Arthur Vidro
On Consumerism
Our postman went on a one-week vacation starting the day before Thanksgiving. I’m sure his hard work earned him the time off.
Trouble was, while he was away, our mail was not delivered.
When I was growing up, whenever a mailman or newsboy took a vacation, a substitute took his place. (Heck, my first job in the newspaper world was as a substitute newsboy at age 9, walking our neighborhood after school, carrying shopping bags filled with afternoon papers.)
No question about it, the newspapers and the mail had to be delivered.
But that was then, and this is now. In today’s modern world, newsboys no longer exist and the mail apparently no longer has to get through.
However, the non-delivery of the mail is a systemic fault, not the fault of any individual. The post office, at least locally, is short-staffed. There’s barely enough people to do the job when all hands are on deck.
When our longtime letter carrier moved to another time zone this year, there was nobody new to give the route to. So our route, or perhaps just our portion of it, was added to another longtime carrier’s route.
But he can’t deliver everywhere every day.
One morning a little after nine I reported to the post office counter that we hadn’t been receiving mail for many days. The clerk’s knee-jerk reaction was that perhaps nobody had sent us any mail. My reply: “But we subscribe to USA Today, which is published Monday through Friday and delivered by the postal service.”
To my surprise, our new postman emerged from the mail-sorting room and apologized for the inconsistent delivery. He then added that he had delivered our mail the prior day.
“But I kept checking the mailbox until 8:30 at night,” I said. “No mail.”
“Did you check the mailbox this morning?”
“This morning? No. Why?”
“Because I delivered to your house between 10 and 10:30 last night.”
Yes, the postman was out delivering his shift when many folks are in bed. We’re close to the end of the route, so probably between 10:30 and 11 p.m. he finished and went home. And there he was back at work by 9 a.m. to repeat the process.
I later learned his workday begins at 7 a.m., and he awakens at 5 a.m.
“So,” I asked him, when he returned from vacation and delivered the mail this past Thursday (the 30th), “when do you sleep?”
He admitted sleep is sometimes a problem.
By the way, on Thursday he gave us three USA Today papers — Friday, Monday, and Tuesday editions.
He stayed away on Friday but on Saturday delivered another three papers to us — the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday editions. So now we were caught up.
Anyway, Thanksgiving was Thursday, Nov. 23. We had no mail delivery that day (post office was closed), or on Friday the 24th or Saturday the 25th or Monday the 27th or Tuesday the 28th or Wednesday the 29th.
However, even when mail does not get delivered, one can still go to the post office and, as I sometimes do, ask politely if any undelivered mail for one’s address is available for pickup. I got two pieces of mail that way on the 24th.
On Nov. 28, I made two trips to the post office. Had a large load of outgoing mail in the morning. While there, I inquired if there was any undelivered mail I could pick up. The clerk looked, but there was nothing.
“We had no delivery on Friday or Saturday or Monday,” I explained, not yet knowing our letter carrier was on vacation. “And we always get mail. There’s the daily newspaper…”
She explained there were lots and lots of trays of unsorted mail that would have to be sorted eventually, and the undelivered mail I was seeking was probably still unsorted and nothing could be done until the sorting took place.
The backlogs weren’t only on the delivery end. They were on the sorting end too.
That same day, close to closing time, I returned with another large load of outgoing mail. While there, I inquired again for any available mail. This time I was rewarded with two or three items, including the USA Today published on Nov. 17.
Remember this was Nov. 28.
That’s how far behind the mail sorting was.
Our mailman told me that while he was away, the Claremont Post Office had three carriers doing seven routes.
“Been doing this for thirty years, and I’ve never seen it this bad,” he said.
Part of the problem is that, at least locally, the post office can’t retain new carriers. They can hire, but they can’t always make a new person remain.
I suspect part of the problem is the overly complicated and time-consuming process to apply for a job. One must use a postal website, which demands tons of irrelevant information and gobbles up hours of each applicant’s time.
If the post office set out a stack of job applications, on paper, at each post office, they’d probably hear from more applicants.
As one longtime clerk (who has since retired) told me, “If I had to apply for the Post Office today, I wouldn’t. They’ve made it too hard to apply.”
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