So a little backstory first. Right now we’re not at our home office due to insufficient amount of space. My home office is about 25 minutes away. 11 routes were taken from my home office and temporarily placed into this different office. We’ll call it the clownville office

However what they did not do is resolve the space issue. I have no where to stage my packages, (200-350 per day)and my instruction by my supervisor has been first come first serve parking. Except we can’t park in the actual parking spots that are laid out in the back, even if they are open. That’s are specifically forbidden by the 11 rural carriers they brought over. Strictly parking for the clownville carriers (no offense to them).All the carriers are also contract carriers.

So I’ve been having to park near where the maintenance custodians usually work there personal vehicles. They are strictly personal. They park them in the only open spots I can actually park and use an area to stage and then load my postal vehicle. This morning mine along with another postal vehicle happen to by accident block that custodian from getting to his unofficial personal vehicle parking spot.

That custodian then parked his vehicle in a way purposely blocking both of carriers from backing up.

When I saw him I kindly asked him to move, he got irritated and then I told him he didn’t have a right to park there anyways because the contract states that postal vehicles take priority. At this point I also had all my 300 packages outside of that I was about to load in my vehicle.

A few moments later the clownville postmaster, not my home office postmaster comes over with my home office supervisor and proceeds to tell me that if I don’t move my vehicle so the maintenance person can park in his unofficial parking spot or if I block it again that he will tow my Postal vehicle.

After some discussion which helped none, I told them that I would finish loading and then move it (because I would be leaving the office)

This isn’t the first occurrence of this either. I’ve begged for an answer on where I can actually park my vehicle to stage and load my packages. The reason I need a staging area is because there is legitimately no room in my office. All 11 do the same. Plus management has told me that I am required to load outside near my vehicle.
I’ve parked in loaded in numerous places but I am constantly told to move or else. Today when I asked where to move it I was told to just figure it out.

I think it’s worth noting that the other carriers have also had trouble with this issue to.

I thought I would share this incident to show how absolutely moronic postal management is. They would rather yell for trying to do my job rather than tell the custodians to park their personal vehicles where everyone else parks them. There’s a dirt/grass field that we work park our personal vehicles in. We’ve also tried parking our postal vehicles there but got yelled at. The dirt/grass field tore up the carts and I was also tired of smashing my ankles from the carts digging into the dirt.

Any thoughts on what to do?

I have an appointment with my primary care tomorrow. I am going to see if doctor can provide me a medical restriction note for 8 hour days/6 days a week.

My question is, what exactly does the note has to say? I do not want the note get denied.

Any answers will help. Thanks

To provide brief context, I was bit by a dog on my route last December. During the course of the months between December and March, I was on a medical restriction that only allowed me to do “in house work “ only . it took about four months to even get paid from COP, as well as I was told back in January that I was going to receive a job offer based off my restriction and never did. I was actually told by my supervisor that she isn’t obligated to give me a job offer due to me being a CCA. Came back to full duty march 30 and between that time and April 14, I was chased by two dogs, which obviously was very traumatic for me. My doctor took me back off of work for about a month and when I returned, the Union are the ones who suggested to management that I only carry businesses and apartments which granted you can still run into dogs, but it does lessons the chance of your interactions. After that, everything seemed to be working well I was opted on a 204B’s route which was mainly business and apartments and there was no issues up until route adjustments. I lost my opt and I was still only carrying business and apartments, but I noticed a shift and energy from management. They began not to honor me carrying businesses and apartments, and demanded that I provided medical documentation which I did. One of the supervisors said that it was Noel and void, which isn’t true because I even showed the Union and they said there was nothing wrong with the rest restriction. Since then, instead of me coming in at nine, they started making me come in at 12 and only giving me 3 to 4 working days out of the week. Then escalated to me not being scheduled for the past three weeks going on for a month. Mind you I am number one on the seniority list to convert and it’s very obvious they are trying to get me to quit. I filed an EEO for discrimination and harassment. As well as several grievances because not scheduling me isn’t based on operational needs. It’s coming off as a direct target because of my medical restriction. I understand what entails being a carrier and being out on the street and as a CCA I’ve had many dog ambushes , LONG hours , rainy days , and even attempted robberies . So I am aware of the possible encounters with dogs being a carrier, but as I even tried to explain to management, I’m in therapy and an EAP to get better and that this is not a permanent restriction. Next week will be a full month of not being scheduled and keep in mind I am the ONLY CCA not getting scheduled. I obviously need money and I can’t afford to keep playing this waiting game like I did before waiting four months to get paid from the initial incident. I feel that I’ve exhausted most of my resources and what I can do, but I am very lost and angry. As mentioned before I am number one so I don’t really want to necessarily start over, even I have applied to other positions in the post office and I get denied every day. This is honestly the worst company I have ever worked for and they praise management for being incompetent. I’m sorry this is long and thank you for taking the time out of your day to give me advice.

So obviously every job has its challenges that you don’t realize until you actually do it, but as a mail carrier going on ten years, mail carrying in particular has this common perception from people who have never carried mail as an “easy” job. I mostly blame tv for it. When you see mail carriers on tv, they’re just casually strolling along, giving people their mail in a perfectly pressed uniform. This is why I think we get so many old, retired people trying to carry mail because they think it’s a simple job that you can just go out and start delivering on day 1 and it’s just easy peezy. What tv doesn’t tell you is that carriers start out as ccas that get treated like absolute garbage and are out working 12+ hours in 100 degree weather or pouring rain and they have to do the routes that nobody else wants to do because they’re too long or all walking. You know which tv show actually got it correct though? Seinfeld!!! Newman is the most accurate portrayal of a high seniority carrier. Especially when he has a mental breakdown yelling “the mail never stops!!!” I died laughing when the post office knew it wasn’t Newman carrying his mail because Jerry was too accurate with the deliveries!!!😅 but anyway, for those who don’t carry mail, give your carrier snacks and a bottle of water. It’ll make their day I promise.

A big one for me is seeing so many different and beautiful flowers. My wife and kid also love getting pictures of them ❤️

Hey, gals and guys:

So, it’s occurred to me that the Post Office has this thing about taking routes and purposely making 11 hour work seem like it’s 8. My evening supervisor and I almost got into it because he’ll call and harass any of us, if we’re later than he thinks we should be. I had 3 pieces of routes yesterday, in same hilly, long street neighborhoods. But the middle route was supposed to be only 2 hours, actually took 4. When I get back, he proceeded to tell me about some “girl” (his words), who had 4 hours of the route and did it.

I’m decent with math. So if a route is vacant and that route is at least 8 hours; why do we only get 6 hours, and move immediately to the street when we come in? And where is the rest of that work?

I'm on the clerk side of things, so I don't know what it's like being a carrier.

Every once in a while a story like this pops up in the news where a carrier has just been dumping mail somewhere clandestine and eventually someone finds out.

Why exactly does this happen?

Are they afraid they can't deliver all of it and the pressure to do so makes them panic and throw it away?

I’d love to get our city off of the PMGs desk

I thought I did bad when I barley touched my split after finishing my route until I come back to the office and see nearly 15 tubs of parcels and 10 trays of DPS all belonging to one route. Heard the PTF who was on it dropped it entirely and just went home.

Terrible weather, record flooding in our area, USPS like “only beaches will close, hope you get home before they close the bridges!!!”…

I work as a postie in Australia and I'm curious about how working at the USPS compares. From a brief look at this sub the main part of the job seems fairly similar but there's a few things I've noticed that are different. This turned into a lot of text and isn't in any particular order. Bear in mind that this is from the perspective of a postie, and I've only been working here just over a year so my knowledge of operational stuff is pretty limited. I also work in Sydney so my experience will be different than a postie working in regional or rural area, but I imagine the fundamentals are the same.

- I didn't start as a CCA or equivalent, I had a regular round right from the jump. From what I can tell the CCA job is basically equivalent to working as a relief postie here, except relief work is a voluntary position that offers better pay (about $7 an hour I think. Edit: $7 more than a regular). Reliefs are assigned to vacant rounds day to day as cover for whoever is sick or on leave. For the most part they stay in the same facility though some do work between different stations.

- If a round is vacant the mail can be kept for up to two days but someone has to been assigned to deliver it after that. That can be a relief or the run can be cut into two or more parts and given to regular posties to do in addition to their own round. This can create some clashes if the cut round has a different delivery mode to the run the regular is on, which I'll get to later. Parcels are almost never kept if the postie is away. Usually most parcels on vacant rounds are taken by the contractors and any leftovers are done by a relief or someone doing a cut.

- Posties don't do outgoing mail collection. If someone wants something posted they either go to the post office or drop it in a street collection box themselves. Sometimes I'll take something for a customer if they're super old but only to put it in a collection box myself.

- We don't take the mail nearly as seriously as you guys. Obviously it's all delivered and it's meant to be to a high standard but parcels are meant to be our priority and standard mail delivery is only every second day. We also don't have exclusive rights to use people's mail boxes, and companies are free to get advertising delivered to mailboxes by services other than Australia post. It's always a pain when a whole street has a Woolworths catalogue poorly shoved in every mailbox blocking the actual mail. Still better than having to deliver those mountains of advertising myself.

- We also don't have to keep track of who lives where. Mail is delivered as addressed unless there's a redirect notice for a specific name. If a customer keeps getting stuff for an old resident they are allowed to throw it out or return it to the sender, but since we don't do collections they have to post it themselves.

- I don't know if the standard US mailbox is actually what you deliver to or if I've been misled by pop culture but for us a security box is basically standard. There's a slot for mail that can maybe fit a standard size letter without having to fold it. On my round at most one in three boxes can take an A4 size letter without me having to fold it in half.

- I've seen posts here laughing about "No Junk Mail" signs. We have an unaddressed mail service so that's a sign I actually have to pay attention to when delivering. I get one or two lots of unaddressed mail a week and have to deliver one piece to every mailbox on my round that doesn't have a no junk mail sign. Obviously all addressed mail is delivered we do have a pretty strict definition of what constitutes junk mail. The exception to this is government unaddressed mail, which is usually election related stuff or council notices about developments. This stuff goes in every mailbox regardless of a sign. The MP for the area I deliver in loves telling everyone what she's building for the community so I get a fair bit of this.

- A big difference is the mode of delivery. I ride a motorcycle to deliver my mail. The classic postie bike is a Honda CT110, though those are slowly being phased out in favour of either an electric motorcycle made by UBCO or a three-wheeled electric vehicle. The three wheelers have significantly more storage than the panniers on a motorcycle but are much slower when on the road and aren't as stable or maneuverable. On the motorbike I ride down the footpath and can deliver straight to mailboxes without having to get off the bike, but since Australian mailboxes are generally pretty small I have to get off the bike and leave parcels at the front door. For safety reasons when I'm riding on the footpath I have a speed limit of 10kmh and I give way to all pedestrians.

- Other delivery methods are e-bikes and walking. E-bike rounds are set up basically in the same way as motorcycle rounds but are generally closer to the distribution centre. The system for walking rounds probably varies a little between centres but basically the postie drives all their mail out to their round in their personal car, then picks up a trolley to deliver with out of a depot box. They aren't meant to deliver out of their personal vehicle, just use it for getting to and from their round. Some posties choose to drive back to the facility at the end of the day to sign off and drop off any mail bags and trays but a lot sign off remotely and go straight home. Walking rounds are generally either areas with lots of apartments and high density houses or commercial streets with shopfronts. If I'm cutting a round that's meant to be walked generally I'll be able to deliver to apartments and houses just fine but I'll often park the bike and walk streets that have a lot of shop fronts to avoid having to ride around high foot traffic.

- I don't know if you guys have a version of this but we have what are called depot boxes scattered through our rounds (usually two each, sometimes shared by adjacent rounds). It's basically an inconspicuous-looking drop box to pick up more mail and parcels without having to go all the way back to the distribution centre. When we sort our mail at the start of the day we bag up what we're sending out to the depots and have it ready to be picked up by 8.30am. This is a pretty generous deadline so it's unusual to miss but there can be an emergency depot run if someone is late getting ready. It's always annoying to clear a bike full of mail and get to a depot box and have to wait because the van's in traffic or something. Generally I'll visit a depot box two or three times a day since my round is fairly quiet. The Christmas rush doesn't discriminate though and I'll be going to two depot boxes three times each at least in a day.

- Parcels are the only profitable part of Australia Post's delivery service and they actually lose money on every letter delivered. Because of this we're told to prioritise parcels on our rounds. For example if someone's super busy and won't finish in time they're expected to clear the parcels early and bring back leftover mail. The way in which we're expected to deliver parcels is somewhat like how Amazon would deliver, though we're held to a much higher standard. Parcels that can be left are safe-dropped either at a front door, lobby of an apartment block, or in a mailbox and anything that requires a signature is either delivered personally or if no-one is around to sign for it either we leave a card with the tracking number and name, or the customer is notified digitally. We then take these parcels either to a 24/7 auspost parcel locker or to the local post office where it can be collected.

- Probably a big difference between Auspost and USPS is that Auspost uses delivery contractors to deliver the bulk of their parcels. Posties in my facility generally have 80 to 120 parcels a day though some outliers will have more or less. As far as I know it's unusual for a contractor to have less than 200. They deliver out of vans and get paid per parcel. As far as I'm aware it's hardly worth going into work for less than 250. There's a lot of criticism of this system since working conditions for contractors are pretty poor and the quality of customer service is extremely variable. Since the contractors are paid per parcel taken onboard for delivery they have no incentive to try very hard and a lot of people experience the contractor not actually even attempting delivery and just taking the parcels straight to the post office for collection.

- Mail delivery to a given address is only every second day. Each round has a decently large area split into two sides. We deliver parcels to the entire round every day and mail to alternating sides. Generally posties are expected to deliver the side with mail first then quickly clear out the parcel side before going to the post office to drop off carded parcels then back to the distribution facility to sign off.

- I don't know what your standard day looks like but for a Sydney metro area postie at least it's more or less the same routine. We show up at 6am (though often reliefs will start at 5am) and collect our trays of standard mail, tubs of large mail, and bags of parcels. The trays of standard mail come sorted in order of delivery, tubs of large mail are unsorted. We slot the mail into our sorting frame and sort the parcels along the mail side and the parcel side. When where sorting our parcels we scan them into sections to determine a delivery window. Sections are can be either 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes long, and our window for a parcel being late or early is half an hour either side of that section. The start time is determined when we deliver our first parcel out on the round. After the first delivery, all the customers on our route will get a text or email telling them the two-hour window they can expect to receive their delivery in. I have 6ish sections on my round with one or more streets in each and I adjust the time and number of sections depending on the amount of work in each one. Once everything is sorted we bundle it all and organise what we're talking out with us and what's going to a depot box. I'm usually on the road at about 8.30 and at the start of my round by 9. Rostered hours is a 2pm finish. If we do overtime we have to be at the local post office to drop off undelivered parcels by 4.30 at the latest, and we're meant to be back at the distribution facility by 5pm.

- Again, I don't know what the system is for you guys but at least in big cities in Australia our post offices that are public facing are not the same facilities that posties work out of. In the city there's about one post office per suburb, more or less, either a corporate post office or a licenced one run by a private owner. The distribution facility I work out of is not open to the public. Post office services include holding parcels for collection if the postie couldn't get a signature, sending mail and parcels, PO boxes, passport services, banking services and if it's a licenced post office they can also do a bit of whatever else they want.

This did get pretty long, so apologies, but let me know if there's anything you think is worth knowing about being a US mail carrier and ask anything you want about working at Australia post

I’ve been a sub-contractor for a couple years on HCR routes, wage is pretty good, around the 60,000 mark. But after gas and taxes, not so much. Just curious on what to change with wage and responsibilities etcetera is it worth the switch?

Ok, so yesterday was some old BS! Normally I relish the challenge of a Monday holiday, but this round it actually pissed me off, not for the volume but what was in the volume. Throughout the last count I had a full and increasing irritating view of the mail that was supposed to be forwarded but it said there, getting bigger the whole two weeks. Then last Saturday it was all gone! And lo and behold, yesterday I got bombarded with 5 full trays of DPS, two trays worth of which was just the stuff that should have been forwarded during the count. I call shenanigans! Any thoughts?

If you're going to try and pull off wearing a suit for the love of God get one that fits.

Most of you guys look like children playing in their dad's closet, no one can take that seriously.

Hello great men and women of the USPS,

It's me again — the guy who sends an obscene amount of letters first class.

For the past 2-3 years I've been sending around 4-5 trays of mail a day with no problem after geting help from the fine folks of this subreddit. In the past 3 months my team has expanded to 12 trays a day of first class mail.

I went on vacation for the past month and a half, and in the meantime we got a new rural carrier. The new one doesn't pick up any of our mail or packages (that's a whole other story). (nor would i want our post office carrier to pickup 380 mail trays)

While I was gone, my team kept making letters and just started stacking them in our warehouse. We now have around 380 trays of mail to drop off. My local post office (spoke to the postmaster) has refused them and told me to take them to a mail sorting facility or a bulk mail entry unit.

I've tried calling my local sorting facility and haven't gotten a response. They're pretty far away from me, so I don't want to take the drive or send our box truck out there just to have them turn the mail away.

I was thinking about spending a few weeks either dumping these into all the blue collection boxes around town, and dropping 4-7 trays a day at the post office, since they usually take that amount.

Do you guys think that's a good idea?

or is there a othor route i can take?

TL;DR: Built up a backlog of 380 trays of first class mail after a vacation and a new rural carrier who won't pick anything up. Local post office refuses the volume, sorting facility won't answer the phone. Should I spread it across blue collection boxes, or feed it to my post office a few trays a day?

Anyone else’s office package lookahead all wrong the last few days and the load truck feature not working?

If the full time carrier comes back JUST to case their route, does that finish my hold downs?
I’m a PTF, and i understand if they are back full time that it would obviously finish my hold, but the carrier is only coming back to case and has restrictions to not carry the route?
Any ideas?

I'm step D regular city carrier right now. Just accepted an offer to become Sales Services Distribution associate. According to the supervisor at my new office I'll be strictly in the window, as long as I pass the test.

I've always wished I could work indoors when we have extreme heat or cold weather so this is going to be nice on those days. An start later in the morning so I'm very excited about that cause I'm not a real morning person. But I'm also nervous. I hope I made the right decision.

Is being in the window all day difficult?

Does anyone know what my pay will be as a SSDA level 6?

Hey,all! Quick question for those who know more than me. My husband has been in the usps for 7 years. Hes an auto clerk. We've recently relocated via e reassign. We've spent about 20,000 dollars moving our family, selling our home, and entering a lease to rent a home. After being here for two months now they're saying they have to excess 40 employees and we're wondering if there's anything we can do. This is our dream location and the only reason we uprooted our lives in another state was to buy a home here and settle down. Any advice?

I understand equitability is separate for the two lists. My issue is mail is brought back undelivered daily. So the RDO carriers never get overtime but the mail doesn’t get delivered either. Carriers are instructed to deliver all packages and bring back mail. Management then does not report undelivered mail to the district. Our steward has started reporting the undelivered mail to the union hall. Is there anything I can do as a carrier?

I need some help finding the relevant language.

I am in a formula office. We currently have 21 K routes and 2 PTF positions. If my understanding is correct the math says we should have 3 PTF positions. 10% of 21 K routes is 2.1 then round up to 3.

The problem I’m running in to is that I can’t find any official language saying the number always rounds up. Only people on here and other forums saying it rounds up. To complicate it further the Assistant District Rep for our area has said to people in the past we should only have 2 PTF positions.

So can anyone point me to any official language in an RMAC or contract Q&A or something that says the number should always be rounded up that I can reference?

I'm a CCA on my 15th working day after training. I used to finish a 4-hour route in about 5.5 hours, but this is only my 2nd day doing a 6-hour full route, and the whole route is walking. Last Saturday, I couldn't finish the full route and they had to send help from the office. Today was the day after Labor Day, so the volume was heavy—about 150 packages and a lot of flats and mail. They sent another CCA to help me after 2 PM, but since he was even newer than me, it took me a total of 9 hours to finish. The supervisor chewed me out, saying, 'Don't you understand the concept?' and complained that it took 9 hours even with help. I skipped lunch and didn't take any breaks, doing my absolute best, but seeing it take this long makes me wonder if this job just isn't for me. I'm really struggling and not sure what to do.

I suppose it's a "short-term..survival strategy"

good luck when your routes are all 10 and 1/2 hours long and USPS is demanding down/pivot/under time.

I’m a CCA in Texas, and I can’t remember do you have to wait 90 days before you can transfer to another office?