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 what can and can't be delivered to PO Boxes. The mailer decides that and I'm guessing when it comes to immigration or citizenship papers there may need to be a physical address to receive the mail in the US but I truly don't know. I don't know much about mail forwarding companies either. There are businesses called CMRAs which stands for "commercial mail receiving agency" (an example is the The UPS Store) which have private mailboxes for rent. I don't know, however, if that is a sufficient alternate to a PO Box for important documents delivery. The address for a CMRA usually reads, for example, "Name of recipient, street address, PMB xxx, city, state, ZIP". PMB stands for Private Mailbox. I don't know if the department that handles immigration and Green Cards can provide further information.
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Letter carriers sometimes have a choice to move to other neighborhoods/assignments based on a seniority-based bidding process. As other carriers retire or move on to other assignments this creates vacancies to be filled, often by lesser-seniority personnel. Sometimes there are newer employees who may be on the same route for awhile just filling in for someone who may be on Long-term leave for illness or injury or military leave. I have been on the same route for 15 years and can stay on it indefinitely unless there is an office reorganization. I can also bid to another route (if I prefer to) if a vacancy is available to be filled and my seniority is enough to move to that route.
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Harris, for last couple of years the number of catalogs and magazines we deliver has decreased quite a bit so they generally aren't a pain at all. Some weekly circulars have loose ads that are oversize or fall out of the main circular and those can be messy, but in the whole scheme of things aren't too bad. Some people love to complain about anything so I'm sure if you poll my coworkers you'll get different answers. Just this past week, IKEA distributed their yearly catalog to many residents where I deliver mail. These are pretty thick, but since that day didn't have a lot of other catalogs or circulars it ran smoothly. It was a heavier than usual load due to the IKEA catalogs, but we only get them yearly and I can't think of another catalog mailers that puts out such thick catalogs in such quantities. In case you missed it, Victoria's Secret ceased mailing any catalogs earlier this year and they were a large mailer of catalogs in the past, I'm sure other catalog companies are following suit as they realize many consumers prefer to browse online. This is a great question. I feel the future for print advertising will continue to decline, but it may not be too precipitous. Another big catalog mailer is Bed, Bath, and Beyond though their ads are very thin so don't add much weight.
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It's not automatically held on Saturday for businesses unless the business is closed or has no place to leave the mail when the office is closed. This is how I believe it works though I have no businesses on the route I deliver so I can't say for sure. The letter carriers in the office where I work who have many businesses on their route generally get to the residential portions earlier on Saturday so your observation would be correct. Scott, I'd say you've made a very good observation. Thank you for writing an email to jobstr for Letter Carrier. If I had businesses on my route and were able to leave the mail in a safe place even if the office were closed on a Saturday, I may try to deliver it so I wouldn't have has heavy of a mail load for Monday.
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I don't know for sure how it works in your town, but I hope it's similar to where I work. If somebody has a doorslot and would like me to mail a letter, they can leave the letter noticeably hanging out of the door slot and I would take it to be mailed. I admit it is a bit precarious as the letter could fall out before being picked up for delivery. Another option is to put a clothespin or other type of clip near the mail slot in your door and attach the outgoing letter so it will be very visible for the letter carrier to take as outgoing mail. You can't go wrong by finding a blue collection box or going to a Post Office, but I think you can be confident using the above mentioned methods. Thanks for your question.
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I can't really comment on any specifics that are happening with regards to your mail delivery. I do agree 100% that you should be receving every piece of mail that a mailer has paid for you to get. This would include any mailing that isn't addressed but goes to each address on the route and is labeled "postal customer". As I've stated before I'm sure it goes on at the PO where I work as well. From top to bottom there are some apathetic and lazy employees. Please do write to your US Senator or the USPS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and make a report of what you believe is happening. I would first take it up with your local post office but that could prove fruitless.
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I don't know the answer to this. Most of the time we deliver all of the mail each day that is in our building unless we get backed up with volume or are short on staffing. This may not be the case in the office that delivers your mail. If there is a merchant that you want to go to with a coupon but it arrived late, you could ask the merchant to honor the offer or the business could contact the post office to inquire why their mailing was delivered late. I'm just speculating, but I would think any 3rd Class Mail (the new official term for this will be USPS Marketing Mail) should be delivered within a few days of it being received at the Post Office. Having answered many questions on jobstr, I can see that service consistency varies greatly from office to office and even among the letter carriers in that office.
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