another postal dream dashed

i'm not talking about the kind of dreaming you do at night while sleeping.
i'm talking about the kind where you have what you think is an awesome entry for a
national contest to come up with a 60 second commercial for a postal product..and the winning idea becomes THE national postal commercial.
i had cool music, a fun concept and cool tag lines.
unfortunately it wasn't cool enough to even win the regional contest. (insert loud sobbing noise here).
i always wanted to be like Dick VanDyke and Morrie Amsterdam or Darren Stevens and Larry Tate on Bewitched..sitting around and playing with jingles and ad campaigns for a living.
guess i'm back to being, Cliff or even worse, Newman.

karma contined: canine edition

sorry all of you dog lovers out there, but this story has to be told.

several years ago, a carrier that i work with, who will remain nameless, told me this karma filled episode from his route.

one of X's customers had a yappy little dog that would go batshit crazy every time
that he put mail in the box. not so unusual.

on one particular day, tired of this obnoxious pup, X decided to do some trash-talking at the dog through the closed door .
after calling the doggy a few choice names, he ended the conversation with "I hope you die!".

a few minutes later, one of the kids at the house opened the door to get the mail
and the dog got out.

at this point, X had already crossed the street to deliver the other side.
little old yappy, in hot pursuit of X, also crossed the street..or rather,
tried to. he had his eyes on the prize and didn't see the car coming.
sadly, it squashed him before he could fulfill his lifelong dream of sinking his incisors into X's leg. he died on the spot.

imagine X trying to comfort the grieving family, all the while knowing he and his postal karma had caused their pooch's untimely demise.

don't jerk with the postal karma

a few routes ago, i had many, many customers that i adored
and a few that "challenged" me.
in fact three of the "challenges" lived on the same street.
VERY shortly after a particularly tough "situation" with customer #1,
i found out that he was guilty of Medicaid fraud (he was a shrink).
soon after, he lost his licence and faced a stiff financial penalty.

customer #2, after screwing with my brain, met a similar fate, only he was an anaesthesiologist, and wound up in the slammer!

customer # 3, (who insisted that i only deliver certain catalogs and not the others
even though i repeatedly tried to explain to him that when it comes to junk mail, it's all or nothing) wound up drowning in the lake at his summer home.

makes you wonder.
nothing extremely bad seemed to happen to the nice folks on that route during my tenure.

suffice it to say.............

i will never, ever jerk with my mailguy...

more potty talk

here's a story that was told to me by a carrier under the condition that i would never tell anyone.
i'm not gonna name names so here it goes.

this carrier was in the unfortunate position of having miscalculated his bathroom pit stop.
what to do?
it was garbage day and he quickly and desperately snatched an empty container out of some one's recycling bin, hopped in the back of the truck, closed the cargo door for privacy and did his thing.
he figured he'd dump it out somewhere when he got off his route.

as he drove to his next park point, he noticed a strong (more than pee) odor
coming from the back of his truck.
he went in the back and saw FUMES rising from the container he had peed in.
that was when he realized that the container in question had previously housed CHLORINE ! apparently chlorine and urine combine to make some nasty toxic ammonia-like
concoction.
he determined he had to dump the stuff PRONTO!

up ahead he saw a storm sewer.
he drove up, looked around, dumped the fuming pee down the sewer, and casually set the container in a blue recycling bin.
he vowed NEVER to tell anyone, but broke down and told me the next day.
big mistake!

postal anxiety dreams

when i was a PTF and under the constant stress of not knowing what
station i'd be working out of let alone what job i'd be on ,
i had whacked out postal dreams almost every night.

here are some of the best ones:

i reported to the case and found that
instead of mail being stacked up,
there where piles and piles of sweaters.
i was supposed to figure out what customers belonged to each sweater, (Mr. Smith at 25 Ivy Circle..hmmm..gotta be the lime green argyle cardigan..) put them in order and deliver them.

in another similar dream, i was supposed to deliver various lunches by determining who probably ordered the tuna on rye vs. the big mac..and then go out there and
get them to the right customer.

an all time favorite was the dream in which my boss at the time told me that the dollar bill she was holiding had to be delivered to Sweden, and i was to Be Back
IN 8 HOURS!

of course we've all had the dream where we are on an unfamiliar route and it's dark out and we can't read the mail or see the house numbers...

i'm curious to hear other people's postal anxiety dreams...

i'd love to write a book about the different anxiety dreams of specific professions..maybe call it Night Shift...with some subtitle giving people a clue about the anxiety dream/work connection.
what do you think?

mailhurl

"what do you do when you have to go to the bathroom on your route?".

i've been asked that question plenty of times.
usually there is no problem making it to a public restroom.
on occassion, we ask to use the bathroom of a customer that we are tight with.
some situations arise that need to be taken care of in more "creative" ways..but i'll leave those to your imagination.
your body tends to give you enough of a warning to not have to scramble.

the other day though i was walking the beat feeling OK.
then after lunch..all of the sudden my body just went into some weird mode where my legs didn't want to move..my eyes wanted to close and i felt like i might pass out.
very inconveinient when you still have an hour or more of mail to get rid of.

so i did what we've all done at one time or another...pep talk myself into finishing..
"come on now..one foot in front of the other..just 8 more bundles..keep going..".
i was almost done when i got hit by a tidal wave of nausea.
no time to find a restroom.
two options:
puke on a customers lawn
or in the back of the truck.
luckily i found an empty tub.
that was friday.
it's monday and i can still barely
move.
don't like this
nasty thing i contracted
whatever it is.

wonder if the PO would ever consider
equipping the trucks with
some rudementary form
of port-a-pottys?
i'll have to talk to
management about it
upon my return.

99

99.
no, not like 99 bottles of beer on the wall.
99 is the postal term for having a walking inspection of your route.
my 99 was just over a week ago, and fortunately, the supervisor that walked with me
was one of the good guys.
the weather was brisk and snowy.
the conversation was interesting.
at about the halfway point of the inspection he broke out this beautiful story.
his mom is getting on in years..somewhere in her 80's.
she has several friends that all look after each other.
one of them can hear, one can drive, one has a good memory..they all kind of pool their talents to get along.
the interesting thing about this group of ladies is that they also sing together
at people's funerals.
they call their singing group The Deadbeats!!!!!!
i don't think anyone knows that they call themselves this.
one of the Deadbeats passed away and left explicit instructions that the other Deadbeats were NOT to sing at her funeral because they suck (not her exact words).
hearing this story almost made the entire inspection worth the hassle.