the initiate

but how does one get into the usps? when i began to think about it, i realised that i hadn't an idea. was it a secret society that was available by invitation only? i started asking my friends if anyone knew and the answers that i got convinced me that they hadn't an idea either of how to begin. maybe i would have to petition the grand postmaster and then if accepted, i would be asked the ages old questions... name the first pony express riders horses, what was ben franklin's motivation, if a piece of mail is delivered late to a home but no one is home, is it truly late? and finally young initiate, how much postage is enough? and if, standing in the dimly lit post office with the grand postmaster general behind his altar of a blue post box, you answered these questions truly and faithfully, you would be given a series of tasks like neatly tearing out a stamp from a block of them neatly, you would be inducted into the ranks.
i began by looking up the phone number for the local po in the yellow pages. hmmm... but wasn't this odd, there were no local numbers for the offices listed, but instead a 1 800 number for the regional centers. i called them, but got no response other than a series of increasingly complex computer generated choices in a canned voice asking me if i wanted to know where a post office was or for more detailed info to visit the post office nearest you. it led me into a circle. i hadn't the proper extension to speak to a human. i hadn't the key to become an initiate.
finally, by chance or maybe design, i was allowed to find a phone number for one of my larger local po's. i dialed it and began to ask about employment. the voice on the other end sensed that i was an outsider and determined that the safest course of events would be to lead me back to the beginning. employment? oh no, not here, you would have to dial... the 1 800 number that i had tried. who would i speak to? oh, i don't know that. ok, how do i find out about the next postal exam? the announcements are usually posted on the wall in your local po. when? whenever they come up. when is the next one coming up? when you see the exam announcement posted. where are they held? wherever the announcement schedule says they are. and i can only find this out when i read the announcement posted? yes. well, how did you get your job? i asked, thinking this would get me a more detailed response. oh, i was called up after my exam. which was when? oh, i don't know... you know that there is a 1 800 number, correct? i was told.
trying to access the information from a teller at the window was equally exasperating. i was given blank stares and the vaguest answers. look for the exam announcement that will be posted. when? no one knew. it was an open call to all apprentices who knew when and where to look for it. and you could only find it by hanging around the po and mailing things, often... the beginners were culled from the ink stained ranks of people with a permanent taste on their tongues from licking stamps and browsing the fbi's most wanted posters. i was reminded of when i was a child walking into the huge post offices with vaulted ceilings and dark cool interiors. the mysterious figures in blue behind the windows framed by bars and the distant clanking of machines postmarking letters and cancelling stamps. these people had the power to return an item to sender, to demand postage due, to bring love letters or bills and the ultimate power, the deposit something in the dead letter room, where it was to never surface from its exile and i wanted this power.

the end of the road

i drove my last bus for this company on may 1st. i found the irony inherent in this by the fact that it was may day and the worker's day in socialist lore. bus drivers of the world unite and undo your seatbelts. it was a long time in coming and i had simply worn down over the time that i was driving and calling in seven days a week. i mean, there has to be a job in the world where you don't have to speak to your management every day of the week. i had to loosen the seatbelt and climb out of the seat after the year was over. i began it telling myself last june that i would drive for a year and then add all of the miles that i had driven up into the great logbook and determine whether it was worth the time and the saddle sores. and my ass was sore... i drove a little over 54 thousand miles in a year (coast to coast about 10 times...) for an average of 4900 miles per month. there were days that i drove as few as the mileage from the garage to the terminal and back (2 miles) or as much as 547 miles in a day. and that only counted the mileage paid and not the 2 miles back and forth from the terminal and garage. all in all, enough mileage to make me too familiar with the contours of a bus seat.
now i am beginning the second part of reinventing myself through my work. it has been a long time dream for me to work for the usps. i could see myself wearing blue shorts and walking along, avoiding the dogs and emptying the blue mailboxes for years. i love to walk all over and to get paid while walking a route through the year and through the snows and rains and suns seemed and still seems to be wonderful thing. where else on earth can you get a job that enables one to wear a blue pith helmet and is still not frowned upon?
the trouble was and is, getting into the us postal service. the idea of doing something that can be frustrating, humbling and not very exciting to many people would seem to suggest that getting my foot in the door would be easy. the mails are always being delivered and there is always work, no disaster of downsizing or inflation, for most people the 37 cents of a postage stamp is always affordable and thus, there would always be work for the lonely mailman, plodding through the city streets, trying not to get bitten or sunburnt or drowned in the rain while hand delivering your mail for less than the cost of a newspaper. i had no idea at the time, how insular the occupation was. the secret society of the blue eagle was a tough nut to crack.