MailmanDave
17 Years Experience
Long Island, NY
Male, 43
I am a City Letter Carrier for the US Postal Service in NY. I've been a city letter carrier for over 17 years and it is the best job I've ever had. I mostly work 5 days per week (sometimes includes a Saturday) and often have the opportunity for overtime, which is usually voluntary. The route I deliver has about 350 homes and I walk to each of their doors to deliver the mail. Please keep in mind that I don't have authority to speak for the USPS, so all opinions are solely mine, not my employer.
Kathryn, I'm sorry for the mistake that seems to have been made by the USPS in not delivering your package to your customer and then incorrectly returning it to you. As far as I know there is no way to get a reimbursment for that error, but I don't work in the customer service/retail part of the USPS operation so I can't say for sure. Did you verify that the exact address is correct? It sounds to me like you did verify it. Good luck and thanks for writing.
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If there is a forwarding request on file for a certain name at a certain address, it is possible that the letter would be automatically forwarded to the new addrEss. We have an automated system that does this. The problem is that it doesn't catch every forwardable letter. it is possible that the letter gets accidentally delivered to the old address. One option is to write the letter to the old address and write "please forward" somewhere on the envelope. That may alert the carrier that the letter needs to be forwarded.
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I can't comment on your particular situation, but maybe I misspoke about no discipline as long as you are doing your job. I agree that taking a day off does sound like discipline. Did you call the SUpv to say you couldn't make the 3PM deadline? They shouldn't be so hard on you in the first week, though going over by 4.5 hrs is quite a bit. Any chance of somebody training you better to be more efficient as you deliver? These are just some suggestions.
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As far as I know if a letter requires a signature to be delivered (i.e. registered or certified), the letter carrier should make an attempt to get a signature at the intended address and not just leave a PS3849 Notice of Attempted Delivery. You may call the Post Office to have the item redelivered and you may leave the signed notice for the carrier to pick up and leave the registered item if all parties feel comfortable doing that.
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So you didn't put your street address in there at all? If you only have city state and zip, I'd recommend contacting the PO somehow and explaining what happened. Hopefully they won't have sent it back for insufficient address.
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Jordan, first of all, thank you for writing in to this Q and A board. I don't know the rules as far as sending back mail because you haven't emptied your box for a week or two and your box is not full. If I were the letter carrier, I would just continue to deliver mail until the box is full and then probably return any future mail endorsed "box full" to the senders (or discard the mail if it is unendorsed Standard Class mail.) I don't recall ever coming across this situation in my postal career, but if it came about I'd probably ask my supervisor for direction. It is not in my nature to leave any notes (esp. threatening ones) for the most part.
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I have deleted one version of this question because it was posted twice. It is a very good question and I will try to be as clear as I can with the how and why of bidding for routes. Firstly, we bid for routes (or assignments, as it isn't always an actual mail delivery route) so that we are doing the same assignment every day in accordance with a collective bargaining agreement between the USPS and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC). It allows carriers to choose what assignment (delivery route, collection route, parcel post route, floater route (which fills in for carriers on 5 routes on their days off and pays a slightly higher wage)) they would like to work. It is based on seniority at a specific installation, not necessarily when you were hired by the USPS. For example, if you transfer from an office in Maryland to an office in Florida, you will likely lose your local seniority putting you at the bottom of the list with regards to bidding on vacant assignments. There are probably some exceptions to this rule and often in cities there may be several delivery stations that you can bid between and not lose seniority if you bid from one station to another. I am no expert in this as I have always worked in the same post office my entire career. I think it is the fairest system around and am a big advocate of seniority based assignments. The airline industry uses it for Pilots and Flight Attendants to choose what equipment they would like to fly, what routes, what cities they would like to be based in, etc. Anyhow, back to the USPS. I am sure there is a process of online bidding, but for vacant assignments in my local post office that are put up for bid, here is how it works. Management will post a sheet a paper called a Notice of Vacancy of an Assignment. The notice will specify the assignment (usually the route #), the specifics of the shift times and days off. The notice will also specify the dates that bidding is open. It is usually a 10-day period. The supervisor will have a locked box on their desk and pink bid cards (blank) available for regular carriers to fill out to bid on the assignment and put the bid in the box. Once the bidding period has expired, the supervisor and union shop steward will open the bid box and sort all of the valid bids by seniority date. The top 3 bidders based on seniority are then announced. The winner then has 3 workdays to try the new assignment and then can decide to keep it or not. If they decide not to keep it, the 2nd and 3rd place bidders can then try out the assignment. It rarely goes past the 2nd place bidder in my experience. I hope this answers your question and thank you for writing.
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