13 Things Your Mail Carrier Won’t Tell You

[luv]

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/...l-you-2445111/

1. Maybe your dog won’t bite you. But in 2009, 2,863 of us were bitten, an average of nine bites per delivery day. That’s why I wince when your Doberman comes flying out the door.

2. Remember this on Valentine’s Day: It takes our machines longer to read addresses on red envelopes (especially if they’re written in colored ink).

3. Why stand in line? At usps.com, you can buy stamps, place a hold on your mail, change your address, and apply for passports. We even offer free package pickup and free flat-rate envelopes and boxes, all delivered right to your doorstep.

4. Media Mail is a bargain, but most of you don’t know to ask for it. Sending ten pounds of books from New York City to San Francisco through Media Mail costs $5.89, compared with $16.77 for Parcel Post. Besides books, use it to send magazines, manuscripts, DVDs, and CDs; just don’t include anything else in the package.

5. We don’t get a penny of your tax dollars. Really. The sale of postage, products, and services at our 36,000 retail locations, and on our website, covers all of the post office's operating expenses.

6. UPS and FedEx charge you $10 or more for messing up an address. Us? Not a cent.

7. Paychecks, personal cards, letters—anything that looks like good news—I put those on top. Utility and credit card bills? They go under everything else.

8. Sorry if I seem like I’m in a hurry, but I’m under the gun: Our supervisors tell us when to leave, how many pieces of mail to deliver, and when we should aim to be back. Then some of us scan bar codes in mailboxes along our route so they can monitor our progress.

9. Yes, we do have to buy our own stamps, but a lot of us carry them for customers who need them. If we don’t charge you, that’s because we like you.

10. Use a ballpoint pen. Ink from those felt tips runs in the rain.

11. Please dress properly when you come to the door. A towel wrapped around you doesn’t cut it. And we definitely don’t want to see you in your underwear!

12. We serve 150 million addresses six days a week, so we’re often in the right place at the right time. We pull people out of burning cars, catch burglars in the act, and call 911 to report traffic accidents, dead bodies, and more.

13. Most of us don’t mind if you pull up to our trucks while we’re delivering and ask for your mail a little early. But please get out of your car and come get it. Don’t just put your hand out your window and wait for me to bring it to you.

"We don’t get a penny of your tax dollars. Really. The sale of postage, products, and services at our 36,000 retail locations, and on our website, covers all of the post office's operating expenses."

This is true. The post office is one of the (if not the only) government agencies that is 100% self-sufficient. They do not get tax dollars or money from the government. Whenever postage goes up, it's typically because the cost of technology used, gas, cost of benefits, or wages have gone up.

Anyway, I just thought I would share this. I know my dad has told me several of these, but I didn't know if everyone was aware.

[Mr. Flopnuts]

Originally Posted by JASONSAUTO

i'll add one

14: **** off.

bet they wont tell you that either

[phisherman]

Originally Posted by Brock

LOL, that's ridiculous.

is it? to an office jockey that sits down all day every day, shlepping mailbags around on foot probably wouldn't be the easiest job.

it's definitely harder than playing piano in a whorehouse.

[phisherman]

Originally Posted by Saulbadguy

Obviously they weren't that smart.

OR, maybe they enjoyed their jobs and didn't equate their wage level with their happiness level...

[Saccopoo]

Originally Posted by phisherman

i'd say that being a mail carrier is as difficult or more difficult than most occupations. I have a pretty darn specialized IT job that took me years to get into, but I still insist, that if someone sat down with me for a month or two, they could do the same job that i do. they may not be as efficient at it as i am, but they could still get the job done.

i just don't have any preconceived notions about the level of intelligence it takes to do any particular jobs. i've known people in high level IT jobs that could barely remember how to write a check, let alone build servers, and i've known people that had very low paying jobs that were as smart or smarter than any of my friends that had high paying jobs.

Being a letter carrier is chimp work. My cousin does it. My cousin's fiancee does it. My ex-wife's new husband does it. They all admit it's chimp work. However, that doesn't mean that postal workers are idiots. Shit, great pay as it relates to the work/thought required, good benefits, retirement, a lot of paid time off, phone in sick days, etc. Sounds like someone would have to be pretty smart to figure out that you get a lot of stuff for not really having to do much of anything.

But then, so is IT. ****ing morons. My brother runs an IT department (for a very good company with some very high level contracts) and thinks that his employees are, without question, some of the dumbest ****ers he's ever been around. And seriously, what do most IT guys do? Nothing for the most part other than pass the buck.

[Brock]

Originally Posted by phisherman

is it? to an office jockey that sits down all day every day, shlepping mailbags around on foot probably wouldn't be the easiest job.

it's definitely harder than playing piano in a whorehouse.

Depends on what that office jockey does. You think a mail carrier would think his job is harder than, say, a roofer or a concrete finisher?

[phisherman]

probably not. roofing is one tough a** job. it's all relative.

i think carrying mail would be much more physically difficult than my job, but i think my job is probably much more mentally difficult than carrying mail.

[Saccopoo]

Originally Posted by phisherman

is it? to an office jockey that sits down all day every day, shlepping mailbags around on foot probably wouldn't be the easiest job.

it's definitely harder than playing piano in a whorehouse.

I don't know about that. Piano player in a whorehouse sounds like a shit job to me.

[phisherman]

Originally Posted by Saccopoo

I don't know about that. Piano player in a whorehouse sounds like a shit job to me.

lots of perks though.

[luv]

Originally Posted by Brock

LOL, that's ridiculous.

Just curious. What do you consider to be difficult? Surely not anything that requires intelligence, as that should be too easy for you.

[MOhillbilly]

http://www.thebuk.com/Post_Office.html

Excerpt from Post Office
It began as a mistake.
It was Christmas season and I learned from the drunk up on the hill, who did the trick every Christmas, that they would hire damned near anybody, and so I went and the next thing I knew I had this leather sack on my back and was hiking around at my leisure. What a job, I thought. Soft! They only gave you a block or two and if you managed to finish, the regula carrier would give you another block to carry, or maybe you'd go back in and the soup would give you another, but you just took your time and shoved those Xmas cards in the slots.
I think it was my second day as a Christmas temp that this big woman came out and walked around with me as I delivered letters. What I mean by big was that her a** was big and her t*** were big and that she was big in all the right places. She seemed a bit crazy, but I kept looking at her body and I didn't care.
She talked and talked and talked. Then it came out. Her husband was an officer on an island far away and she got lonely, you know, and lived in this little house in back all by herself.
"What little house?" I asked.
She wrote the address on a piece of paper.
"I'm lonely too," I said, "I'll come by and we'll talk tonight."
I was shacked but the shackjob was gone half the time, off somewhere and I was lonely alright. I was lonely for that big a** standing beside me.
"All right," she said, "see you tonight."
SHe was a good one all right, she was a good lay but like all lays after the third or fourth night I began to lose interest and didn't go back.
But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen is drop in their letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes.
So I took the exam, passed it, took the physical, passed it, and there I was—a substitute mail carrier. It began easy. I was sent to West Avon Station and it was just like Christmas except I didn't get laid. Every day I expected to get laid but I didn't. But the soup was easy and I strolled around doing a block here and there. I didn't even have a uniform, just a cap. I wore my regular clothes. The way my shackjob Betty and I drank there was hardly money for clothes.
Then I was transferred to Oakford Station.
The soup was a bullneck named Jonstone. Help was needed there and I understood why. Jonstone liked to wear dark red t-shirts—that meant danger and blood. There were seven subs—Tom Moto, Nick Pelligrini, Herman Stratford, Rosey Anderson, Bobbly Hansen, Harold Wiley and me, Henry Chinaski. Reporting time was 5am and I was the only drunk there. I always drank until past midnight, and there we'd sit, at 5am, waiting to get on the clock, waiting for some regular to call in sick. The regulars usually called in sick when it rained or during a heatwave or the day after a holiday when the mail load was doubled.
There were 40 or 50 routes, maybe more, each case was different, you were never able to learn any of them, you had to get your mail up and ready before 8am for the truck dispatches, and Jonstone would take no excuses. The subs routed their magazines on corners, went without lunch, and died in the streets. Jonstone would have us casing the routes 30 minutes late—spinning in his chair in his red shirt—"Chinaski take route 539!" We'd start a half hour short but were still expected to get the mail up and out and be back on time. And once or twice a week, always beaten, bundle of sticksged and f**ked we had to make the night pickups, and the schedule on the board was impossible—the truck wouldn't go that fast. You had to skip four or five boxes on the first run and the next time around they were stacked with mail and you stank, you ran with sweat jamming it into the sacks. I got laid all right. Jonstone saw to that.
© Charles Bukowski. Excerpt Used Only As An Appreciation of Buk!

[ChiTown]

My job is a piece of cake. I just sit here in my Avatar (24-7) and jerk it to TV.

[-King-]

How much more difficult is it to be a mail man than to be a paperboy when you're 12? Serious question.
Posted via Mobile Device

[Brock]

Originally Posted by -King-

How much more difficult is it to be a mail man than to be a paperboy when you're 12? Serious question.
Posted via Mobile Device

[Bwana]

Heh, I forgot about Newman.

[luv]

Originally Posted by -King-

How much more difficult is it to be a mail man than to be a paperboy when you're 12? Serious question.
Posted via Mobile Device

Don't know much about being a paper boy. Do they still roll their own papers, or do they go and pick up a bag to deliver? Do they do it for 8+ hours per day? Do they make kids go out and walk up porches in the winter? Can they still ride their bikes in the summer?