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.
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.
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You could try again at your next available convenience when the PO is open and give it to a sales and service associate at the retail window. There are 2 other options I can think of: 1)Put the mail directly in the mailbox of the correct recipient. 2) Re-seal or tape the mail and put it in a blue collection box. If you want, you could put a note on the mail (like a post-it note) saying "opened by accident". Finally, you could put the mail back in your mailbox with a note saying "misdelivered" on top of the mail. Again, you could use a post-it note if you want. All in all, I'd say it's no big deal. We make errors in deliveries all the time. Many times the recipients may just discard the mail, so you are doing the correct thing by putting the mail back in the system to get correctly delivered.
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Usually a point of delivery that has been establish (whether it be a group of cluster boxes in a trailer park or individual mailboxes at each trailer) doesn't get changed easily. I wouldn't accept a request like that to be made as that makes us less efficient and if it's done for one customer, others could claim they want it delivered to the house as well.
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I think it should be 2-3 days for First Class Mail from California to Arizona. Our mail transportation is pretty reliable when it comes to meeting our delivery service goals as long as the mail isn't missorted or misdelivered.
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Please go to www.usps.com for information on how to apply for a job with the USPS. On the main USPS website, there is a section on the right hand side regarding employment and careers with the USPS. I don't recommend any online sites that ask you to pay for applying. If they are providing material for how to succeed or prepare for the exam, that may be valuable, but the USPS doesn't charge to take the exam as far as I know.
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Vbjmin, you ask a question that I'd love to know the perfect answer to as I've been struggling with this issue from the beginning of my postal career. Cold hands are really hard to tolerate especially when you will be out delivering hours and they must be nimble enough to finger the mail. I wear a glove (thick or thin) on the hand where I hold the mail and cradle the flats since I don't need that hand to finger the mail. The hand that I use to finger the mail and deliver the mail I try to wear a thinner and sometimes fingerless glove or one with small gripping dots on them This has worked okay over the years. Another item which can be useful is "hot hands" which are small single-use packets that form a chemical reaction and heat up for several hours. You can put those in your pocket or even inside your glove. I have rarely used these but my girlfriend, not a letter carrier, loves them. I have purchased many pairs of gloves over the years. It's just a matter of finding the ones that keep you warm enough but allows you to still feel the mail. Thanks for writing and winter is my least favorite season to deliver mail.
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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.
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