So what's it like to be a mailman?

[MurphNKY]

Wondering if there are any postal carriers out there who can give me some sort of idea what it's like to work for the USPS.

Considering looking into employment as a carrier, but have heard good and bad things about the job. A few things I'm curious about...

- Pay...i.e. how often do you get raises? How much OT is allowed?
- How micromanaged are carriers? How harassed are they by supervisors, etc?
- Chance for advancement withing the USPS?
- Physically what does it do to you walking that much every day? I see the good, some point out the bad to me..
- What can a carrier get capped at salary wise?
- Benefits/Vacation?

Thanks for any input!

[1aguilas]

- Physically what does it do to you walking that much every day? I see the good, some point out the bad to me..


[/ QUOTE ]

I know someone who is a mailman and he spent a week in the hospital because of heat exhaustion from being outside in the heat. The weather was in the 90s everyday with high humidity, and he just couldn't take it; despite drinking a lot of water. Obviously this doesn't happen to most mailmen, but it goes to show that it can be very physically taxing.

[Ron Burgundy]

1. get job at USPS
2. steal mail and hide it in basement/attic/garage
3. ???
4. profit!

[MurphNKY]

[ QUOTE ]
1. get job at USPS
2. steal mail and hide it in basement/attic/garage
3. ???
4. profit!

[/ QUOTE ]

Not quite the feedback I was looking for...curiously funny though. Thanks for your keen wit and insight. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[youtalkfunny]

When I was a kid, mailman was considered the greatest "cush" job ever. They'd give you the keys to a truck, and eight hours to go do about two hours work, unsupervised. If you were dumb enough to bring the truck back after two hours, they'd give you more work to do. The pay was good for unskilled labor, and the benefits were second-to-none.

Then, competition reared its ugly head. Suddenly, productivity was expected. The UPS/FedEx model of supervision was adopted: "Faster! Faster! You're not going fast enough!"

This explains why it became trendy for postal workers to snap, bring a gun to work, and shoot the place up (hence the origin of the phrase "going postal").

I mention all of this in case you, like many others, were under the impression that it's still a "cushy" job. Those days are long gone.

[Ook]

Possible bonus - one time sexed a 34 year old female carrier who had the most amazing body from all that walking [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] (sorry, did not take pics)

[Blarg]

I read an article a long time ago about how the drive to cut costs resulted in carriers being expected to meet unrealistic goals that took virtually no account of their workload, and at the same time being incredibly micro-managed by superiors and force-fed a lot of pressure and criticism for failure to meet essentially "feel good" targets set by management to make management look good and like they were efficiently cutting costs. This made huge chunks of the postal service feel trapped and very angry, as well as overworked, and that's when you started hearing about workers "going postal."

I'm not sure how much that has changed these days. It's pretty standard now to run operations understaffed and just pile the work on others until a workplace becomes provably ridiculously unmanageable and unproductive, or someone quits or has a heart attack or something and legal worries crop up. So I wouldn't be surprised to see the postal service still dangling from a branch of that tree of management theory.

On the other hand, you can work in the postal service behind a counter, too, which looks extremely easy in some post office branches, and merely not very at all in others. I'd probably go for the indoor job if it were me, to save my back and keep the frustration level low.

[Cry Me A River]

My brother works for Canada Post.

He started seasonally as a sorter. However, in order to get on permanently he had to work as a carrier for a few months.

That is a brutal, brutal job. And according to him, the vast majority of carriers have massive substance abuse problems to cope with it (working drunk and/or stoned is common for carriers). Mail carrier is one of the most physically demanding jobs there is. If you are not prepared for this both mentally and physically, you will be crushed.

It's one thing to walk five or ten miles in a day with a load, it's another thing to do this every day. Day in and day out.

However, if you have an inside job it's extremely cushy. Particularly if you're competent since most people working for the post office are not.

BTW - According to my brother, driving the mail trucks is the WORST job. You're micromanaged like crazy and on a very tight schedule at all times.

[Bullrun]

wow....mailman just stopped by the house as i read this thread....classic timing...gg life....

[Los Feliz Slim]

The mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming, there's never a let-up. It's relentless. Every day it piles up more and more and more! And you gotta get it out but the more you get it out the more it keeps coming in. And then the bar code reader breaks and it's *Publisher's Clearing House* day!!!