The Insanity of the United States Postal Service

Look at your anger and frustration already, imagine
when you add the 40 feet of snow your area gets
every winter. Just sayin..

Quote: Face

If you had a garage, would you hire a shadetree mechanic?

The local Ford, Chevy and Chrysler dealers do, the only difference is scale. They always put the least expensive person they can on the task I need done. I have a friend that washes cars for Chrysler.

I also have a good friend who retired from the USPS and I have met some of his cronies. Different sort, I feel empathy for those at the windows, dealing with an unhappy public. I have a hard time taking guff off of anybody, let alone as a career. I finally started getting the hang of shining them on when I finished up at a power company. There are people outside, all hours of the day and night wanting to know why you aren't working, even while you bust your ass. I have been complained about before I could even get to the job site, let alone get out of the truck. Everyone is a critic. That's where we use the term "hero to asshole in 60 seconds". They love you until their lights come on, then you are over paid donut eaters. I like mine glazed, thanks.

Quote:

I don't know how to turn a factory truck into a state snowplow.

I almost mentioned it last winter. A friend and his friend got a track drive snow thrower that they could dismantle into 3 pieces and pack up extension ladders and reassemble. They had formula's for how much they would charge for rooftop snow removal. Had the estimates for the weight etc, and would show prospective customers. One time a Costco [?] manager didn't want to pay them and they showed him the weight on the roof, many tons. When they looked up from inside, the beams that hold the roof were visibly bowed. They got to work and were making about 3 grand a week, BITD [back in the day].

I had a great sno plow truck, a 76 f-150 [should have been 250] with posi-track all around. Industrial sno chains on 10 inch tires all around, it went where I shouldn't of. When it got stuck, you knew you were stuck. Twin posi's with chains is awesome. Western plow, antiquated but moved a lot of snow. It almost takes a full time mechanic to keep an old plow working, they are needy.

Can you fish guide? Or sell fish?

I think I've mentioned before, I had a professionally built food concession trailer. I would quit my jobs in the spring and go to a lot of shindigs with my kids for the summer. We wouldn't work on good tides and went clamming and king fishing. The regular customers complained a little, but they weren't what it was about. My kids before 10 could and can make change for a hundred in the blink of an eye and count it back properly, and almost forgotten art. They did great in math, and as many as two at a time were on the honor rolls. I was a pretty intense parent.

The best money or fastest I made was selling sno cones, [in Alaska no less]. Several days we sold 800 per day. They cost .15 to make and sold for a buck each or 1.25 for a rainbow. That isn't big money, but the experience was wonderful, for everyone. And, they all caught some big fish. One of those retired mail trucks would be excellent for that purpose. Coffee, cigs, and sno cones would make a guy a surprising amount of money on occasions of his choosing. We fed music festivals, rodeo's and I really liked auctions. Never, do a dog show. They were way worse than horse shows.

I laughed when you put up that dog flying off the bridge. I had cats that could fly, and a couple mutts. I really like dogs myself, but I hate getting bit.

I didn't post in the most jobs thread, I led a different life. I averaged between 4 and 12 w-2's per year for a long time. Some would be several jobs per year each.

Just as my postal friend used his experience and seniority to travel, I used my trade to see a lot of the west coast. Fifty city's in the first 5 years. Rabble rousing and buying loose women drinks isn't for everybody, but at the time seemed like the thing to do.

I saw recently, the postal service was advertising for someone to go and work the south pole. I had a friend that worked there every summer for years

Quote: petroglyph

There are people outside, all hours of the day and night wanting to know why you aren't working,

A neighbor and I were talking to a
power guy the last time the lights
were out. He was across the street
waiting for a can to be delivered.
All my neighbor could see was he
had no lights and a power guy in
his truck doing nothing. He said
to him in a loud voice "Don't you
even care how inconvenient it is
for us with no electric?'

The power guy says, nope. 'All I care
about is getting your meter spinning
again so we're making money.'

Which I thought was a pretty cool response.

Wow, just read this. Very interesting.

Approximately how many addresses or boxes are on your route? What percent of them get mail each day? I know at my house we only have mail in the box about every third day.

I personally think mail should only be picked up and delivered three times per week for residences. For your sake I hope that doesn't happen until you find another job.

My new CC was mailed 11 days ago, where
is it?

Quote: DRich

Wow, just read this. Very interesting.

Approximately how many addresses or boxes are on your route? What percent of them get mail each day? I know at my house we only have mail in the box about every third day.

661 stops on my current route. Even though it's summer which is the "dead" season, and I typically do the short days (Monday is big mail day), I rarely have a stop that doesn't get mail. Sure, there's a few businesses that aren't open on Saturday, so those are a given. And some of my stops are mostly abandoned but the owner still has stuff delivered there. Hell, one of my stops doesn't even have a house. It was razed after a flood, so it's just a lot with a mailbox. But even so, there are very few stops I can skip. Talking maybe teens a day.

Quote: Face

661 stops on my current route.

5 short of the Devil's work.

I'm arriving late to this thread [yet again]. All your stuff, Face, is worth reading but you are one productive guy! Wow. Yet somehow I can't picture you being the Journalism student.

Some 45 years ago I took the exam you need to take to work for the Post Office ... I think they just called it the Civil Service Exam. It was the Post Office I was eyeing alright. I was fresh out of college, needing a job, and by God absolutely a veteran of the art of taking exams, in my absolute prime. I flunked it miserably. It was unbelievable how hard they made it. They had a math section and it had no math whatsoever except you were supposed to solve long division problems one after the other, there must have been 200 to do if you could get that far in the time limit. And each one was like this:

solve 598709876/289 to 3 decimal places

I actually wasted some time looking to see if these things were simpler to solve than meets the eye, like 867/289 ... no sir, this was not the case. Clearly only some savant type was going to do well. I was extremely bitter that they were putting on a charade like this.

Do I have to tell you what I experienced the next several decades going into a Post Office and sizing up the employees there? I think I might have run into maybe a couple of them I thought might have done better than me on such an exam. Clearly other factors got you a job there, it wasn't taking some stupid test.

Face, the exam you had to take these days was something more reasonable I assume, since you didnt say much about it. And as you have found, for some reason the non-full time RCA is a job that is available too. The Post Office was a Federal job back then, it wasn't the "USPS" and you were part of the civil service system. I' m sure nobody was part time and all that.

One day maybe 8 years ago I ran into a clerk I figured was about my age. He was so bitter about the PO that he was ragging about it loudly to each and every customer who walked into the place. Daring them to fire him I guess. I have reflected on this since then and found some peace. Actually it seems now I was quite lucky not to have passed that exam.

Quote: odiousgambit

I'm arriving late to this thread [yet again]. All your stuff, Face, is worth reading but you are one productive guy! Wow. Yet somehow I can't picture you being the Journalism student.

Thanks! =)

Productive? Journalism? I can only assume that's in reference to the wad of stuff I churn out here. And you'd be right. I don't even think I knew what journalism was when I went to college. I can't tell you how unprepared and naive I was. I just went the science route because I "knew I had to go to school" and science was very easy for me, and entertaining. Even something as obvious a career path as the DEC was something light years outside of my cognizance. Some part of my system failed me then, and failed spectacularly.

This is all sort of new still to me, even something as simple as blogging or "foruming". Sure, I had a few moments of brilliance in high school, had a couple of short stories I got A+ on when I was eeking out D's in regular class, had some read in front of the whole school, but even reading wasn't something I really got into until after my hard drug phase, after I sort of withdrew from the social scene. Mid 20's or so. Writing and taking it sort of seriously didn't start until WoV, and then kind of stretched out with DT and the ability to write about whatever. So no... not much of a journalist here lol.

Quote: OG

Face, the exam you had to take these days was something more reasonable I assume, since you didnt say much about it. And as you have found, for some reason the non-full time RCA is a job that is available too. The Post Office was a Federal job back then, it wasn't the "USPS" and you were part of the civil service system. I' m sure nobody was part time and all that.

No, I do know the PT aspect is relatively new, but it's still a Federal job. Wouldn't be bad if I was in as FT just because of that, but I feel I've a long road ahead to get to that point, if I even want it. I dunno. Just glad I have some sort of income for the moment. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.'

As for the test, I could easily recreate it and will do so now. The first part was just being able to recognize mistakes. That gave you a long list of addresses. On one side there was the actual address. On the other, the address as it was written on the piece of mail. You had to look at both and state whether it was correct, whether the address was wrong, the zip code was wrong, or if both were wrong. Pick one answer of these four. It looked sort of like this...

11566 W Alameda Ave, Idiot, ID, 29346	11566 W Almeda Ave, Idiot, ID, 29346
17 Sixty Five blvd, Scranton, PA 63094	17 Sixty Five blvd, Scranton, PA, 60394
222 Tutu Ln, Walla Walla WA, 43435	222 Tutu Ln, Walla Walla WA, 43435

It would give you, I dunno, 40 of these at a time and you'd have 5 minutes to look at all 40 and note 1 of the 4 answers - correct, wrong add, wrong zip, both wrong. There was about 5 of these groups of 40 that made up the first part. Very little brain power as far as computing, you just needed... visual acuity? Something along those lines.

The next part was memory. They gave you a route list, it looked sort of like this...

ROUTE 1	West Main 100 - 499	Heidl 1700 - 5699	Sesame 1000 - 1099
ROUTE 2	West Main 500 - 1499	Sesame 1100 - 4999	Pennsylvania 6900 - 7499
ROUTE 3	Heidl 5700 - 5999	Pennsylvania 7500 - 8999	N Creek 2000 - 2799
ROUTE 4	N Creek 1000 - 1999	Sesame 100 - 999	Hertz 0 - 6999

With this route list up on the screen, it would then give you a wad of addresses, again in group of about 40 with 5 minutes to complete, where for each address you check box 1-4 to denote which route it went to. 354 West Main? Goes in ROUTE 1. 3826 Hertz? Check ROUTE 4. Easy enough. They gave you about 3 groups of 40 for this, and then the hard part came. They took away the route list and gave you three more groups of 40. You still had to read an address and denote which route it went to, but the route list was gone. All you had was memory. 1854 Hertz? Easy, all of Hertz was ROUTE 4 only, no prob. 1094 Sesame?.... shit. Did it start low on ROUTE 1 or somewhere else? Did it jump around? Where did it break off? Still 3 groups of 40, still only 5 minutes to do each group.

This last was the only part I would describe as any bit challenging. The rest you just needed a modicum of focus and the ability to read equal to at least an 8th grader. Simple, really. But that last you need some experience with associations or whatever you do to remember a mass of info.

But that was it. Took me 5 times longer to drive there and back than it did to take the test. No math. No comprehension. Just see and remember what you saw.

I took the test and got a job at the PO
in the early 70's. They give you the
shittyest job they have when you start,
hand sorting mail at 5am. Means I
would have got up at 4am and driven
downtown winter or summer. I never
went in, I knew I'd last less than a week.
I'm a night person, never go to bed
before 2am. I worked a graveyard job
for 4 years, loved it.

The best job at the PO in those days,
one everybody wanted, was a route
like Face has. You had to be there
years to get one. I was surprised Face
got one right away.