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.
It is possible you've been lied to as your name suggests which I find to be very bad. Unfortunately I can't confirm if this is the case or not. I don't know of any rules either way as to why the postman would automatically return any mail that doesn't have the hostels name included in the address. It is pretty common for people to receive mail or packages at a hotel or some type of short-term stay facility. A woman who I work next to has a Comfort Inn that is part of her delivery route. I'm pretty sure she delivers any mail with the hotel's street address on it. It's then up to the hotel to notify the recipient that mail has arrived and then return any mail which may be for someone who is no longer there. I think that the letter carrier will accept any returned mail from the hotel and mark it "refused" or "attempted, not known" and it should go back to the sender. You ask "is this possible?" It certainly is possible as nothing surprises me about what happens at the USPS because the consistency of service among the employees and offices is not good in my opinion. I think we should deliver the mail as addressed (especially to a hotel, hostel, Airbnb, etc) and not worry about the names on the mail and let the receiving office decide whether to keep it, return it, or discard. Individual mail cannot be forwarded from a hotel or any business. In the future, if you want something mailed to a hostel, I'd recommend putting both your name and the name of the property you are staying at.
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I don't think I've ever had as detailed a question as yours Isabella. Unfortunately I don't have an answer for you and am not going to research your question as interesting as it is. I don't know postal delivery regulations and I find that when they exist they are adhered to arbitrarily. I understand your concern about leaving outgoing mail (including valuable checks) in an unsecured mailbox outside your office. For the most part we go in to businesses to deliver their mail and take any outgoing mail. There are some offices that have curbside boxes or multi-unit cluster boxes. I don't know that your office qualifies for indoor delivery (though I don't now what those requirements would be). You could call USPS consumer affairs but I don't know how much they can help. It'd be nice if you could at least find out the regulations and know if you are being fed misinformation or you truly don't "qualify" for delivery into your building.
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Generally that would be correct. If the PO is closed due to poor weather conditions it would usually mean our whole retail and delivery operations have been suspended. I don't know if there are still processing operations going on at the mail plants. It isn't too common for us to suspend delivery for an entire day, but in blizzards or states of emergency, it could be necessary for us to do so.
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I don't know the answer to this question but I would generally think we can't do profiling based on what we see and then refer that to the USPSIS. There may be a branch of the USPS that does legally do such observation and data collecting but I know nothing about it nor have ever been approached about being involved in such activity. What you're asking about seems somewhat discriminatory so I would likely never want to be involved in any type of racial profiling.
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I have never come across this situation as far as I can recall. I'm pretty sure if there is a suspicious package or letter, I'd notify a supervisor who would then decide whether or not to call the USPS Potsal Inspection Service or local law enforcement. They also may want to segregate the item from other mail or people in case it is potentially hazardous material. I don't know how the notification process works with reference to the sender or recipient. This may be more common in a larger mail processing facility where the mail for many offices passes through to or from the local post offices. We aren't often taught about suspicious or potentially hazardous mail, though it is covered sometimes in service and safety talks.
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I believe I have been asked this exact same question before with the same wording on this website. Anyhow, if this happened, I'd proceed with caution. When I felt it was safe to do so, I'd park the vehicle and walk around it to make sure everything looked okay. If I was in an unsafe area, I may think that it's some kind of setup to get my vehicle to stop and I'd just keep driving. Your scenario doesn't seem like it would happen very often and I don't usually pay attention to the actual other motorists gestures. I have driven a few times without the back tailgate being properly latched down which could make for a hazardous situation. I probably would be glad if someone had pointed that out to me.
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I don't know much about transferring between locations as I've never tried myself but I've seen it done quite a bit both into and out of my office. I believe you need to be off probation and maybe worked for a certain amt of time before being eligible to transfer. Also, whether or not a transfer is granted could depend on the staffing levels of the office you'd be leaving and/or the one you are requesting to transfer to. Usually transfers result in you losing local seniority so you go to the bottom of the list for carries as far as vacation requests and work assignment choices. With regards to your other questions, I'd never call anyone one slaves at the USPS? If you are implying the CCAs have to cover the routes for call offs, it depends on the managements and the staffing needs. As a regular carrier I usually fill in to do parts of routes that need coverage on any particular day and will be paid overtime to do this after finishing my own route. So when you say slave nobody is being forced to do this job. In my particular post office the staffing is perpetually not that good so both the CCA (of which we have very few) and the regular letter carriers fill in as needed. One main difference is that as a regular letter carrier you would rarely be forced to do overtime work if you choose not to and are not on the OTDL (overtime desired list).
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