It’s a pre-Christmas Saturday in December at 6:30 a.m., and Postmaster Beth Fox has been on the job since 6 a.m.
The work day has barely begun and already two postal workers are busy tearing cellophane off a loaded Amazon container. With scanners in hand, workers begin sorting packages into zones. Regular parcel post items have already been scanned and sorted. This is the first phase of the process. Packages will be sorted again for final delivery. Some will go into postal boxes, some will be delivered over-the-counter, and some will go into lockboxes where recipients get a key and can retrieve packages at their convenience. A huge quantity is sorted into the route delivery section where contractors pick up mail and packages for specified routes.
This time of year is hectic.
It could be the ideal setting for an episode of the popular reality TV show “Undercover Boss,” where the CEO of a company takes on an entry-level job in the company he/she runs and learns the inner workings of the company from the ground up, including how hard the employees are working on a day-to-day basis to get the job done. United States Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is the first postmaster general in 20 years to come into the role with no experience as a United States Postal Service (USPS) employee.
Along with two other full-time employees in the Meeker office, route contractors glance at addresses as they sort their mail, readying it for delivery. They place mail into sort boxes, scan packages, and get ready to load them for direct delivery.
“There is no post office degree. Employees have to learn on the job,” Fox says as she sorts through a new stack of yellow package notification slips to go into clients’ postal boxes. There are more than 100 in this stack. There are more in a basket behind her. The Meeker post office will process, sort and deliver between 300-400 packages a day per route — the bulk of them from Amazon. This just might earn a “Post Office PhD.” Piled higher and deeper.
According to a former route delivery contractor, the town driver alone will make as many as three to six trips a day from the post office to various neighborhoods because the volume of packages is so large. Susan Scott, who now has that route, said her package load is close to “300 a day.” She handles the bulk of packages coming into the Meeker Post Office. Her route varies from the rural remote stretching into Moffat County to the condensed, but time-consuming, door-to-door delivery in the Fairfield Center Apartments.
Gayla Carstens, whose late husband Eddy used to deliver that same route from Meeker to ColoWyo, said, “People just have no idea how hard these postal employees work. It’s long, hard hours with few breaks.”
Fox confirms. Her last break was this past June for a three-day camping trip. She emphasizes, “We care about each other. Nobody wants to take time off for a vacation or even take a sick day, because we know how hard everyone else has to work to make up for it.”
YOU’VE GOT MAIL …
The Meeker post office processes, sorts and delivers between
300-400 packages a day PER ROUTE, and around a thousand a day during the holiday season.
The Meeker office has three employees: two clerks and the postmaster. They should have three clerks, but one former employee has been on workman’s compensation for 10 years, blocking the office’s ability to hire a new worker because of regulations.
A fix isn’t as simple as hiring “temps” to come in and fill a space. Everyone who works in the post office must be fingerprinted and have a background check that can take up to 30 days to approve. That means if a post office in Craig or Rifle gets backed up, a postal employee from another location is sent to help ease the pressure. That often causes additional workload problems at their home location.
If a prospective employee passes the background check they’re then required to attend a 30-day training. Even so, the bulk of learning comes on the job and not all of it is pleasant. One misplaced lockbox key can create a frenzy on Facebook or other social media. Quite often, a misdirected package is returned, but sometimes they are not.
Nkiki Keetch has had several misdirected packages — most of which were found and properly delivered. But one in particular was not — a package of new clothes from a company that would not refund the loss. Unless a package is insured, USPS will not refund a loss either. Keetch was left without a resolution for $250 worth of clothes. Keetch did say that Fox made a special effort to reach out to her. Amazon will offer a refund or will send a replacement item.
That may solve the problem for the customer, but Amazon and similar companies that have end-point delivery contracts with the USPS are a large part of the workload problem. The shippers who utilize USPS for last-mile deliveries compensate the Postal Service, which uses that revenue to pay for salaries, buildings, vehicles and infrastructure. The only direct revenue the local office receives comes from postage stamps and delivery fees.
The end-point delivery contracts are considered a “low-level” type of service. Regardless, they cause backups. Surrounding communities with higher package and mail volumes than Meeker are also experiencing those backups, and that, in turn, affects Meeker.
COME ON, JEFFREY …
Amazon and similar companies that have end-point delivery contracts with the USPS are a large part of the problem.
Postal overloads in Western Colorado have been so severe recently that Meeker has sent a clerk to Hayden to help move a serious backlog of package deliveries. Fox herself often spends two to three hours a day attempting to solve customer service issues in Silt, Rifle and Craig, trying to help ease their backlog. Her desk is stacked with folders of customer calls and complaints, each that Fox must meticulously document and attempt to solve even though many are outside her management zone. Every phone call essentially starts with, “I am so sorry…”
“We take everything to heart,” Fox explains. “We care about what we do.” She adds, “It takes a special kind of person to be a postal worker.”
The frenzy of sorting in the room beyond her suggests that is true.
Efficiency matters to her and if that means she shoulders in and works to catch up backlogs, she will do that. “Do we make mistakes? Certainly. Mistakes happen. We’re human.” Fox pointed to a recent incident when she mistakenly put the wrong number on a lock box key and the package ended up with the wrong recipient. “That was entirely my fault.”
When asked what the percentage of error is based on the volume of mail and packages, she said it is “extremely low — look at the volume we handle.” She gestured toward bags of letters, bulk mailings and the newly arrived bulk containers from Amazon.
Rural areas like Meeker have particular, unique challenges. Visiting hunters, according to Fox, often arrive and set up general delivery with an explanation, “My wife is sending me…” Traveling nurses, essential to the hospital and local health care, are here only a few weeks, yet require temporary mail delivery. Other transient labor in oil and gas, agriculture, outfitting and the boom and bust of seasonal construction projects add additional variables that have to be accommodated by the post office. Fox believes they do remarkably well in handling those issues, but they are different challenges than many urban counterparts have.
Equally challenging is the development of new housing that requires direct delivery, adding time and duties for Fox, the two clerks, and the contract delivery providers. Housing development here is largely done by property owners who sell off a lot or two and the builder then establishes an address and sets up an individual mailbox. In a more urbanized development, companies create housing tracts and can be required to set up “cluster” mailboxes for efficiency.
For drivers like Scott, new developments can create a nightmare of a delivery route, particularly since the USPS has cut overtime.
“If we could get the Fairfield apartments and the new developments to set up a cluster mailbox system,” Fox contends, “that would add a lot of efficiency.”
The Town of Meeker and the County could be important in helping to require cluster boxes for added efficiency when new developments are approved.
Internet commerce adds challenges, too, as rural residents are increasingly reliant on internet shopping. Fox recalled a time when she was scanning a package she was about to deliver to a home when she was a delivery worker and the homeowner’s door popped open. “My package is here!” the customer exclaimed before Fox even had a chance to ring the bell.
People get notification of package delivery often before the post office is even open, and before the yellow cards that Fox is working on have been sorted into boxes.
“The package may be scanned — but it’s not ready for pickup. People rush to the post office to get it. They get upset when they know the package has arrived, but we can’t give it to them yet,” she explains. “It might be down in the bottom of a cart, and it might take us several minutes to locate it, and sometimes even an hour because those packages haven’t made it to the final sort.”
You want to reform the system? Be careful what you ask for.
Greater accuracy and greater accountability mean changes.
Common practices that Meeker residents have greatly appreciated over the years are likely going to end, warns Fox, in part because they are against established rules. Are you picking up the neighbor’s mail while she’s in the hospital? You will have to be authorized and show an I.D. Are your kids picking up the mail after school? If they forget the combination or key, an I.D. will be required. Forgot your own key? Get out your I.D.
“Yes, we know who you are — part of the time,” Fox stresses that postal employees know your box, they don’t necessarily know you.
If Fox can get approval, security cameras may be coming to the public access area for the lockboxes.
Other integrity and courtesy issues on the part of the customer are also important. When a postal clerk is putting parcels in the lockboxes, please don’t ask them to drop what they’re doing and get your delivery out of the central building when it’s closed, Fox implores. “It’s closed. They can’t access that mail for you. A distracted employee makes mistakes. It’s human nature.”
Fox is more than willing to address customer issues and complaints. If she had her way, she would gladly open the doors and guide tours through the local facility.
Fox stresses that the friendly, hometown service isn’t going away. The Meeker postal workers enjoy working here because of it and they don’t want it compromised or hurt. They just want to make it better.
Meanwhile, in a reality-TV-show perfect world, perhaps someday you may be greeted by a postal worker weirdly decked out in a fake wig and scraggly beard, fumbling to find your Amazon package, getting your name wrong, and brusquely asking for an I.D. It just might be Louis DeJoy amid a taping of “Undercover Boss.”
BY KATHLEEN KELLEY
Special to the Herald Times
Updated Wednesday, January 3 – a previous version of this story stated the post office handles 300-400 packages daily. According to the postmaster, this is the average for each route, not the total, which is around 1000 packages total each day during the holiday season. Check out the package apocalypse here.
