December 15, 2015 PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) – It may be one of the happiest times of the year, but for the Post Office, they say it’s their busiest.
For 15 years, Art Ness has ridden the streets of Panama City Beach as a mail carrier.
And during the holidays, he says his truck is a little more packed than usual.
“The holiday season, we’re extremely busy with all the packages that we’re getting,” Ness said. “I would say probably about, maybe on average 100 packages, and maybe about 50 to 60 smaller packages for the day.”
Mail carriers like Ness are rolling through the holidays, expecting to deliver more than 15 billion pieces of mail this season.
“Our packages have really been up this year, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 packages per week,” Dan Tyson, Acting Postmaster for Panama City, said.
But Tyson said with extra packages, comes extra security for carriers during this time of year.
Mail carriers delivering more packages with more security during the holidays
Many believe that management is out on the street to see why the lazy carriers put in for an extra half hour to deliver the extra 50-100 parcels. It’s such a relief to know that the stupidvisors are actually out there to look out for the carriers’ safety.
It’s a big shift in our world as emphasis and product go from letter mail to packages. Sure, letters and flats will be with us always, mostly bulk rate, and in the case of letters, bills, official communications, business mail, etc. But each year with the exception of the senior citizenry who still prefer taking the time and effort to actually go to the trouble to send real cards and a few other thoughtful people who think doing everything on the computer is lazy, including yours anonymously. If I think enough of a person I will send a real card. Sometimes I forget, and that can be understandable due to burnout but I think people appreciate that somebody still actually takes some actual time to think of others.
I have a very long route, and a ruined shoulder and back. This time of year because I have a work restriction for eight hours, five days a week, I have to get help from CCA’s more than I want to, but after 31+ years I’m just worn out. You spend many years doing walking routes in the pre-internet days like I did and some of my buddies, you get worn out. So I don’t apologize for that factor, but it still bugs me sometimes.
Anyhow, I always give my help enough change to buy a pop when they get back to the office and will share most of my candy on my route since being diabetic I don’t need it. They say I’m the only regular who ever shows any kind of appreciation for getting the assistance.
I’m out at the end of next year, and I expect two or three years down the road if I were to go back and visit, I probably wouldn’t recognize the job any more. Management will have to adjust routes one of these days to ensure we city carriers are getting the street time credit we need as all our routes are taking longer now. But I also think they won’t do it until a bunch of us old farts leave in the next couple years and then convert CCA’s, keep them running and cut routes and positions all over the place.
If you younger CCA’s especially do not want ridiculously overburdened routes, make it a lot longer to get converted to a career position, and have routes eliminated, you must immediately make the route you end up with an eight hour route. Do your forwarding properly. Take the time on the street to insure accuracy, label boxes and pace yourselves so you won’t end up like me and a lot of other old goats, with myself having two hernia operations, shoulder surgery, a shot back with a couple herniated disks and bad knees. Don’t let management bully you into casing two routes a day and running like you have to now. They can’t make you do that stuff if you make your routes true eight hour routes, and if you do have to do extra duty, make it pay. Never eat the time just to get off early. It’ll make it much harder for anybody to convert and easier for jobs to be lost.