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 believe they can ask you what is actually in the large letter, but I know if it's over a certain weight or size, they can ask something to the effect of "is the item you are mailing liquid, fragile, perishable, or potentially hazardous?" and you self-certify the answer with a yes or no. Certain batteries have to go by surface only and can't fly on airplanes. So I would take exception of they actually ask you what is being mailed if it's first class or Priority Mail. If you are mailing something via Medial Mail they can verify or even open a package to inspect that it is media (books, CDs, cassettes, video, DVD). I hope this answers your question.
I actually have no idea regarding the blue collection boxes being replaced with ones that have thinner slots. Possibly it is harder to steal out of it with a thinner slot buy I'm purely speculating. I don't know that theft from these boxes is much of an issue in most areas. Your question is the first I'm hearing about different size slot collection boxes. If anything I just hear of there being less collection boxes in general due to the decline in First-Class Mail being sent.
I don't have any insight on how to transfer to other offices besides eReassign or asking for a mutual exchange transfer (which are advertised in The Postal Record). One suggestion I have is to call any office directly that you may be interested in to see if there are openings. I don't know how this would be any different from eReassign. Mutual transfers aren't so easy because you have to find someone from the area you want to transfer to who wants to go to your area. Also, there is an issue with the seniority dates that are assumed by the transferees which I don't know about. Good luck, be patient, and I predict you eventually get a transfer. What's wrong with Long Island? I love working here but know it's not for everyone partially due to the cost of living.
I'd recommend taking it to the Post Office to make sure you are paying the right amt. You should just be able to put it in a letter size envelope (if it fits) and seal the envelope well. A proper address should also be written on the envelope where the bottom line is the Country of Destination (in your case either UK or Scotland). My quick search says that a 2 oz. letter to Scotland would be $2.21. If you are interested, you can go to www.usps.com and search for calculate a price and after answering several questions you can get a rate. 2 stamps would be equal to .98 so that would be insufficient to mail to Scotland. The minimum price for international mailing is $1.20 I think. Thanks for writing and I always say it's better to put too much postage on instead of too little. This way you lessen the risk of an item being returned for insufficient postage.
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I would forward any mail you receive from this point forward since you now have a valid COA for that former employee who is now deceased. Any mail that was previously put through with the MLNA may not come back at all and was returned to the sender. If the mail happens to come back to your office I would then forward it. This is all just my opinion. I'd ask the clerk who handles forwards in your office or a supervisor, but they may also just give an opinion without knowing if there is a correct procedure.
Teri, generally the mailman will be running behind because the day after any holiday there is often a heavier quantity of mail to deliver. I can't speak for all offices, but most of my co-workers were probably 1:00-1:30 behind their regular schedule when they started deliveries today. There was a huge quantity of parcels to have sorted by the clerks (took awhile) and also delivering these takes longer . One other factor is that the sun sets earlier this time of year so delivering the mail in the dark takes even longer.
I don't know the policy on this as I've never thought to put someone's mail on hold without their authorization. I suppose this could come about if their mailbox was full and the carrier couldn't deliver any more mail to that address. In that case maybe a letter carrier would hold any future mail at the PO for a certain amount of time and then possibly return that mail to the sender with the endorsements "mailbox full". A letter carrier can also hold the mail at the PO if your mailbox is inaccessible due to snow. They will usually deliver all of the accumulated mail within a couple of days of the mailbox becoming accessible. We had that situation occur at our PO this past winter when snow prevented some of the driving (mounted) route carriers from being able to drive up to a mailbox without getting out of their LLV.
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