PART I
DELIVER MY TRUTH
I thought about joining up. Doesn't everyone? The smart uniforms. The dutiful discipline. The admirable dedication through tough situations, carrying bulky packs through territories with snarling unfriendlies. Right-handed steering on busy cul-de-sacs and indifference to paper cuts. Yes, indeed! Many have considered joining the Postal Service. But the few -the proud -and the generally diffident- have actually crossed that threshold and begun the process. An almost digestive process that literally breaks down an individual, and calorically burns parts as components to be absorbed into a living, pulsing, Borg-like mass on a mission.
A mission to deliver Bed-Bath and Beyond coupon books, apparently.
GOING POSTAL
The USPS is aging and its staff are happily turning over their laminated keycards. This is a stoic crowd who have had to suffer under a lot of 20th c. US Gov'mint bureaucracy and capricious Forbes 500 top-down decisions: it is as if they've all been children raised by a divorcing couple who never agree and drag their shit out forever and it dwindles their resources and basically leaves everything tenuous and guarded. Now, this is all prelude to the fact that in my personal lifetime, I haven't seen many campaigns to hire postal workers, but just a month ago, a big white banner sailed on the Main PO, WE'RE HIRING! I thrilled a little. As public as mail delivery seems with men and women out on routes every day, it has almost clannish secrecy, that and the Civil Service Exam, and the funky pith helmets some carriers seem to favor; these things made me sign up for the "So You Want To Work For The Post Office?" clinic. I had more than a passing curiosity, and a strange feeling I was fulfilling a long yet unknown prophecy. Was this, finally, my mail calling? I signed up immediately.
Upon the day and meeting hour, a handful of clearly under-employed local citizens with Mead-type folders or legal pads milled around the front of the Main PO desk. Several days earlier, we'd been sent sketchy email directions as to where our clinic would actually be, but at 10:30 a.m. like a time-lock on a safe, a door opened and a pear-shaped woman with cat-eye glasses herded us in to the "Employees Only Beyond This Point" zone.
Welcome to this city's Main Post Office Building, she intoned. Built in 18somethin' —Its the longest continuously operating US Post Office since 19mumbleteen West of the Rockies. Yes. THE OLDEST! (I guess someone made a doubtful noise and she dismissed us all summarily.) Go. Follow the arrows on the floor, go up the stairwell directly ahead. Keep moving. See the arrows? Then take a right, and then another right and then a left. Keep moving.
As Cat-Eye Woman slipped behind a partition, I gazed around. Briefly taking in the enormity of the space, I could compare it to the other Grand Federal style buildings I'd been in while visiting state capitals, libraries or museums. But the interior was a pastiche; a combination of a Jiffy-Lube, industrial dry-cleaners, the workshop of a dozen retired eccentric cabinet builders, and the evident neglect of perhaps a half-century. We passed through a narrow door to an even narrower stairwell that seemed to have been built into a closet. You actually had to duck your head at the stair corner, and then upon reaching the landing you faced a lovely old wood door with smoked glass and a brass knob as big as a softball. It was off the floor by at least a couple of feet and had a sign DO NOT ENTER. Through a corridor displaying a bulletin board, beyond a small break room with a few tables, chairs and an out-of-order table-top video game, then into our meeting space made strangely disproportional by a low drop-ceiling, and what would appear to be a fake-floor. The arc of the very top of the original 19th century, 13-foot windows were at our feet, giving you slight vertigo. The low walls sported motivational posters, all with soaring eagle imagery. Bristling with "Git'er done!" energy, a sparkplug of a woman named Liza directed us to sign in, grab a folder (boasting A Great Place to Work ©USPS 1993) —and take a seat.
Eight tables seated about 4 people each. Facing the Power Point Screen, I side-eyed and sized-up the others' Postal Potential. Most were young to middle aged men. Just a few women including me. We were a motley crew, with half of the applicants showing up in full-interview dress-tie askew and the rest just wearing their least crusty shoes. Inside the glossy folder were print outs of the actual job descriptions and wages. When we saw the per/hr numbers we all seemed to exhale deeply, a collective deflation. It was suddenly very warm in the room. I envied the people closest to the foot level windows.
Hello everyone, Liza said.
We looked at her.
HELLO I SAID, Liza barked.
HELLO we hailed, immediately wising up. OPEN YOUR FOLDERS, she commanded. Folders slapped in precision. The process had begun...
TIME STAMPED
The PO has long been a difficult 'company' to get a job at, not least of which is they require a Very Special Exam. Fail it, and you are OUTTA THERE! Being a nosy nerdling, I'd already fished around the Internets and taken a facsimile of the test. Even without trying very hard, I got a reasonable score, well above the cut-off of 70%. This meeting though, was apparently for the real slow learners who hadn't even THOUGHT to look up, "Post Office Test" on Google. Liza presented us with both hard-copy and visual screen shots of samples of the three different test parts. There was figuring out columns of correct/incorrect Address-City State ZIP; a multiple choice section about how accurately you could fill out certain forms; and memorizing ranges of addresses in order to choose the Postal Zone where they should be directed. All timed. It's this third level that separates the Wheaties from the Cocoa Puffs, if you know what I mean. Liza told us her secret for test success.
I am not a good test taker. Tell me there's a test and I get sweaty. No joke. Like the heaving flop sweats. Throwing up, right? And when I took this test (many many years ago) I was worried about the memory stuff. Some people have told me, Oh! I just have photo memory! I can see something and POP there it is! Not me. But, like, when I studied with a group for the test, I found that if I made a story up, I could remember what I needed, right? Like, I see this set of numbers and street names on the first part. I might say, OK: there's a 4 year old girl named Myrtle Circle, she's going 88 blocks to pick up some Vitamin D Street milk for her Grandpa Tony who was in Court from 1976 until 2001 and she takes East Route 10 with between 13000 and 17500 apartments. See? It doesn't have to make sense. It's all just cues to remember 4-88 Myrtle Circle and so on... A story, ya'know?
She smiles sympathetically at the room of people trying to make up their own short stories from the test samples.
I got a hundred on the exam. Perfect score. So, ya'know. You just gotta do what works for you, right?
Now Liza seems kind of back-door bragging. We're all murmuring with our own half-assed doggerel of the numbers and names. She finished the "workshop" by explaining that the City Carrier Assistant position currently is the only one in the USPS with the potential to move up in the Service, as she did from lowly sorter all the way to a Sr. Career Recruitment Officer, which gives her full benefits and generous pay. Ironically the starting level position for CCA is not a guaranteed full-time, regular shift or benefit covered job. You might work 5 days, 6 or 3 depending on mail load. The benefits for the job arrive after 3 years full-time. She also made it clear that the Carrier was not a job for the faint of heart. That it would require physical endurance and long hours. Really long. Really really hard. She emphasized the duress the job would put us through, and that many can't make the commitment. They work a few weeks, still can't handle it.
But stick with it! she said with conviction. I did it, and I thought I'd be in the hospital after the first few routes. But, then I got into it. I did! I'm telling you, if you can just hang on for those first 90 days, you're gonna know if you can do it as a career... Oh, well and if you haven't been let go after 60 days for not performing well. Then you'd be out —but, stick with it anyway!
We are told to return to the website asap to start the application process, and it's then we are given the only actual helpful information. Liza returns to her laptop controlling the projection screen and clicks back to the first image of the USPS web homepage.
You might have found the website isn't so great, right? (Groans of agreement from the group.) Yeah yeah they tell me they are working on it...
She says something unintelligible about the IT people.
So, when you "Search for Employment" —don't use any keywords or job titles or anything! Just look through all the California jobs —you'll find the link by City, so it's not too hard. Trust me. If you put anything else in a field, you'll get "Zero Results" back. It's a little frustrating...
More sibilant exhalation. The semi-grizzled Luddite next to me nearly snaps his ball-point underlining FUBAR on his marked up note-paper. Liza calls the meeting over and we all mostly shuffle out, although some in the room crowd her with sidebars, or other test taking tips. Luddite guy wants to know if he can send his resume in on paper. Liza just looks at him sadly.
DIVERGENT
Beyond the job possibilities (or even the job duties), I am excited as a pedestrian to be in the actual Post Office space, so I leave in no particular hurry. This is my idea of a job hunt, investigating the work space! I re-examine the table video-game and discover not only is it in disrepair, it is a completely obscure game, named like X10-EN0X produced by JEN-RU. No wonder boxes are stacked on it. The little half moons of windows continue along the floor until I step down into the Bulletin Board corridor, which is dark and doesn't seem very conducive to reading the mandatory posts for Dept of Labor Legals, OSHA Notices and copies of faxes (faxes? really?) of what seem to be Official Dog Bite Reports dated 2009. There is a boxy standing water cooler, and I hear its refrigerant hum. I take a metallic drink, more like liquid copper than water, but it is impressively cold. I stare at the Mystery Door Not on the Floor. The hallway leads to yet another door also off the floor, but with the addition of level steps. This one has no sign, no smoked glass same big brass knob style. I take in the walls, the ceilings, light fixtures, floors —they are all different materials; all different eras. I go carefully back down the narrow gauge steps covered in truly ancient linoleum smoothed like wax in the curves and interstices of the stairs. I reenter the Great Work Room, with its rear-end cement floors worn with combinations of ramps and jut-out parts to accept large delivery trucks and palettes and fork-lifts. The air is filled with discrete shuffling sounds, not industrial blasts or computer beeps, and maybe a fine slight haze of paper dust. It's lunch time, so things are at a lull. I walk beyond some painted lines and see enormous bolts cut off flush at the floor, where something once stood, but no longer did. The shelving system looms up on the other side 8-foot or taller in a complex maze of cubbies with ladders intersected by lines indicating bins to coordinate with satchels. Here and there -over the matrix of partitions and cabinets- I see a pilaster, a cornice detail, a marble lintel from the great old days of the Post Office's belle epoque. Now, the space is collided, divided into fractals; factions even. To the left, Abnegation. Right, Dauntless territory. I almost spin...
MA'AM?! MA'AM!! KEEP TO YOUR RIGHT PLEASE, FOLLOW THE ARROWS OUT! MA'AM?! TO YOUR RIGHT? OUT!!
A younger, yet again, pear-shaped woman squats on a very homemade looking carpet cushioned wooden stool apparently slipping envelopes into low-placed cubbies. She uses more than an indoor-voice to get my attention, as she adjusts her blocky Erudite glasses and focuses on me. She points with a latex glove finger the way I must go.
OUT!
(To be continued...)
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