Read on Twitter
Okay, I want to talk about this for a sec, as a former letter carrier/204b supervisor for the USPS. https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1285908762444922883
So, I don’t know what the actual reasoning behind a move like this is really, so I can’t speak to that. All i can do is look at this practically and see how it’s going to affect your mail delivery. Because it will.
From the looks of this, the idea of getting carriers out to the street earlier and getting them back earlier, that’s a good idea, especially in the hot summer months. You’ll have fewer carriers bringing back 1 to 2 to 4 hours of mail and going home early from heat exhaustion.
Some carriers at my old station made arrangements with management to do this pre-emptively. They’d go ahead and sort tomorrow’s flats at night, or even arrange an earlier start time to work the day’s mail into their case so they could still be done before the heat set in.
But the part of this stand-up that made me flat out laugh out loud was this part:
“Any unsorted First Class flats will go directly to the street with the carrier and will be routed in delivery sequence while on the street.”
And I gotta say, that just isn’t going to happen.
“Any unsorted First Class flats will go directly to the street with the carrier and will be routed in delivery sequence while on the street.”
And I gotta say, that just isn’t going to happen.
Each route is set up each morning at the Case - a tall cubicle with slots for each delivery address on the route, in order, from bottom-left to top-right. Carriers spend the first hour or two of their day casing up (sorting) the letters and flats for the day.
These come to the carrier in tubs each morning, and are unsorted aside from the route number. They’re not anywhere close to being in delivery order, which is why they get sorted at the case.
Even the most experienced carriers takes an hour to sort an avg. day’s mail.
Even the most experienced carriers takes an hour to sort an avg. day’s mail.
These tubs also don’t contain only first-class mail - they contain bulk-rate, business mail, political mailings, catalogs, flyers, etc. Lots of different stuff in there. Some of it isn’t even for that route, it just got put in by mistake - clerks are human too, mistakes happen.
So, it takes some time to go through these. The carrier also gets Coffin mail - the Coffin is a large shelf next to the case where presorted bundles are stacked each morning, this mail is measured in inches.
These ‘presorted bundles’, well, that’s kind of misleading. They’re supposed to be sorted for the route, so that the piece on top comes earliest in the route, and the piece on bottom comes at the end. That’s usually true, maybe 90-95% of the time.
Sometimes the bundles are ‘pre-sorted’, in reverse. Whatever, it happens. Assuming you got the right bundles for your route - again, mistakes happen.
These kinds of mistakes are easy enough for the carrier to adjust for when they’re sorting the mail at their case.
These kinds of mistakes are easy enough for the carrier to adjust for when they’re sorting the mail at their case.
So, as I’m reading this msg., the directive is for the carrier to show up, get their accountables (vehicle and route keys, any certified mail or postage due, expresses - jeez, I just thought of Express mail!), collect their mail, and go.
Here’s a simple reason this won’t work:
Here’s a simple reason this won’t work:
Almost none of that stuff is ready to go when the carrier gets there. The DPS mail for the day is often not set out for carriers, because the clerks are still frantically working through several pallets and wires of packages that came in overnight.
Flats and coffin mail often doesn’t get distributed, hot case mail is still being sorted. In order for this to work at all, clerks (most stations locally are understaffed with clerks) will need to start their day at least a couple hours earlier than they already do.
And again, this is going to mess up Express delivery. Exp. mail often doesn’t show up at the station until sometime between 8 and 9:30 am. Usually it’s on the early end, but I can’t count the number of times I (as a supervisor) had to run late Express mail out & del. myself…
…so we wouldn’t fail on our delivery and trigger a possible refund to the customer (did you know that if your Exp mail doesn’t get delivered by noon you can get a refund?)
So, okay. This whole thread is all over the place, and kind of a mess. But honestly, so is the USPS in general. They do great work, but I tell you the management has no real idea what the clerks and carriers do all day, and it shows.
To see a directive like this come down, knowing how it’s going to impact the carriers and clerks and their ability to do their jobs and live up to mgmt’s expectations of them, it just really makes me glad I got out of the USPS when I did.
The USPS is designed to run smoothly on a 24-hour schedule, and everyone from mail handlers to clerks to carriers to drivers has to perform their jobs as quickly and consistently as possible to even make the system run at all. They’re already running at their peak.
And to see a wrench being thrown so casually into that system, a ‘new way of doing things’ that will upend the entire works at the local stations, is confusing. And to think that it’s being done intentionally to break the USPS is frankly infuriating.
This isn’t being done to curb overtime - any time saved today is just being stolen from tomorrow. And arguably routes will take longer, since at any given time about 1/10 of the mail being delivered from your station is being carried by people unfamiliar with the route.
First-class mail is expected to get sorted into sequence while on the street - there’s no way that’s going to be any faster than doing it at the case where the whole route is already laid out in order.
And I guarantee those fill-in carriers, anyone taking a section, who’s been recently reassigned, or whose route recently had an adjustment (an annual or bi-annual event), there’s no way they’re sorting mail on the street. That stuff’s coming back for tomorrow.
And what of the ODL carriers? The Overtime Desired List carriers, who are volunteering to work overtime to make sure everything gets delivered each day. Well…
ODL carriers are usually used in the morning to case up extra routes (absent carriers, or unassigned routes, typically), or in the afternoon to help carry sections of onworked routes. ODL carriers can work a max of 10 hours a day per contract.
So lets say that all mail sorting is being done in the afternoon now. Are the ODL carriers coming back to the station to sort their route for tomorrow, and then going back out to deliver on another route? You’re losing a lot of travel time there.
What if the ODL carriers carry their sections and THEN come back? Now they’re working their own route on overtime. Tell me there won’t be any penalties for that. There’s no protection for that under the current employment contract.
And besides, the previous paradigm was that all first-class mail gets delivered everyday. The whole system was geared toward that (not-always-) simple goal. Now that 1C mail is being brought back, why even have the ODL? Why permit any OT at all?
The simple truth is this: The USPS handles a lot of mail each day. Millions of pieces. The system worked, because it all got delivered every day. As soon as you allow - EXPECT - some of it to get brought back or delayed, it’s going to start piling up. And that pile will grow.
Here’s a quick story: Couple years ago we had a rough winter - weeks of snow and ice. One of our carriers came in each day and cased up their route, then refused to carry it. Every day. For a week.
You wouldn’t believe how quickly a single route can pile up.
You wouldn’t believe how quickly a single route can pile up.
So folks, do humanity a favor, and be kind to your postal carrier. It’s not just you, and it’s not just your route. If you have complaints about your delivery, go straight to your station’s supervisors, and then call your local postal union and tell them they have your support.
Don’t be fooled into thinking any of this is the fault of your carrier, or even your local station. Any delays or disruptions to your mail delivery are coming from the top down.
