A Lost Week

Working at the Post Office

This week has been a "lost week" for me in that I have been working at my part-time post office job all week. The way this job works is that when the regular carrier wants a day off (or a week, in this case), I am first in line to work for him if I can. Well, this week he wanted off and I can see why!

A Big Hose

Think of working at the post office as being under a gigantic hose with "stuff" always coming out of it—stuff in the nature of letters, magazines, junk-mail (lots of junk mail, as you probably know from your own mail) and of course political mailings this time of year. Then think of no one ever shutting off the spicket to all this "stuff"!

Whenever there is a holiday on a Monday, the Tuesday after that is hellish. Next time there is a Monday holiday, see what time your mail comes—I'll bet it is late! I know I sure delivered it later than I normally do!

The Way it Works

It really is amazing how it all works. I have been astounded to find out how incredibly hard working at the post office really is, how great most of the people who work at the post office really are and what an incredibly difficult job they do day in and day out.

If you are a rural carrier like I am (actually, a substitute rural carrier), you get to the post office in the morning and there are flats (things larger than a typical letter, like magazines, fliers, large envelopes, etc.) and letters waiting for you. In my case, there are anywhere from 3-10 large "tubs" of flats and 4-10 trays of letters. I put all of that mail into the slots in cases (called casing the mail—I have almost 600 slots in the cases that I do). Some of the items in the tubs are sorted into the order that you deliver the mail (route order) and some not, but all of the letters (thank God!) are sorted in route order.  I spend anywhere from 3-6 hours standing and putting the flats and letters into their proper slots.

Once the flats and letters are sorted and "cased", I then see what my load of packages for the day looks like and assign those packages to the proper slots. Next comes pulling all the mail from the slots in the case and putting it in route order in large tubs. Once the mail is all pulled down and put into tubs (which usually takes me about an hour, depending on the amount of mail), I then load the mail truck. Then I get to go out and deliver the mail, which usually takes me about 3-4 hours.

The people who work at the post office are always trying to figure out how to get the mail that comes to them to the customers in better, faster ways. I can't say enough good about what they do while doing an incredibly difficult job.

The Crux of the Matter

So, I'm "over the hump" of 5 days of working at the post office and boy am I tired and sore. Working a day at the post office is like doing a week at the gym—you use muscles you have never even felt before! I have a love/hate relationship with this job. The pay is OK (but believe me, you don't get paid anywhere near enough), the stress is sometimes almost overwhelming and it is physically very demanding. And I am dreading Christmas! Did that already last year and even though it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, it was still something else! Boy am I dreading Christmas (I know, I already said that).

So, the next time you get your mail late or there is some problem with your mail, please be gentle with your mail carrier—it is one helluva hard job and they do the absolute best that they can do!

Until next time...