What does the mail carrier think about my mail
April 3, 2018 11:07 AM   Subscribe

I'd like to know what the mail carrier and sorters think about my mail and the other mail they handle. Do you know of any first-person accounts of postal worker experiences, extra-credit for gossipy about postcards?
posted by bq to Society & Culture (17 answers total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Charles Bukowski's Post Office is probably not representative of a typical postal worker's experiences.
posted by box at 11:27 AM on April 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


Best answer: I've been a mail handler with USPS for 22 years, and to be honest, we don't (as a rule) think much about the packages and letters that come through the mail stream on a given day. When I worked at one of the Remote Encoding Centers back in the mid 1990s, we did see postcards that people sent from various places, but there wasn't a lot of time to peruse them because we were working on production - you had to be able to manually key so many items per hour.

That's not to say that mail is boring, mind you. I've seen things mailed (both legally and not) that would surprise most people. There was the woman who sent her boyfriend a bottle of homemade liquor (as in, not the stuff you find in a typical liquor store) that burst open because she didn't package it properly. Needless to say, you would have thought we were running a still if you had walked onto the dock that day.

Oh and let's not forget the man who tried to mail a firearm back home from overseas - a fully assembled rifle. I would have loved to see the look on his commanding officer's face when that package got returned.

We've had live animals come through here as well - crickets, worms, bees, baby chicks, and even a pair of roosters (who had to be returned to the sender because one escaped its container and attacked the other one).
posted by Roger Pittman at 11:32 AM on April 3, 2018 [45 favorites]


Are you looking for written accounts or personal knowledge about mail carriers reading mail?

If the latter, my mail carrier's wife (who I was friends with) once told me that my neighbors must come from a really rich family based on the postcards their mother sent. I was also getting a newspaper from a different city that she casually mentioned her husband was reading.
posted by FencingGal at 11:34 AM on April 3, 2018


Best answer: I'm just in the process of reading The Postal Age which talks a lot about how the growth of postal communication changed society and culture. it's worth a read if you like this general topic.

I have a PO box and receive a lot of postcards and while the mail clerks will sometimes mention something truly notable ("Hey a postcard from Antarctica!") this is quite probably because they know I do not mind and am a chatty type about this sort of thing. I also have friends trying to address things to me in ridiculous ways (it is a small town) and this will often solicit a mention but usually only if I open a conversation. My take is that they notice a LOT of things but that part of their job is being somewhat circumspect about it. Like it's Vermont, we don't have curtains but there's a social custom to NOT MENTION what you might see through someone's window. Or like the mods here with the anon questions. When I worked here I had access to who asked the anon questions, but it was never something I talked about, even to close friends.

I receive mail for two deceased parents and this is definitely a thing that is known about me, for example, but there's no extra context added by the postal clerks, just "Hey how can I help you with whatever administrative aspect of that needs handling?" I should also note they NEVER talk about anyone else's mail except in the vaguest of terms "I hope they come pick up their baby chicks, the noise is making me crazy"
posted by jessamyn at 11:46 AM on April 3, 2018 [11 favorites]


Best answer: I did the mail when I worked as a student assistant in my dorm in college like 20 years ago. The job was to do mail for about 500 rooms, either all female or all male depending on the side. Male was better, they got fewer letters, post cards, and catalogues. I really liked doing female mail though, and there definitely were people who got more, bigger, and cooler mail than others. You got to know some people through their mail - the super churchy person, the sports nut, the gambler, the lady (usually) who got a mail from her family every day, the Victorias Secret nut. Not that many people got all-black (meaning porographic) magazines. If there was someone in there, there'd always be a joke about that. This was also when AOL disks and then CDs were big. They mass-mailed to every single theoretical address in the building - which about half didn't even exist. So we would erase the floppy disks and put personal stuff on them, or double stuff something close, or use the CDs as coasters. Never stole any other mail and never heard of anyone else doing it either.

Mail was fine if boring, package slips were the worst. You had to fill out a slip for anything that didn't fit for special pickup. Around Valentines Day (big college holiday since Christmas and Thanksgiving were generally celebrated away from school so not that much mail) the wrist cramps from filling out 1000 package slips was the worst!

Also, I never got over the feeling that I was putting the person's mail in the wrong box.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:48 AM on April 3, 2018 [4 favorites]


Our mail carrier was stealing and throwing out our Ms. and Mother Jones magazines back in the 90's because of a political objection. We had to go all the way up the chain to deal with it and had to keep doing it because they'd get a warning, they wouldn't stop, we'd have to complain again, etc. for several years until they finally got fired.

I also used to put out the mail in my dorm's mailroom, and I can't say I ever really looked at the mail. I was mainly concerned with getting everything out on time. A perk of the job was free magazines from the people who moved away and didn't leave a forwarding address. Once the mailroom and the entire building got shut down because it was 2002-2003 or so and someone's package was leaking white powder...turned out to be baking supplies and not anthrax. Double-bag anything that can leak, please.
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:00 PM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm friends with a mail carrier, and I get the sense that he cares more about the people on his route than the content of the mail. Meeting new puppies, fanciful lawn ornaments, noticing the oranges are in season early this year or seeing their daughter visiting from college.

He's been on a similar route for about 20 years, and was really excited about getting a few streets after they had been reassigned to another carrier for about 5 years.
posted by politikitty at 12:09 PM on April 3, 2018 [11 favorites]


Best answer: Back in the seventies when my parents moved to a ramshackle farm in rural Texas, their mail carrier--a grizzled old Vietnam veteran--stopped by one day to tell them he liked what they read: The Nation, Mother Earth News, the like. He subscribed to the New Yorker and a few other highbrow lefty magazines, and started bringing his old issues by, since he could probably tell they were poor and couldn't afford too many magazine subscriptions. Eventually it turned out he grew the best pot in the county, which he was glad to share, and therein bloomed a lifelong friendship. I can't imagine the mailman noticing someone's mail (at least in a non-disinterested way) like this in the city, but in the countryside it must've been such a blessing for both of them to find fellow cranky leftists in the thick of the Bible Belt.
posted by tapir-whorf at 12:52 PM on April 3, 2018 [35 favorites]


Best answer: I worked briefly as a sorter in one of the large sorting offices in London almost 30 years ago. I worked 6pm to 6am, seven nights a week for a couple of months. I remember the postcards being a small window to another world. We couldn't have read them due to the pace of work, but occasionally my eyes would slip over from the address and take in a few words, sometimes there only were a few words. The images were what really set me dreaming though.

Of course I never knew the senders or recipients though I think I once sorted a card addressed to a friend, and once a card to a previous address of my own.
posted by zingzangzung at 1:53 PM on April 3, 2018


I was (briefly) mortified when we received mail from the IRS, until I realized the mail carrier probably couldn't have cared less. That particular mail has stopped now (hooray!)
blnkfrnk, your tale of stolen magazines enraged me.
posted by BostonTerrier at 2:16 PM on April 3, 2018


All I know is I’ve had more than a few copies of The Nation show up in my mailbox torn and beat to hell. Far more than one would think would be statistically normal. Once, all I got was the cover inside a plastic bag with a generic, corporate “sorry” message. All I can imagine is someone in the USPS doesn’t agree with magazine’s politics.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:20 PM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


All I know is I’ve had more than a few copies of The Nation show up in my mailbox torn and beat to hell.

Yup. Rural place, first six or eight copies of The New Yorker arrived beaten up, while my husband's more conservative mags arrived unsullied. Hasn't happened since, though, and my local mail carriers are pleasant and know my dog by name. Mostly they seem too pressed for time to be judgy about what they're handing off.
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:58 PM on April 3, 2018


Daughter of a postal carrier, my dad very discretely knew the customers along the route including who needed more help with packages and all the "safe" locations to leave mail. My father would occasionally see a postcard from a super exotic location and mention the location but no further details. He was more interested in the people of his route and their conversations. He was a Vietnam vet and enjoyed talking to everybody over a wide range of topics. He prided himself on his speed and efficiency (let him have more time to chat up the customers) so would not linger over mail more than necessary to get the job done elegantly. This was from the 1970's until the 2000's.

My former carrier in Minnesota, was more concerned about my cats than all the mail I got including an insane amount of Amazon packages. But he was efficient, slightly cranky and nice enough that I did not complain that be walked a path through my woodland style lawn.

My favorite book about any postal service is Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. It addresses in its humorous way, the tragedy of the commons and the value of communication.
posted by jadepearl at 6:54 PM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


My friend used to work in the sorting office in Edinburgh. It was the time of year when the clocks change in spring - also very close to Mothers' Day - and my friend had just told to a co-worker a story that I'd previously told her, about how my mother never changed her clocks in either autumn or spring, because she preferred to run on summer time all year round - so she was an hour out from everyone else for half the year. Literally the next piece of mail that my friend sorted after telling the story was the Mothers' Day card that I'd posted that day - she recognised my handwriting, and my mother's name & address.
posted by rd45 at 3:25 AM on April 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


I read PostSecret for a while early on, and I remember there was a postcard that said something like "I wonder if your mail carrier ever reads the postcards. Maybe they could put a little tear in the postcard if they do so we know." And there was, in fact, a little tear. So I figure that must be one of the more interesting routes in the town.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:06 AM on April 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


I had the same carrier for about 10 years in Peoria and we mostly talked about the weather and my growing (and growing number of) children, but occasionally we had mail-related pleasantries over the years when I happened to take the mail by hand -- "Looks like a big load of Christmas cards today!" or when I was 8 months pregnant and baby stuff started to arrive from Babies R Us in boxes that said "Babies R Us" he'd say "More stuff for the new addition today!" when he gave me the box. We also talked about the last couple of Harry Potter books, which I got on release day by mail; with #7 he told me his daughter was going to start as soon as it arrived and they were letting her stay up past her bedtime to finish. (He also said Harry Potter release day was awesome but annoying, because there were SO MANY individual packages to deliver, but people were SO EXCITED to see him and a surprising number were at home waiting for the mail.) He also once asked me about Birchbox since he was suddenly delivering a ton of them and didn't know what it was and was curious. Occasionally when I've had to sign for a package from overseas, I've had a postal worker (either my carrier or at the desk if I had to go pick it up) comment on how far away it came from.

Since I'm at home during the daytime I think I tend to chat with my mail carrier more than most people. We're still on complaining about the weather at my new place, but he knows my kids look forward to their Kiwi Crate (because they all but mug him when they see him carrying it) and he'll comment on that on Kiwi Crate day.

The carriers who work in lowish-density urban neighborhoods where they walk from house to house, small apartment building to small apartment building, who tend to have the same route for many years, I think have more opportunity to notice what the mail is that they're carrying (since they're walking and getting it ready between houses) and they get to know the folks on their routes over time. High rises and suburban neighborhoods where it's delivered to the curbside mailboxes by trucks seem to offer less of that.

I do remember in college the post office gave the mail sorted by dorm to student workers who delivered it to the dorms and sorted it into the mailboxes in the dorms, and by far the most-stolen item was Victoria Secret catalogs and people would get real pissed. 19-year-old boys delivering the mail to the dorm would just take a couple for their, uh, personal enjoyment, which was dumb, because if they just came back the next day, there'd be half a dozen of them sitting on the table in the mail area where people dropped catalogs and magazines and newspapers they were done with so other people could pick them up if they wanted. But instead, constant complaints to the post office about stolen lingerie catalogs!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:30 PM on April 6, 2018


The_Vegetables: I did the mail when I worked as a student assistant in my dorm in college like 20 years ago.

Hey, me, too -- Bush Hall at Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155!

My dorm was only like a hundred people, and the mailboxes were all broken (the huge door that opened for me to load in mail had no latch, so every box was open literally all the time), so I just carried around the mail and stuck it under everyone's doors.

Catalogs were the worst: in the early 90s, everyone got a Victoria's Secret catalog like every ten days. There was usually a foot-high pile of catalogs every day. Magazines were awesome: thanks to people who moved without changing their address, I got tons of stuff to read.

Also, I liked the mailbags: the cotton canvas ones were cool, but the ones made from synthetic fabric were lightweight and very strong.

Now I am a computer system administrator, and one element of the two jobs that is the same is this: I have so much stuff to move that I have neither interest nor time in any one item. Could I read your mail? Obviously yes. Do I care about your mail? Yeah no.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:12 AM on July 27, 2018


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