No Bed of Roses for New Mailman

Ryan Bradford, a USPS Transitional Employee (TE) in San Diego, Calif., writes on the San Diego Reader website about his training and first month on the job.

According to Bradford, "The job description states that this will never lead to a career position. The base pay is $21 an hour, but with none of the medical benefits of a regular. Stations will use us until they don’t need us anymore, then we’ll be sent to another desperate outpost. We are expendable. This is mercenary carrier work."

 "The first person to speak to us during training is from the Employee Assistance Program," Bradford writes. "It’s her job to make sure no one goes 'postal.' (A bad omen for a new position?) We watch an hour long video about reading the 'language' of dogs."

After about a week on the job, Bradford pens, "You come home every night, and your fingers are torn to shreds. You are constantly jamming them into rows of paper, which get up under your fingernails, under your cuticles. You don’t vote in elections, because of the paper cuts endured from political mailings. You spend each night cutting your nails down and removing the broken skin around them."

Bradford points out, "The mailman/dog relationship is no lie. It’s like they can smell it on you, a scent that triggers their hunting instinct. But the owners are worse. Opposite of owners who talk to their pets in baby voice are the ones who scold their pets as if they were aristocratic children."

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