crazypostal.com

To: Marty Fortier

Coeur d’Alene Press

RE: Fighting ‘The Femail Man’

It’s too bad that this story gets lost in gender wars.  The real story is automation is pushing the limits of human endurance.  We are about to go to the next level of automation in our office.  In the months to come we will lose people to automation who are the middle postal workers who route the mail to each carrier.

The carrier will have to add more customers to each route to make up for what automation will take away especially on rural routes but also city routes and CDS routes.

We have a formula that will give us 2 minutes per each box per 6-day week if we maintain a route with fewer than 12 boxes per mile, (impossible after the next phase in of automation.)

The minute we go over 12 boxes per mile we get 1.82 minutes per box per week.  If we deliver to a central box, (apartments, trailer parks, business, new housing developments use central boxes,) we only get 1 minute per box per week.  (The Postal Service can potentially save 2 billion a year with delivery to central boxes.)  That’s not 1 minute per day, but 1 minute per 6 days of mail delivery, (you do the math.)

The formula is computed on the lowest volume month of the year, February and the luck of the draw of what mail might show up then verses the rest of the work year.  An inventory is made of every piece and type of mail, plugged into a formula that is used to pay us for all of the year, (the rest of the year mail volume is heavier than the post-Christmas slump,) leaving us with nothing but hustle on our minds to get our routes finished before the sun sets and the last dispatch truck leaves.  I’m a rural carrier and I don’t get paid by the hour, but by the above method.

That pace of delivering mail is maintained even on light mail days, not just out of habit, but also because it is figured into the formula and lets us go home early.  Some customers will complain because we burn up the road to achieve our mission as efficiently as possible, but if customers start leaving mailboxes blocked with kids toys, trash cans, pit bulls, farm animals, parked cars, overhanging limbs and branches, or snow on any significant amount of our routes, we will be delivering in the dark and past the last dispatch truck that takes the mail we collect for delivery.

When we walk our walking sections to deliver to houses should it be necessary for us to come armed with deadly force to defend against that loose Rotweiler that is known to kill more people than any other dog including Pit bulls?

Now the post office has essentially merged with DHL, UPS, and FedEx for sharing the delivery loads.  They say we have a monopoly on the mailbox.  That has essentially disappeared over night.  I have delivered DHL, UPS, and FedEx parcels on my route.  I’m sure they are doing the same with USPS products.

If we got paid for all the real services we provide, especially pruning customers trees and shrubs, moving kids toys, the price of postage would skyrocket which is not in our best interest or the general publics best interest.

The postal service has a zero tolerance for missing the dispatch trucks with outgoing mail.  We are penalized if we are late for that truck.  Methods of punishment include changing our start times, cutting the size of our routes, (hence cutting our pay,) and forcing different casing methods that force us onto the street transferring the workload to the street which makes us do the work, (that could be accomplished so much easier in the office,) to the street.

We have been called glorified paper boys by some members of congress who are trying appeal to those who would transfer every penny of the postage stamp that pays for our services into their own advertising pockets, (yes Marty, you were once one of those on the congressional dole if you were an ad exec and as a writer still are,) while working us into the ground before we can collect a retirement pension, (which I might add was radically changed when it was moved to FERS from CSRS,) but those who make those kind of statements don’t realize the work that goes into delivering a paper route much less serving the number of people we serve daily delivering mail, selling postal products, picking up and delivering parcels and mail, and offering friendship to those whom we serve.

Our local surgeons know us by first name for constant knee, wrist and shoulder repair for the damage repetitive and awkward motions cause that we endure to deliver the mail efficiently.  Just try it during the heavy months of the year.  We must maintain an average speed of 10-15 miles per hour just to stay within the time allotted to do the job.  That doesn’t sound like much in terms of speed, but when you take into account we have to come to a full stop, collect outgoing mail, sell stamps, and deliver parcels to the door, well, our average speed doesn’t reflect our true speed.

If you were to drive where you had to stop quickly, accelerate quickly, constantly watching out over your shoulder for speeding customers who hate to get caught behind a delivery vehicle for even 10 seconds, making constant turns down every cul-de-sac, private drive, and street on your line of travel, you would find the same stresses on your neck and lower lumbar that a fighter pilot endures.  (We hire a lot of those by the way.)

That very friendship we establish with our patrons can get taxed when we are under pressure to deliver the amount of mail that we now have to face each and every delivery day that will only double by the end of next year.

Thanks so much for the cookies and milk, the walnuts, the fruit and other goodies my appreciative friends supply me who know the meaning of a fair days pay for a fair amount of work and I have so many on my own route who have toiled for a living and know what I endure daily.  I’ve been delivering for nearly 2 decades to the same customers and we know and appreciate each other well.

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