****DISCLAIMER****
Just because things are true at my post office doesn't mean they are true everywhere. Postmasters have a lot of discretionary power, and as long as the Unions aren't complaining, can very nearly do things how they please. Also, there are differences in rules between City and Rural carriers. As a Rural carrier, I'm not allowed to leave my car without good reason - City carriers often have stretches they walk instead of driving. I don't know all the rules. This is just what has filtered in from the 4 months I've been doing this
********************

There is a common misconception that my job is to deliver the mail. That's not precisely true. I often do deliver the mail, but my job is to attempt to deliver the mail. As long as the attempt is made, I have done my job, and neither I nor my supervisors cares that you didn't get yours. Technically, if I drive by your house with the mail in my vehicle, an attempt has been made. Of course I couldn't just drive through the whole route and bring all the mail back - there has to be some sort of reason to not deliver the mail.

It's easy to arrange things so that you won't get your mail, though. I am not allowed to back up. I am not allowed to leave my car unless it is an "authorized dismount." You parking in front of (or directly beside) your mailbox does not an authorized dismount make. Nor does putting your trashcan directly in front of the mailbox. If I cannot reach your mailbox from inside my vehicle, or cannot continue forward without backing up after reaching your mailbox, I don't have to deliver your mail. I might do it anyway, if I'm having a good day and don't want to have to handle your mail again tomorrow - but not only do I not have to, I'm not supposed to, so I have no problem driving right by your house without slowing down.

And I don't care. I'm not paid to care. I don't care that you didn't get your tax refund check this week. I don't care that your phone got turned off because you didn't get your bill (after leaving that broken down car with 3 flat tires parked in front of your mailbox all week)

And no, you ****ing ignorant ape, you don't pay me. I don't get your tax money. The postal service gets its money from postage, not from your income taxes. You probably don't know how to write, much less address a letter.

Also, you can't sue me. Definately not for spraying pepper spray at your unleashed dog. Yes, I do have animal control on speed dial. In this county, you'd probably face several thousand dollars in fines and having your dog put to sleep if it bit anyone - it would definately die if it bit me. I just saved your dogs life - shut up, apologize, thank me, but don't threaten me. (It's a spray for agressive dogs, issued to me by the post office, approved by the SPCA - no lasting physical damage to the dog, wears off after 10-15 minutes)

In fact, you couldn't sue me if I ran you over. You know why? I'm protected while I'm on the clock. I would lose my job, but you couldn't sue me personally. The legal limit the post office could be sued for is something like 30k? 35k? Not enough to retire off of. Stop threatening me already.

Also, I don't understand some people. How can you have a million dollar home and yet let your private road become so full of potholes you could get lost in one. How do you let that rusted up excuse for a mailbox sit in front of the same house you spend thousands of dollars a month landscaping? You can get a mailbox for like $10 at walmart, and yet hundreds of people on my route don't replace them when the doors fall off or they get hit by cars or smashed with bats. There are probably a half dozen crushed and broken mailboxes held onto their posts with bungee cords on my route. The main carrier could refuse to deliver to them until they've replaced it, but I'm just a sub, all I can do is whine.

When I signed up for this job, I thought it would be easy. I should have known that they don't pay this well for jobs that are easy. I should have known that they wouldn't have 75% of new hires not last the first year if the job was easy. I just didn't comprehend how frustrating it could be. The blocked mailboxes, the broken mailboxes, the old people who have nothing better to do than watch you out their windows and call up to complain about the slightest things. The quotas, time limits, supervisors who have never delivered a days mail and yet feel qualified to tell me how I should do it. Car problems, god, I've spent as much on my jeep as I've made so far. Forgetting to turn in box keys or scanners and having to drive 10 miles back to the post office at 6:00am the next morning to give them back, even though I'm not scheduled to work. Trying to handle two jobs, even though I can never know from 1 day to the next whether the post office will need me - handling 12 shifts one week, and then only 6 the next (between the two jobs) I go from exhausted to bored. Days when I work both jobs I'm so tired - get up at 4:30 in the morning and get home at midnight. Two days in a row? Yay for 4 hours sleep.

It's just a matter of holding on. If I can manage to keep this going until I become a full time carrier, then financially at least, life will be good. I've been there 4 months and gotten more than a dollars worth of pay increases. I've never before had a job that paid as much in overtime as I get now in straight pay. Just gotta focus on the good -

/sigh

I'm going back to bed. I worked 18 hours yesterday. God only knows whether I'll deliver mail every day next week, or be off until saturday.

no wonder fedEx and DHl are having good business

Plllth. Packages and items that have to be signed for ARE authorized dismounts. Those are the only things that those other companies handle. It's quite a bit different than when you're delivering bills and magazines and catalogs and junk mail to 900 houses. They give their drivers a workload that assumes they will dismount at every house. If I had to dismount at every house, I'd never get done, and my supervisor would kill me.

you learn something new everyday :P


see you don't ask for bill for home delivery unless you want it lost here in kuwait , you get a P O box like the thousand others

oh and magazines are handled by delivery companies like
http://www.saudi-distribution.com/
oh and newspapers have thier own drivers :P

The local paper here has it's own drivers, but lots get newspapers from out of state, and those get mailed. Also, the monthly spanish portion of the local paper gets mailed out instead of delivered using their own drivers.

I have a PO Box myself, and have had it for nearly 2 years. Seems simpler than changing my address when I move.

I had someone chase me down the street and yell at me because I didn't bring the welfare check they were expecting. It's not like I was hiding it from them - I brought all the mail I had for them. If it didn't come the day they expected it, it's not my fault. And yet, they yell.

This mail route is supposed to take roughly 9 1/2hours. Sometimes, on heavy volume days, or days with a lot of packages, it takes me 12. Thats without taking a lunch break. And often I leave there, change clothes, and go to job number 2.

But such is life.

Thank God for e-mail. :p

My postal lady is actually really hot. I keep trying to get her to come in for a drink...but she never takes me up on it.

I hardly ever get to see my postman, he usually comes to my house when I'm at work. But at least you don't have to climb up at least a flight of stairs for every delivery like he does, Solanar.

There's not a house on my block that has the mailbox/slot at street level, we all have them up by our front doors, which are a flight up (because we generally have our garages & basements on the ground floor, and our living spaces over that)

We have a guy that works here in the district office that has a nickname of "Squirrel Hunter". Apperently he subbed for one of the carriers that used to feed this particular squirrel every day. Well he walking the route and this squirrel starts following him around. He basiclly panics and MACES THE SQUIRREL! Bet it didnt come to the postman for nuts anymore. :p

I just got a thank you card from my carrier this weekend. I'm in a bit more of an urban setting and I always cut a path in the snow from my driveway to the neighbor's and he doesn't have to walk all the way back to the street and around to get to my house. I was actually quite surprised that he took the time to bother

I have to cut the pathway halfway across the yard anyway for my walkway to the door. The remaining distance I cut strictly so I can get around to my backyard where my shed is.

I'm a good USPS doobie. :p

I ran a city route just one time when they were really shorthanded, and on that route roughly 1/3 houses had the box by the door instead of at the road.

It was pretty awful, but I was able to make up some time by running. Since they base how long a route is supposed to take on many things, including number of dismounts, that was my one and only way to cut time.

Bah, a sub mailman maced our dog when I was a kid, for similar circumstances. The normal mailman often brought around small dog treats for the occasional bribe and just to be nice. The sub didn't know and when our dog ran to the fence he panic-maced.

But, in the sub's defense, Jhani, he's got no clue the regular guy feeds your dog treats. The dog sees mailman, and gets excited 'cause as far as the dog is concerned he sees: Extra Treat Guy. The sub sees dog bounding up to him and sees: dog which might be happy to see me, but might be coming to attack me, and I don't have more then a second or two to make a decision and I'd really rather not risk getting bit, so: *mace*

Yeah, I agree. It was just a sucky situation, not his fault that he didn't know what to expect.

The one and only dog I maced was basically herding me - away from my vehicle and german shepards aren't a dog I want to grab hold of me. These people never leash their dog, have no fence, and the regular mail carrier on that route had complained about it before. When I got out to deliver the package, I hadn't seen the dog at all, but halfway to the door it ran around the side of the house. After that, I didn't try to deliver their packages, I just left them a notice to pick it up at the post office. Which was probably inconvenient, because they seem to be mailorder fiends, but that is their problem.

They tried to threaten me for "attacking" their dog, but it was just stupid. Considering how harsh the local laws are, they're just lucky the dog hasn't bitten anyone bad enough for a hospital trip yet.

I delivered a pizza one night to some people who got stuck with 5k in fines and had their homeowners insurance dropped because their dog bit someone. They were given the option of a $2,500 fine and putting the dog down, or double the fine and keeping it alive.

Yeah I have an 80lb. German Shepherd and the mailman has maced it twice. It is the sweetest dog ever to most people but it HATES the mailman. It got out on two seperate occassions (one where it opened the front door by itself) and started to viciously bark at the mailman. I dont blame the mailman at all but i do feel sorry for my dog.

Lord, that sounds like my godmother's former neighbor's Doberman named Razor. Was probably at least as tall, if not taller, as me when I was 3 and would follow me around like I was the moon, sun, and stars.. but this sweet dog jumped through a plate glass picture window to get at the mailman... on three seperate occasions.

My own dog when I was living out in "da country" was a Shepherd/Boxer mix, and I swear he could hear the UPS truck from a mile away. Minutes before we even saw the truck arrive in the neighborhood, he'd be at the door, hair on end, barking, growling, and snarling, because he knew that the 'Brown' sound = person at door. The USPS truck - no reaction ... it was a rural route and they delivered at the end of the driveway. Dang smart dog, miss him.

You never fail to amaze me.

And the point of your post was?

Edit: clarification

I bolded and increased the font of the point to his post.

Um... point please?

I think I know what stalkyr is talking about, but I'm not sure I can put it into the right words. And by this, I mean there is indeed a point.

Dont talk about them things blaze!

If I had to guess, it would be your ability to

a) have a personal anecdote about pretty much anything (your grandmother's former neighbor's doberman? wtf?). This isn't really anything to worry about. I've got one too, which probably explains why my classes are running about 3 weeks behind the schedule I had set for them at the beginning of the semester.

b) provide unnecessary detail within said anecdotes. LOL wtf cares what the doberman's name was? I actually prefer more detail to less. Razor and I have a connection that we didn't have before. Well probably Razor is dead, so we don't really have much of a connection afterall. But even so, I like it.

Poor Razor

I had a chow mix puppy when I was in jr high that our mailman maced apparently because she woke up from a nap. I was at camp at the time but apparently he stepped on the porch she woke up and he sprayed her. My mom and my brother didn't hear her bark or growl before she started wimpering and whining from being maced. The part that gets me is she was a PUPPY! A little black puff ball and this idiot mail man felt threatened by her. Now years later I could have understood him being threatened she got an attitude about anyone in uniform after that happened, mailmen, police, even my dad if he was in his military dress. Then the wonderfull post master in our town sent us a LETTER telling us our mail wouldn't be delivered untill we took care of our dog, and either kept her chained out of reach of the mailbox or locked inside. How in the **** are you supposed to get a letter saying you're not going to recieve any more letters?

F-

Nah, I just don't post in those threads in which I don't have an anectdote or a bit of personal experience in.

Just to make you even more annoyed...

A former landlady had an obnoxious mini fox terrier (name was "Bruiser" - more like a "bruise" ) that did bite the mailman, and she had the affrontery to be pissed off when the mailman threatened to punt the dog into the next county if it bit him again. Was a nasty little dog, took after his owner.

But the question is, do you ever not post a story that you have?

Yeah, I don't post all the time, nor on every thread that's interesting to me, just while I'm tryin' to maintain a little sanity at work. /shrug

Are any of you actually saying you don't like Delissandra's little anecdotes and little stories in a story?

I enjoy em.

Vilk

I don't mind them at all.

Besides, it's not like any of us here hasn't posted something completely ****ing useless before. I know 99.9% of my posts have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand...but I crack myself up, so **** it.

The moderators have advised me to answer this question with the following statement.

No comment.

Well it beats the **** out of whatever the latest "Why are only psycho women attractive to my sensitive shy self?" post is, there's always one around and there's always a new suc.. guy for one. (answer: Psycho women are like large hungry African cats, they smell your weakness and are as attracted to it as a lion is to a bleeding baby wilderbeast. Try it, tell the next one you only care about her because she takes less time to inflate than a sex doll and performs almost as well as one, see if she sticks around to hound your life after that)

Or the latest discussion about anime series. Got nothing against anime but since I don't watch anime series discussions about specific ones bores me. Or the latest religion vs politics, pope - satan or saint, gun control through abortion, or random_flash_movie03 single liner comments. I like to read thinsgs I haven't read 89 times before, and those 89 instances being just in the last 3 months.

Don't hold back, man. Tell us how you really feel.

Sounds like an interesting idea. I would like to hear more about this.