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.
I don't know but my guess would be 6 months or less. I don't know if there is still a test that needs to be taken to be hired as a City Carrier Assistant and how frequently the test is given. Many years ago, this exam wasn't given too frequently. Now I hear nothing about it so maybe it's an ongoing hiring process, where they are continuously hiring and training. From what I hear anecdotally, and what I personally see in my workplace we defintitely could use some new hires. It seems the demand for letter carriers exists, but the hiring of qualified candidates who make it through probation isn't keeping pace with that demand. Good luck to you!
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Usually a point of delivery that has been establish (whether it be a group of cluster boxes in a trailer park or individual mailboxes at each trailer) doesn't get changed easily. I wouldn't accept a request like that to be made as that makes us less efficient and if it's done for one customer, others could claim they want it delivered to the house as well.
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Two good questions that are easy to answer. 1) there is no radio in the LLV which I drive. It's possible some postal vehicles have radios but not the one I use. Some carriers bring a portable radio with them or listen on their mobile devices to music or podcasts. I listen to podcasts while delivering the mail. I have one ear with the earphone in it and the other left open so I can hear any traffic or people looking to get my attention. We are probably not supposed to work with both ears covered.
2) I get both a pension and a 401(K) type program since I'm employed by a quasi-governmental organization. The pension is called FERS (federal employees retirement system) and the 401(K)-type program is called the Thrift Savings Plan. Along with Social Security, they make up the 3 "legs" of the retirement system under which I'm covered. The TSP offers a lot of potential growth because you can contribute a lot of your earnings plus the USPS matches some of your contributions. You choose how aggressive of an investor you want to be with your TSP contributions. Thanks for your questions and asking something I actually know about. Many of the questions here I can only answer by my experience not necessarily what the rules may be or how different people would act in a situation.
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Definitely. It's never been an issue as far as I know to take a bathroom break as needed even if it means leaving the street you are delivering mail on to go use a lavatory at a public business. That's what I usually do. I'll leave my route and go to a gas station or the public library that are near my route as needed.
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When a route goes up for bid due to a vacancy, it is usually first offered in the office or city (if there are multiple stations combined into one bidding unit). If nobody bids that assignment and there are no unassigned regular letter carriers in the bidding unit, the assignment might be posted as available through the eReassign system. This is the way that letter carriers can move between districts.
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You could try again at your next available convenience when the PO is open and give it to a sales and service associate at the retail window. There are 2 other options I can think of: 1)Put the mail directly in the mailbox of the correct recipient. 2) Re-seal or tape the mail and put it in a blue collection box. If you want, you could put a note on the mail (like a post-it note) saying "opened by accident". Finally, you could put the mail back in your mailbox with a note saying "misdelivered" on top of the mail. Again, you could use a post-it note if you want. All in all, I'd say it's no big deal. We make errors in deliveries all the time. Many times the recipients may just discard the mail, so you are doing the correct thing by putting the mail back in the system to get correctly delivered.
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It depends when you drop the letter in the blue collection box. If it is before the daily pickup time (which is usually posted on a label somewhere on the box) then it is likely going to be on the same dispatch truck as if you put the letter in a box at the PO. The truck then goes to a centralized mail processing facility. If you put the letter in a blue collection mailbox after the daily cutoff time posted on the mailbox, but the local PO is still open, you'd probably be better off bringing the letter there for mailing. At most POs you can probably bring in letter up until 1700 for same-day processing.
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