Confessions of a Former Postal Employee

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This was inspired by April's (@thislittlepennyears ) rant earlier today about the post office after seeing an article about a New Jersey letter carrier who dumped mail on the side of the road. Maybe I shouldn't admit this for fear of alienating everyone, but I'm a former postal employee. Don't worry, though, I'm not disgruntled. Having said that, I can tell you some horror stories that would make your hair curl, not to mention make you think twice before dropping that bill into the mailbox. I thought "mind games" ended when I got out of boot camp. No, the post office excelled in playing them in ways our drill instructors never imagined (thankfully, or I might not have survived boot camp). Because of the "busy season" being around Christmas, nobody was allowed to take leave (vacation time) between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But that doesn't mean we were swamped nonstop. There were days when we sat in the post office with no mail in the building, but the supervisors not allowing anyone to leave early. Why? Because it was the Christmas rush season. Lots of money lost that way. Speaking of lost money, let me tell you about the scam known as "Sunday premium." If you had to work Sunday you got more money. That's nice, of course. What happened, however, was that people who worked nights (such as I did) got "Sunday premium" for two nights, not one. We started our shift at 11 PM on Saturday, but that was considered "Sunday" because we got off at 7:30 AM Sunday morning. As a result, we got eight hours of "Sunday premium" money (if I remember correctly, 25% more). Sunday at 11 PM was considered the clock-in for "Monday;" however, because we were clocking in on the calendar day of Sunday we got the Sunday premium money again. NO, not for just the one hour between 11 PM and midnight....for all eight hours. It paid for a couple of cars, I'll admit, but dang that was wasteful! Remember the old Elvis song, "Return to Sender"? That's another issue: some of the people at the post office -- including the supervisors -- didn't seem too interested in getting the mail to the person it was addressed to, or returned to the person who had sent it. I remember a fan letter addressed to the New Kids on the Block when they were playing in town. It was poorly addressed, causing it to arrive in the Dead Letter Office (where I was working at the time). I tried to get it to where it was going (the venue where they were playing). Three months later, I saw the mail come through the Dead Letter Office again, with the label I'd put on it removed. I'll post more of these if you think you have the stomach to tolerate it. Here's April's article: