kind of money with no prior experience or degree. Also, remember the economy is seriously stinking right now so you would think that people would just at such a job. It floors me that less than half of those that were scheduled showed up. While the Postal Service is in a load of hurts, you can still make good money there right now. I know this from personal experience. Those people who didn't show up for those interviews missed a chance to make some good money. Cheers all!

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!

5 Day Delivery

I saw in the news where the Postmaster General requested Congress remove the 6 day delivery requirement. He'd like the Postal Service to go to 5 days a week delivery wise. This would save a lot of money as it would cut down significantly the amount of overtime the Postal Service would have to pay potentially. From my side of the woods however, this would be devastating financially. The Postal Service wouldn't be able to guarantee me at least 1 day of work anymore. The consistent time I'm needed as a substitute carrier right now is on the regular carrier's day off i.e. their 6th day. If we go to 5 days a week, the regular carrier won't have a day off they need a substitute carrier for anymore. The Postal Service will still need substitute carriers to cover for when the carrier's take annual leave or calls out sick but, those days are sporadic. I believe the Postal Service will have a hard time attracting substitute carriers if this goes through. I suspect it will. For me, I'll just have to bite the bullet and look for a second job though that'll be hard to find with the bad economy at the moment.

Hard Day at the Post Office

I had a very hard day at the Post Office yesterday. I knew I would before I went in. We had a 3-day weekend thanks to Martin Luther King day. Holidays are bad for mail carriers. Just because you don't get any mail doesn't mean your mail isn't being processed. The Postal Service runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a week. The mail continued to be processed. All the holiday did was prevent it from being delivered which caused headaches for the carriers as that meant there was that much more mail to be delivered when they came back to work. That's what I faced yesterday. I had 3 days worth of mail to sort, pack-up and deliver. It was going to be a hard day made worse by the route I was on. The route I worked is one of my least favorite routes because, it has a lot of apartments that people move in and out of. This causes a lot of undeliverable mail that I have to bring back. Second, the route is all multi-mailboxes which means I have address ranges in the mail case. Example: I have one mail slot at the mail case for an entire condo building. There will be at least 12 condos in that building. This will make it easy to case at the Post Office BUT, I'll have to sort the mail again when I get to the condo. This is a real pain and, it causes me to be out on the street a LONG time. Yesterday, I was out delivering mail for 7 hours in the cold windy weather. It was a real pain. I was seriously glad when I got done and could go home. I definitely earned my money yesterday. Still, it'll help pay off my future trips so it was worth it. Cheers all!

Layoffs

I saw a blog entry on http://returnoftheconservatives.blogspot.com/ mentioning that the U.S. Postal Service plans to layoff 40,000 workers. I've heard this before and, I believe they do plan layoffs for the first time in their history. I know for a fact they are offering early retirement to full time carriers. One city carrier I know at the Post Office where I work has put in his paperwork and is counting the days till he leaves. I'll be saddened to see him go as he is a really good joe and, as far as I know, a good mail carrier too.

Return of the Conservatives blog entry mentions that the Postal Serviced is bloated. I can state unequivocally that at the Post Office where I work, that isn't true. We have 2 custodians doing the job of 5. We have at least 4 city routes that they haven't filled with full time carriers. Because of that, other city carriers have to take pieces of these routes and carry them in addition to their regular routes.

On the rural side, we don't have enough substitute carriers though that problem is complicated. We have substitute carriers that will only work 1 day a week and aren't able to come in on short notice. The reason they do that is because they have other full time jobs. I can understand why they keep their full time jobs (the Post Office won't guarantee them more than 1 day a week) but, it creates real problems for the few subs that will come in on short notice. Those few subs tend to get tagged a LOT and that isn't right. Another problem we have sub wise is we have some bad eggs. We have one sub that has been written up at least EIGHT times and, they still can't fire that sub. That sub is now refusing to carry any route that sub doesn't like. If that sub gets assigned to a route the sub doesn't like, the sub calls out sick. The sub refuses to provide documentation that the sub was legitimately sick. Guess why. This "can't fire us mentality" is a major problem at the Postal Service.

The bad economic times promise to make things harder at a time when the Post Office is already having problems. High gas prices have really clobbered the Postal Service though this has let up some with the price of gas coming down though that won't last. More and more people are paying their bills on-line is hurting the Postal Service as it costs them their bread and butter mail i.e. First Class. And, can you remember the last time you actually wrote someone a letter? That hurts the Postal Service too. With the bad economic times, advertisers will cut back the fliers they mail. You say that's great. I say you're wrong. It's those fliers that are now paying for your mail service. Cut back on those fliers and the price of 1st class stamp may have to go higher which conversely will hurt the Postal Service as more people will turn to paying their bills on-line. It's a real problem. Ironically, this comes when the Postal Service is doing a better job than ever at delivering your mail. And, we offer good value. A study I saw recently showed that we did just as good a job as FedEx or UPS with Express Mail i.e. we promise to deliver it to the address by Noon and we were as much as 30% cheaper. Unfortunately, the word doesn't seem to be getting out about that.

Times promise to be hard for the Postal Service for at least the next year. The Postal Service needs to be more responsive to its customers and postal employees need to get out of this mindset that their jobs are absolutely safe. While the postal unions can offer some job security, there is a limit to it. The upcoming layoffs prove that. In the coming times, the greatest security those working at the Postal Service will have will be on how well they take care of their customers. Take care of the customer and, you'll stay in business (and the Postal Service is a business). Fail to do so and someone will take the Postal Service's place. FedEx and UPS and have shown that.

Postal Service Loss

I read an article on the Associated Press this past week that stated that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) lost 1.1 billion dollars this past quarter (http://govexec.com/dailyfed/0808/080608ap2.htm). I thought I'd offer my 2 bits on this. First, summer time is the worst time of the year in regards to mail volume for the Post Office. I've seen considerably less mail these past 3 to 4 months than I do during the rest of the year. This is the norm. Personally, I like the lower volumes as it means I can get my route done quicker and I end up giving the Post Office fewer free hours. Second, the price of gas is really clobbering the Post Office. The Post Office has one of the largest fleets of vehicles per a U.S. company in the country. On some of the routes I deliver on, you have to drive from box to box. It would take far too long to deliver the mail walking. I think I saw a statistic some where that stated the Postal Service loses 8 million dollars for every penny the price of gas goes up. Considering how much gas has gone up, you can see how badly the Postal Service has gotten clobbered. Lastly, the service is trying to keep costs down. I know on the city side at our Post Office that they are having more open routes i.e. routes that don't have a salaried carrier. These routes have to be carried by the other city carriers. Also, our Post Office is cracking down on mis-thrown parcels. If a parcel is shipped Priority or First Class, we must deliver it the day we receive it. Mis-thrown parcels by the clerks can make it necessary for us to send a carrier (at $17.98 an hour) out to deliver a $4 parcel. By cutting down on mis-thrown parcels, we're able to save money and parcel runs.

The Postal Service is facing some incredible challenges. On-line bill paying is really hurting the service. People prefer to email or text message vice writing letters. Also, competition from FedEx and UPS is tough. Ironically, the Post Office offers a great deal in Express Mail but, a lot of people still prefer to use FedEx or UPS. Postal work remains labor intensive though the service has tried and continues to try to automate as much as possible. There has been a serious reduction in the number of clerks because of automation. The service also has a real challenge getting people who can do the job. A lot of people in this country don't realize just how hard it is to deliver the mail. I know, I was one of them. We have a high attrition rate among new hires. One of the things I've had to do is encourage the newbes to stick it out. The job is very hard until you start to figure out where various addresses are on the mail case. Lastly, I think the Postal Service is a great bargain. You can still mail a letter across the country for just 42 cents. With high gas prices, competition and communication advances, the future promises to be very challenging for the U.S. Postal Service and its employees.

Heat

One of the hardest things that a mail carrier has to deal with is the weather. It isn't a cliche when the mail service says that neither rain nor sleet nor cold will stop the mail from getting through. The Postal Service means it. Yesterday, I got to deal with another weather element: Heat. The temperature was in the high 90's and it may have hit 100. You walked out of the Post Office and you could feel the heat at once. You promptly started sweating. You work as quickly as you can so you can get back to the Post Office and out of the heat. Also, you take plenty of fluids with you. It's easy to get dehydrated while you're delivering the mail. You're out in the heat for a long time. Yesterday, I was out in it for over 3 and 1/2 hours. The postal trucks have fans in them but these do little good in the heat. All they end up doing is blowing hot air into your face which may make the situation worse.

The forecast for the neat 5 days predicts temperatures in the 90's. It promises to be a hard week. Luckily, I'm scheduled to do Express Mail for 3 days. I'm hoping the schedule doesn't change. With Express Mails, you're outside a max of 90 minutes. That's one of the nice things about Express Mails. The bad thing about them is you are very pressed for time. The Post Office means it when they promise to deliver your package by Noon the next day. They won't accept any excuses from the carrier. We'll see how it goes.

Post Office Update

I got to deliver Express Mails today. For some reason, it was heavy today. We got 27 of them covering 4 different zip codes. That's a lot and we only had a little over 90 minutes to deliver them all. By the time I got done writing up all the PS Form 3849s for them (the form people have to sign), I had 75 minutes to deliver 14 of them. I had to haul some butt to get it done. Also, as part of the deal of getting the regular carrier to let me use his truck, I had to fill it up with gas. Our Post Office is tight on vehicles and we don't have a couple we could use just for them. Sometimes, I've had to use my car to deliver them. In that case, I'd get paid for the milage but I doubt it covers the cost of gas and wear and tear on my car. The main advantage of using my car is that I don't have to go to the various carriers and talk them into letting me use their truck. Carriers can be reluctant to let me use their truck because it could hold them up. I did my best to get the Express Mails I had done as quickly as possible but, it still took me over an hour and 45 minutes by the time I got back to the Post Office. The carrier who loaned me his truck was ready to go and waiting by the time I got back. I was sorry about that though there was nothing I could do about it.

On a different subject, it looks like the route adjustments will take effect soon. I know one of the powers that be was in today. He was plugging in the information for all the routes into the computer. I'll find out if I'll get an auxiliary route and how long it will be. The auxiliary route was supposed to be 2 hours but it might be less since they plan to move parts of routes to other routes to bring up their delivery times. I'm not worried as far as how things will go. I'm just curious to see what the changes will be. Any way it goes, things will work out.

Transfer

One of the great ironies of working at the U.S. Postal Service is that it is one of the worst organizations to try to transfer from one state to another. It is ironic when you consider that no other organization/company has more branches throughout the U.S. than the U.S. Postal Service. In my case, I'd like to transfer to a post office that is in the York, PA area or to some post office close to I-83 in northeast Maryland. As either of those two areas are outside the Capital District that I'm currently part of, I'll have to take the rural carrier exam AGAIN even though I've been doing the job for almost 2 years now. Worst still, if I get picked up by a post office in the York area or northern Maryland area, I'll go to the bottom of the list of the subs at that Post Office. What does that mean? It means that I'll get the fewest hours and will be the last to get a route when one opens up. In order to transfer to the new post office, I'll forfeit all the seniority I currently have. It's one of the things that really bites working for the Postal Service.

New Scanners

We received new digital scanners at the Post Office this past weekend. I don't know why the Post Office decided to go with the new scanners. The old ones seemed to work fine and they were pretty indestructible as I can testify as having accidentally dropped the things a few times. The new scanners are convenient in some ways and give a back-up to the form 3849's we have people sign when we have a package needing a signature confirmation or if its insured. Convenience wise, we no longer have to punch in the last four of our social security number when we log into the scanners. Instead, we have a bar code tag on our Post Office ID cards which we scan. Once we scan that bar code, the scanners will remember our name, social and route we worked that day in its system. In regards to a back up for the form 3849's, the new scanners scan in the signature of the person signing for the letter or package. This gives a digital image which can serve as an additional record to the form 3849. It's possible this image can be shown to the customer who requested the signature from whomever was receiving the mailed item.

Postal Service Exam

I received the results from the U.S. Postal Service exam I took over three weeks ago. To my disappointment, I scored 82.7. I'd hoped to score higher though I did get a passing score. According to my sister Ellie, my name now goes on a list and I'll get called once the Post Office gets down to my score. Considering how I scored, that could be a while. Oh well. To be completely honest, I'm more concerned about another test I took a couple weeks ago. If I pass that test, I'll get to go into the Air Force Reserve and return to my old job. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I passed that test. We'll see.

Updated Sealing Wax

I've discovered a better way of using sealing wax on letters. I found out there is a thing called a melting spoon. While a melting spoon doesn't look like a spoon, it handles like one and enables a person to melt enough sealing wax to do just one or two seals. The biggest advantage of using a melting spoon is that you don't have any sealing wax that is on fire dropping on to your letter. What you do is place enough sealing wax into the small metal cup at the end of the spoon. You then hold the cup over a candle or lighter until the wax melts in the metal cup. Once the wax is melted, you pour the wax onto your letter, and then press whatever seal you're going to use into the hot wax. Since no flame makes direct contact with the wax, there isn't any way for it to catch on fire and possibly set your letter on fire. This is obviously a huge advantage over using sealing wax sticks that have wicks in them. I've used sealing wax sticks with wicks and I've had letters catch on fire at least two or three times because of them.

Another advantage of using a melting spoon is that you can use sealing wax beads. The beads are cheaper per seal then sealing wax sticks. Using LetterSeals.com's sealing wax beads, the cost of a wax seal is just 8 cents vice 35 cents using sealing wax sticks.

The one disadvantage with a melting spoon is trying to buy one. I searched for one and finally found one as part of a set sold by bridal people.com (I've removed the link here). The set costs $32.25 not including shipping. (THIS OFFER IS NO LONGER VALID.) The set comes with a melting spoon, a packet of red sealing wax beads, a stick of silver sealing wax, a small portable burner so you can have something to melt the wax in your melting spoon while your travelling, and three seals (a fleur-de-lis, a fish, and an anchor). Considering that a seal alone can cost you over $8 each, the set is a good value. Still, I do wish I could buy the melting spoon separately.

Updated December 24, 2012

Since people are reading this blog entry, I decided to check it and see if it needed updating. It did. First, as far as I can tell, the bridal people web site I posted no longer sells the set I mention. Second, you can buy a sealing wax melting spoon by itself from www.letterseals.com for $12.50 plus shipping. You will need something to heat the spoon so the wax will melt. I use a small alcohol burner which does a fine job of heating the spoon. Lastly, as an fyi, if you mail a letter with a wax seal on it, you will have to put an extra 17 cents postage on it if mailed in the United States. I believe the reason for it is because it increases the WIDTH of the letter or invitation and, U.S. Postal Service does charge extra for wide/thick letters. I remember my step-mother Kay getting hit with a postage due notice from the postal service because I'd put a wax seal on the letter I mailed her. Also, you may want to put an extra sheet of paper around your letter in the envelope so, you're letter doesn't get messed up where the seal is put. I believe the wax can cause writing on the letter in the envelope to smear like it would if you accidentally poured some kind of liquid on the letter.