The sneering career carriers smiled at this today:
True Life: How hard could a mail job be? Very
August 31, 2000
By PHIL GARLINGTON
The Orange County Register
Back then, I never thought much about the future, except that I knew I wanted to spend the winter in Mexico. That meant I needed a summer job that would lay me off after a couple of months so I could collect a smidgen of unemployment. That's how I became a temporary mail carrier in a little town in Northern California.
To save money, I pitched a tent in a state campground nearby and rode my bicycle down the hill at 6 a.m. to the post office annex.
I'd always assumed that being a mailman would be a pretty easy job. How hard could it be, to walk across the lawn and stuff some letters in a slot? It was in "postal college," a weeklong training course for the temps, that I started to have misgivings.
For one thing, I hadn't realized that part of the job would be casing the mail. It should have been obvious that somehow mail has to be sorted before it goes into the carrier's bag or into the truck. What happens is that the carrier stands inside a three-sided wooden case made up of pigeonholes. Stacks of mail for the route roll up on a cart. Then the carrier has to deal it into the appropriate slots corresponding to street addresses.
Magazines and other "flats" had to be sorted separately. Special delivery mail had to be signed for. And then there was the ton of junk mail, supermarket fliers and the reams of other stuff addressed to "occupant."
Professional carriers can case their route in a couple of hours. But I just couldn't seem to get the hang of it. It was so boring. By 9 the supervisor was visiting my case, glowering, and looking at his watch. I could tell time. But I was slow, and all thumbs.
As a temp, I had to fill in on different routes. When I was on foot, carrying a bag, I was supposed to "finger" the mail. That is, I would pull out all the letters and flats for an address, add the junk mail, and have it arranged and ready to stick in the mailbox as I walked by.
The letters are held in the hand, the flats balanced on the back of the wrist, the junk mail piled on the elbow. I was like a harried waiter carrying too many plates. I didn't have the dexterity and coordination. I was always picking up bobbled mail.
I also didn't realize that every witty merchant on the route was going to call me "Cliff," after the obnoxious mailman on "Cheers."
From the first day, I was struggling. Nothing about this was fun. Not only did I drop the mail, I was always finding letters addressed to houses I'd already passed. Frankly, when I got way behind, some of the junk mail didn't get delivered.
My colleagues, all career carriers, didn't say anything, but I know they sneered at my clumsiness. One time one of them had to drive out and rescue me when my arrow key, the brass key that opens banks of apartment mailboxes, got stuck in a lock with me still attached to it.
But that's not why I was fired.
I was driving one of those boxy red-white-and-blue mail trucks on a suburban route. I was seated on the right side, slowly cruising along the curb, pushing the mail into the passing boxes.
Halfway down one block I saw that one of the mailboxes had fallen over.
I stopped my truck, put it in park, and stepped out with the wad of mail assigned to the fallen box. I knew I was violating a rule. In postal college they'd told us that if we ever left the truck FOR ANY REASON we were supposed to shut off the engine and lock the doors.
Just as I got out, the homeowner saw me, took her mail, and launched into the details about how her mailbox got knocked over (kids), and how her husband would fix it after work. Maybe a minute elapsed.
I turned around. My truck had disappeared. It was gone. Nowhere in sight.
I looked right, left. I even looked up. This was one of the times that I have been stricken with a feeling of true horror. How could a mail truck disappear?
Then, across the street to my left, I saw the truck slowly backing up a driveway. Evidently, the transmission, of its own volition, had popped into reverse. The wheels must have been crimped to the left. The truck was backing up in a path describing the letter J.
Fascinated, I watched the moving truck narrowly miss an above-ground natural gas meter. It majestically backed past a row of cars in the adjacent driveway.
At the end of the driveway was a small rental cottage. Inexorably, the truck continued. It smashed into the front door, tearing it off the hinges.
By that time I had leapt across the street, reached into the cab and turned off the ignition. I was trembling. This really could have been awful. What if the truck had ripped out a gas line? The fire department would have had to evacuate the block. Or what if the truck had flattened some of the numerous children playing outside on a warm summer afternoon?
Dressed in the postal service light blue shirt and a dun pith helmet I approached the demolished door, which was lying flat inside the living room.
"It's your letter carrier," I said.
At first the occupant, an unshaven middle-aged man whom I noticed wasn't much of a housekeeper, showed signs of umbrage at the unheralded intrusion. I was afraid he might say something like "I can't abide rudeness in a man."
But then it gradually came over him - you could actually see it moving across his face, like a shadow crossing a lake - his door had been knocked down by The Government. It meant that there was going to be a nice check for him in the near future.
The guy helped me push the truck out of his living room. But after that he said, "I don't think we should touch anything." Right. The photo.
Soon the postmaster arrived, a very grim-lipped public servant. If there was any humor in this situation, he didn't see it.
We left the truck in the drive way, pending police inspection, and it was a very quiet trip back to the postal annex in his government sedan. But by this time, I had recovered my composure. Since my negligence hadn't actually killed anyone, I was glad the post office was going to fire me. Being a letter carrier was not for me. I had no aptitude for it, and it wasn't much fun anyway. But from then on I would have nothing but admiration for the men and women who can expeditiously case the mail and then pile it in three tiers balanced on the inside of their arms.
So I was fired, and I had to figure out another way to raise the cash for Mexico. I became a parking lot attendant for the just-conceived Renaissance Pleasure Faire. And happily, I was really good at it. I had a knack for getting the surly drivers of Volkswagen buses with "Question Authority" bumper stickers to line up like ducks.
I even got these insouciant young showboats to slow down, by my shrewd placement of orange cones. The parking lot bosses wanted me to come back the next year. But that was thinking too far ahead.
At the end of September a Tres Estrellas de Oro autobus rolled into La Paz, Mexico, and dropped me off on the plaza.
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