u/NrwgnSpaceWolf

I’ve been working on consolidating as much information as I can find about the PS Form 3996 and requesting and dealing with the overtime process into one document that can hopefully serve as a useful resource for both carriers and stewards.

I’ve tried to bring together the relevant handbook and manual language, M-documents, arbitration decisions, guidance, podcasts, and other resources in one place instead of having people hunt through a dozen different sources when a 3996 issue comes up.

I’d really appreciate some extra eyes on it. If you see anything that needs to be corrected, clarified, or expanded, or if you know of a good source, grievance decision, arbitration award, or argument that I’ve missed, please send it my way.

The goal is to keep improving this until it can serve as a pretty solid “one-stop shop” for understanding the 3996 process from both the carrier and steward side.

Postal history gets weird when you start looking at how the job was actually done.

In Episode 2 of The Nixie, I dig into the history of letter carrier door knockers, postal whistles, early city delivery, household mailboxes, and the time carriers once spent waiting for customers to answer the door.

When free city delivery began in 1863, a carrier could bring a letter all the way to your house and still have nowhere to leave it. Before residential mailboxes and mail slots became standard, carriers often had to knock, ring, shout, or blow a whistle, then wait for someone to physically come to the door and take the mail. If nobody answered, the letter might stay in the satchel for another attempt.

That led carriers to use some pretty unusual tools, including small wooden handheld door knockers designed to save their knuckles and whistles that announced their arrival. A double knock or double ring could even act as a recognizable postal signal.

But what starts as a strange little piece of carrier equipment turns into a much bigger story about route time, delivery efficiency, customer responsibility, mail receptacles, and the development of the modern delivery point. Postal officials estimated that carriers could lose anywhere from about half an hour to significantly more time each day simply waiting at doors. The Post Office Department gradually responded by encouraging, and eventually requiring, customers to provide mail slots or residential mailboxes so carriers could complete a delivery whether anyone was home or not.

The episode also looks at the long transition toward mailbox requirements, the hundreds of early mailbox designs the Post Office Department considered, how knocking and whistling lingered even after receptacles became common, and similar delivery practices in London and Montreal.

That is basically what The Nixie is for. Instead of the large institutional history, I pull some small, strange, obsolete, or half-forgotten piece of postal history out of the mailstream and ask: “What the hell is this, and why did we have it?”

For this one, it starts with a tiny wooden door knocker and ends up in the history of USPS city delivery, letter carrier work methods, route design, mailboxes, postal whistles, door delivery, and the changing relationship between the carrier and the customer.

If you work for USPS, collect postal history, study labor history, or just have some weird piece of old postal equipment sitting around your office that nobody can explain, I’d love to hear about it.

Search/Topics: USPS, United States Postal Service, NALC, National Association of Letter Carriers, letter carriers, city letter carriers, postal history, USPS history, Post Office Department, free city delivery, city delivery history, mail delivery history, letter carrier history, postal workers, postal equipment, postal artifacts, letter carrier door knocker, postal door knocker, mail carrier whistle, letter carrier whistle, postman whistle, postman knock, double knock, The Postman Always Rings Twice, household mailboxes, residential mailboxes, mail slots, mailbox history, home delivery history, door delivery, mail receptacles, delivery points, route time, postal efficiency, carrier waiting time, 1863 free city delivery, 1912 mailbox requirement, 1923 mailbox requirement, National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Postal Museum, postal labor history, postal operations, Parcels of Knowledge, The Nixie, postal podcast

Sorry to hit y'all with two of my long-ass reports in one day, but just like with the CCA-PTF conversions. My president asked me a couple of months ago to put some stuff together in one place that we could give to carriers when they are hurt, or share before problems start. This doc includes as much as I could find. Hyperlinked words in the doc will take you to relevant laws, forms, and postal record articles that explain the issue in more detail. If anyone sees anything missing or needs corrections, leave a comment below or in the doc. I'm also working on a steward version of this to help us out, cus sometimes we go a while before dealing with an. Injury, and it just gets pushed aside.

So my city is converting CCAs to PTF because a lot of runners have been destroying routes at other stations in my installation. My carriers are mostly great, so no complaints there. Anyways, because of that, we have a ton of UARs floating around, so they are making the CCAs who hit their 24 and 3 PTFs. We haven't had PTFs here in decades. My Pres asked me to put together as much as I could for what we will have to deal with, which is this. Anyways, I thought I would post this here for advice, because some of y'all might have actually dealt with this and know more than I can find and put together.

Companion Report

Here is my companion report for this week's news round/up and review.

I explored more NALC history, focusing on Vincent Sombrotto’s journey from a letter carrier in 1970 to NALC president in 1978. The story is messier than the highlight reel suggests.

Sombrotto became president of Branch 36 within a year after the Great Postal Strike, helped create the National Rank-and-File Movement, challenged national leadership over a trusteeship, advocated for direct elections of national officers and contract approval by members, lost national elections, kept organizing, and finally defeated President J. Joseph Vacca in 1978.

With our current NALC election underway, I thought revisiting this history was relevant. Not to suggest current candidates are "the next Sombrotto," and definitely not to influence your vote. I'm more interested in the questions his story raises about experience, incumbency, insurgents, accountability, union democracy, and what truly prepares someone to lead.

I also wondered if elections back then were simpler. Spoiler: evidence doesn't support that idea. The politics were intense, involving internal fights, a trusteeship, federal lawsuits, convention battles, and membership rejection of a tentative contract. I couldn't confirm whether personal mudslinging was as nasty as it is today, so I won’t pretend the record shows more than it does.

Near the end, I reflect on today’s election and remind us that we're mostly regular ass rank-and-file letter carriers participating in a democracy. We'll get passionate, angry, and fight for ideas, but ultimately, someone wins, and someone loses. Still, we remain brothers and sisters. Management is still there, and the contract must be enforced. When it comes down to it, we need to stand shoulder to shoulder.

Read it, and if you've got more Sombrotto history, old campaign material, corrections, or if I missed something, share it in the comments, because half the fun of these is hearing from y'all.

Here is my companion report for this week's news round/up and review.

Here's what Charmaine Taylor and I, along with those of you who were kind enough to share input on your sections, put together to help condense (even though it won't feel that way) the information out there about the candidates. We are still adding interviews as they happen, along with any last-minute information, recommendations, or edits to correct misunderstandings or incorrect information. Hope this helps those of you wondering who to vote for, what their history is, what the job is, and the position's history, so you can make an informed decision.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IuiOLfIJUebaYSI8XXn5_2dazoC5jguaIs0ehI2H2KA/edit?usp=drivesdk

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NHqI-L7cyh0_4p7XdWXxFYa9YGYn5yzBfQFnRAVRakU/edit?usp=drivesdk

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f_Y354fu5kD5-3Z57NfuW6fb8VUJIdRn8p53He4xBj4/edit?usp=drivesdk

Starting something new for the postal history nerds. The Nixie is going to dig into the smaller, stranger, and sometimes forgotten pieces of postal history; old equipment, markings, terminology, forms, and practices that have disappeared or somehow survived in some weird little corner of the Postal Service.

For the first one, I dug into backstamps; the markings once placed on the backs of letters to document where and when they moved through the postal system. At one point, backstamping ordinary mail was actually required, and there is a surprising amount of history hiding behind what looks like a simple circle of ink.

I also get into what a "nixie" actually was, where the old postal term came from, and why I thought it was the perfect name for this. A nixie was mail that couldn't move normally through the system and needed somebody to pull it aside and give it a closer look.

That's basically the idea here. Pull some weird little piece of postal history out of the mailstream, take a closer look, and figure out what the hell it was and why we had it. If anybody has an old postal object, marking, term, form, or practice you think deserves its own Nixie, throw it in the comments.

Here is my companion report for this week's news round/up and review.

Anyone interested in this log and making sure you always get paid should check it out. Lot of good information that sometimes goes by the wayside, especially since the T-7’s handle TACS.

I’ve got a fever and the only prescription is another report. Little history about Labor Day, the NALC, and some elections.

Here is my companion report concerning my most recent episode of Parcels of Knowledge: The Last Loop. You can find the links for it in the doc and also feel free to send me any important information for my Union Solidarity/Local Loop segment you find and I'll try to include it when or if I can.

Hopefully we see a lot more of these kind of grievances breakthrough and get a national arbitrator to weigh in at some point.

Guess who’s back . . . back again, lol. Had 8 candidates here so I thought it was worth putting together. Especially as it was really a larger gathering of the Rhine-Peralta ticket than I think we’ve really seen at any one time for the podcast/youtube crowd. Drass and Caref were here and so it was interesting to see some of the candidates responses following them and making the case for Rhine.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TQAh-k8Xbj8vQQgA\_C993Ina2RqrYKbp9rbfPgau76Y/edit?usp=drivesdk

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HoRujelotvMdSfjIYbb3dclxyw6Pbg6Z2cTIl7qg6JE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Also, my candidate dossier is getting closer to completion, if you don’t have it or are interested, it’s in the bibliography of both documents.

Guess who’s back . . . back again, lol. Had 8 candidates here so I thought it was worth putting together. Especially as it was really a larger gathering of the Rhine-Peralta ticket than I think we’ve really seen at any one time for the podcast/youtube crowd. Drass and Caref were here and so it was interesting to see some of the candidates responses following them and making the case for Rhine.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TQAh-k8Xbj8vQQgA\_C993Ina2RqrYKbp9rbfPgau76Y/edit?usp=drivesdk

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HoRujelotvMdSfjIYbb3dclxyw6Pbg6Z2cTIl7qg6JE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Also, my candidate dossier is getting closer to completion, if you don’t have it or are interested, it’s in the bibliography of both documents.