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.
Hello, I'm glad you have an interesting question at such a young age. Usually another mailman delivers the mail to a mailman's house unless they happen to live on the same postal route that they deliver mail to. This does happen but I haven't seen it in the PO where I work. As for the question is it possible to pick up their own mail, I would say probably not. I deliver mail to a letter carrier's house who happens to work in the same office as me. I don't give him his mail any differently than I would any other customer on my postal route. I stay professional and no special favors are done for anybody. As an aside this particular letter carrier has never even asked me for anything special or to pick up his mail. I hope this answers all of your questions and send anymore if you think of them.
David, i don't know the answer to resolving that issue, but it does seem wrong for the carrier to leave the package at your apt. door if you don't feel it is safe for that to be done. You are saying there is now an office? Do you mean an apt. rental office that would accept your parcels is available? Maybe a sign could be said to leave packages at the rental office. I don't know that your letter carrier would do that. Finally, your letter carrier is correct (at least from the perspective where I work) that we are just to leave Amazon parcels at any address and not scan it "attempted". We scan it delivered even if they are on a vacation hold and then we hold the parcel at the PO until delivery to this address has resumed. This doesn't make sense if you live in area where a secure place to leave a parcel isn't available. Another option may be to rent a PO Box for your parcel deliveries but that requires time and an additional cost. Thanks for writing.
It doesnt sound too common to me though it doesn't surprise me at all when I hear this story. If a carrier has an item that needs a signature or needs to be handed to someone personally then they should make an attempt to ring the bell or knock on the door. If you live in an area where snow or ice would prevent them from getting to your door then it is appropriate to leave the PS Form 3849 in your mailbox. Sometimes the carriers are too lazy or under a lot of time pressure to get done so they may cut corners when it's time consuming to go to one's door. This is not a legitimate excuse, but I'm not surprised by what happens. In my office we are pretty short staffed as of late and I see quite a bit of mail not getting delivered correctly or in a timely fashion. It's pretty pathetic if you ask me. The rough winter in the Northeastern US with a lot of snow, etc. doesn't help matters. On a side note, I'm not a fan of your user name as it denotes profanity which is not very classy. Just my opinion, of course.
I don't know the answer to this question. I can only speculate as to what I might do if I was a letter carrier who was emptying out a collection box and approached by someone asking to intercept their mail. I'll let you know that the times posted on the mailbox are the "earliest" time that mail will be collected from that box. It could be a later time than is posted so you could be waiting awhile for the mailbox collection personnel. If someone could prove to me who they were (with ID) or I personally knew them and could easily find their mail, I'd probably give it back to them. Sometimes the collection boxes near a post office are pretty full and it would be too time consuming to look through it for a couple of letters that somebody wants intercepted. I'm sure there is other personnel who wouldn't return it to you under any circumstances, which is why I can't give you a definitive answer.
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I used to do this but was then told that I really should take the 30 minute lunch within 6 hours of my BT (begin tour) time. I now take lunch from approximately 1300-1330. The new scanners that we have tells the mgmt where we are so they can see if we are sitting for 30 minutes at the end of the day instead of our approved lunch period. If the management doesn't give you a hard time about it, I don't see why not but the union and managers technically should be enforcing the 6-hour rule for taking a lunch break. I've become used to it so it's no big deal to take lunch when I'm supposed to and not at the end of the delivery route.
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.
Tina, when I get a question like this it disturbs me because I have to think it wasn't an innocent error that the item was scanned as "delivered" but no notice was left nor was the item. As an aside, if a notice was left, the package would have been scanned as "attempted". It could've been an error, but I will explain why I think it may not have been. When the packages arrive at our PO in the AM, they are all scanned as "arrival at unit". Then, at the end of the work day, our supervisors are supposed to make sure that each item has an additional scan such as "attempted" or "delivered" or "business closed", etc. I know at our office that if they can't find the parcel as accidentally left behind in the office they may assume the parcel was delivered and enter it as such. Amazon specifically wants their items delivered the day they arrive at the destination PO. In a way this is falsifying and undermining the integrity of our scanning system. I won't say this happens to many items nor do I know if it's widespread. Hopefully what I described above is what happened with your package and it should be delivered on the following delivery day.
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