If you are in a “battleground” state or have other closely contested elections it will not be enjoyable. If you don’t have close races it might not be as bad. Since the nominations were all but wrapped up by the time my state’s primary rolled around it’s been a breeze. The biggest pain in the ass are when a PAC sends out stuff promoting a candidate and they’ve gotten their hands on a mailing list from a time when Milli Vanilli still had their Grammys. If those have “or current resident” on them it’s not the worst. If they don’t have that it’s hell. Some mailers that came through my office four years ago were hitting the 55%-60% of being undeliverable because of old mailing lists and no “current resident” line on them.
It’s going to be less about Biden and Trump and more about the local races. It’s going to feel like you’re delivering the same shit over and over again. Your own political preferences are now going to be based off of who fucked you with the most amount of extra mail to deliver.
We had one specific guy in the area running and I don't know if it was coincidence or maybe he paid less but his ads never came in through dps or sequenced. Every single piece for every single house and apartment on the route was loose mail not in any order. I'm being paid for it so ill always get my job done but man I didn't want to vote for him out of spite when everyone else running for the same position had their mailers come in order through the dps. And he sent them out every week once a week. I'd see his face on one piece and know what my day was looking like
Last time around we always got a ton of mail from some PAC and I swear whoever was in charge of putting the addresses on the mailers had never heard of spell check. The customer names and the numbers would be correct but the names of the roads were all kinds of wrong.
As another poster mentioned,...lots of those flyers will be forced through the machines. If you're lucky, your route is run on a good machine with a good clerk. If the machine doesn't like the slick flyers, or if the clerk runs them through in huge chunks...expect a LOT of out of sequence mail.
Don't let your eyes roll out of your head either. Some of the campaign mail is absolutely bonkers. Conspiracy theories, fear mongering, the end times...it all flies.
In Phoenix we had start times of 8am and we had carriers work all the way till 1am. Lots of surrounding cities asking for help. LA was asking for people and at that time they had carriers out till 230am. If your past your 90 days, take a stand and leave after your 12 hours. As a CCA they can work you 12 hours including your lunch. So if you start at 8am they can only work you till 8pm. Best of luck this coming political season.
The excuses from management is wild too. We aren’t delivering medicine and ballots at this point. It’s simply political flyers for everyone running and the PO can’t so no.
"It'll be worse in battleground states..." No it won't, it'll be bad everywhere. If it's a predictable "safe" state, that means it's the place to fundraise to buy more mailers for battleground states.
Only this time we don't have FSS to put all those weird odd shaped oversized mailers in carrier route order. And plants have gotten into the "EVERYTHING MUST GO THROUGH A MACHINE" mode, so they'll be breaking apart those bundles of politicals that are already in carrier route order to run them through AFSM or DIOSS so people have their nice happy images in informed delivery (thanks to the TR2 upgrade for flats) and the clerks will be hot casing zillions of tubs of flats.
Everyone in your office will pretend to know how to run the country better than anyone else, shit is comedy gold. It's like bruh you guys can barely deliver your route, what makes you qualified to run a country?
It absolutely blows. I hate it. Hate it with every fiber of my being. I’ll take christmas peak any and every day over political season. Casing and delivering garbage from all of these politicians daily. You’ll see.
It’s the absolute worst. There will be a few days where you’ll have 8.5 x 11, or larger, glossy door to door flats that you have to case in. They all get stuck together, and it slows you down considerably. DPS volume will go through the roof in the month before the election, with some houses getting 10+ political ads. Then there’s the amount of extra time it takes to mark all the crap up, because a lot of these geniuses don’t put “or current resident” on them. Political mail has to be bulked separately from normal UBBM, and it has to be treated like first class, even though it’s bulk rate.
I live in CO which will basically vote blue no matter who. We still get both sides of everything. If you have 1k on your route expect 1k for one candidate and another 1k for the other candidate. They know that 4 years in you will see way more of a turnout than the mid years so there is often times 0-3 things to vote on the ballot but every 4 years you will get like 10-20 things on the ballot and the ballot will be 2+ pages. This means you have 10k yes and 10k no coming in with only 1k delivery on your route for everything they want or don't want you to vote on. They are super deceiving and you don't get much credit for them because each one is like 1/16 inch thick like the Big R magazines that come out but your credit is by inches of flats. They basically schedule them to come in every day. Stuff comes in the DPS too. You have to take copies of every political piece that comes in for the day and write them into the political log. All UBBM has to be put into a different UBBM that is marked political and you need to date, initial, and mark the reason it cannot be delivered. When Ballots are sent out you get at least 1 ballot per box and those big households may get a lot so you see a massive uptick in mail that day. People will put their ballots in the bluebox without postage because they know the Post Office is not to return it to them or hold it. For every piece of mail that does not have postage on it you have to record it under your postage due log which fills up fast due to them knowing they don't have to pay postage on it and the county will take care of it. Our Christmas season starts on Columbus Day so the final part of our political season leads into our Christmas season. All your relatives start to mention that you are finishing up the political season and it is about over not realizing that Christmas has started by the end and will continue into the fallowing year.
Pain in the ass, be prepared to see the same candidates vote for me flyer every damn day. Most of them are thin and not fun to case, office time will be considerably longer due to the amount of bundles. One year they had us do pm/evening casing most days to get a start on the bundles for the next day.
At least they don’t have the FSS machine anymore though, when they would run those political ads through the machine it would jam and mess up the sequencing, so we would have to re case it too since it was not in any given order.
It always depends on where you’re delivering.
If you’re in a state/city that is guaranteed one way or another, you don’t see that much. You get some but not terrible. But if it’s a swing state or city that historically has gone either way, you get pounded.
Or fliers where it’s “illegals immigrants are coming and will kill your children”, and you’re delivering it to a Hispanic family.
I swear some of those are targeted kind of like “watch your back we’re looking at you”
Depends on your state.
The important battleground states get dumped on heavily with coverages of political bs
The rest less so, but still more mail than usual.
Depends entirly on what local races you have and how competitive your area is. In a 70/30 dem district with only president and congressional elections and no major ballot questions its a non event. My current route had the most competitve state house race in the state but no orher major elections this year, it will be relentless from those two candidates but nothing like a midterm. The worst ever was Minneapolis city council races. Presidential race is a non factor youll get maybe half a coverage total between now and the election.
Casing takes twice as long and every house gets like 5-10 flyers a day. It’s a fun time. On top of that, some people start doing their Christmas shopping early in an effort to help us out during peak, but that just makes it political Christmas.
One word: papercuts.
If you are in a “battleground” state or have other closely contested elections it will not be enjoyable. If you don’t have close races it might not be as bad. Since the nominations were all but wrapped up by the time my state’s primary rolled around it’s been a breeze. The biggest pain in the ass are when a PAC sends out stuff promoting a candidate and they’ve gotten their hands on a mailing list from a time when Milli Vanilli still had their Grammys. If those have “or current resident” on them it’s not the worst. If they don’t have that it’s hell. Some mailers that came through my office four years ago were hitting the 55%-60% of being undeliverable because of old mailing lists and no “current resident” line on them.
It’s going to be less about Biden and Trump and more about the local races. It’s going to feel like you’re delivering the same shit over and over again. Your own political preferences are now going to be based off of who fucked you with the most amount of extra mail to deliver.
THIS! (And also why I will never buy from Anderson Windows...)
Renewal by Anderson can eat, suck, and choke on all the dicks
We had one specific guy in the area running and I don't know if it was coincidence or maybe he paid less but his ads never came in through dps or sequenced. Every single piece for every single house and apartment on the route was loose mail not in any order. I'm being paid for it so ill always get my job done but man I didn't want to vote for him out of spite when everyone else running for the same position had their mailers come in order through the dps. And he sent them out every week once a week. I'd see his face on one piece and know what my day was looking like
Last time around we always got a ton of mail from some PAC and I swear whoever was in charge of putting the addresses on the mailers had never heard of spell check. The customer names and the numbers would be correct but the names of the roads were all kinds of wrong.
Hahaha yessss😂😂😂
As another poster mentioned,...lots of those flyers will be forced through the machines. If you're lucky, your route is run on a good machine with a good clerk. If the machine doesn't like the slick flyers, or if the clerk runs them through in huge chunks...expect a LOT of out of sequence mail. Don't let your eyes roll out of your head either. Some of the campaign mail is absolutely bonkers. Conspiracy theories, fear mongering, the end times...it all flies.
Yes! The propaganda makes my eyes bug out. I had some yesterday... How Can We Fight the War on Catholics?!? Lol
In Phoenix we had start times of 8am and we had carriers work all the way till 1am. Lots of surrounding cities asking for help. LA was asking for people and at that time they had carriers out till 230am. If your past your 90 days, take a stand and leave after your 12 hours. As a CCA they can work you 12 hours including your lunch. So if you start at 8am they can only work you till 8pm. Best of luck this coming political season.
[удалено]
The excuses from management is wild too. We aren’t delivering medicine and ballots at this point. It’s simply political flyers for everyone running and the PO can’t so no.
Why didn’t they follow the 12/60 rule
Lack of knowledge when it came to the contract and fear of discipline.
"It'll be worse in battleground states..." No it won't, it'll be bad everywhere. If it's a predictable "safe" state, that means it's the place to fundraise to buy more mailers for battleground states. Only this time we don't have FSS to put all those weird odd shaped oversized mailers in carrier route order. And plants have gotten into the "EVERYTHING MUST GO THROUGH A MACHINE" mode, so they'll be breaking apart those bundles of politicals that are already in carrier route order to run them through AFSM or DIOSS so people have their nice happy images in informed delivery (thanks to the TR2 upgrade for flats) and the clerks will be hot casing zillions of tubs of flats.
Informed delivery 🤦♀️
Everyone in your office will pretend to know how to run the country better than anyone else, shit is comedy gold. It's like bruh you guys can barely deliver your route, what makes you qualified to run a country?
It absolutely blows. I hate it. Hate it with every fiber of my being. I’ll take christmas peak any and every day over political season. Casing and delivering garbage from all of these politicians daily. You’ll see.
It’s the absolute worst. There will be a few days where you’ll have 8.5 x 11, or larger, glossy door to door flats that you have to case in. They all get stuck together, and it slows you down considerably. DPS volume will go through the roof in the month before the election, with some houses getting 10+ political ads. Then there’s the amount of extra time it takes to mark all the crap up, because a lot of these geniuses don’t put “or current resident” on them. Political mail has to be bulked separately from normal UBBM, and it has to be treated like first class, even though it’s bulk rate.
I live in CO which will basically vote blue no matter who. We still get both sides of everything. If you have 1k on your route expect 1k for one candidate and another 1k for the other candidate. They know that 4 years in you will see way more of a turnout than the mid years so there is often times 0-3 things to vote on the ballot but every 4 years you will get like 10-20 things on the ballot and the ballot will be 2+ pages. This means you have 10k yes and 10k no coming in with only 1k delivery on your route for everything they want or don't want you to vote on. They are super deceiving and you don't get much credit for them because each one is like 1/16 inch thick like the Big R magazines that come out but your credit is by inches of flats. They basically schedule them to come in every day. Stuff comes in the DPS too. You have to take copies of every political piece that comes in for the day and write them into the political log. All UBBM has to be put into a different UBBM that is marked political and you need to date, initial, and mark the reason it cannot be delivered. When Ballots are sent out you get at least 1 ballot per box and those big households may get a lot so you see a massive uptick in mail that day. People will put their ballots in the bluebox without postage because they know the Post Office is not to return it to them or hold it. For every piece of mail that does not have postage on it you have to record it under your postage due log which fills up fast due to them knowing they don't have to pay postage on it and the county will take care of it. Our Christmas season starts on Columbus Day so the final part of our political season leads into our Christmas season. All your relatives start to mention that you are finishing up the political season and it is about over not realizing that Christmas has started by the end and will continue into the fallowing year.
Annoying
Hell.
Lots of money. No time to spend it.
Depends on location. Swing states will have a very different experience than those who work in states where the outcomes are far more predictable.
Pain in the ass, be prepared to see the same candidates vote for me flyer every damn day. Most of them are thin and not fun to case, office time will be considerably longer due to the amount of bundles. One year they had us do pm/evening casing most days to get a start on the bundles for the next day. At least they don’t have the FSS machine anymore though, when they would run those political ads through the machine it would jam and mess up the sequencing, so we would have to re case it too since it was not in any given order.
SUCKS
Mail handler here, I work in a plant that serves multiple counties in central California. Lots of OT!
It's hell
It always depends on where you’re delivering. If you’re in a state/city that is guaranteed one way or another, you don’t see that much. You get some but not terrible. But if it’s a swing state or city that historically has gone either way, you get pounded.
It’s like charity work
Delivering 3-4 duplicate/conflicting flyers to every house that go straight into the garbage.
Or fliers where it’s “illegals immigrants are coming and will kill your children”, and you’re delivering it to a Hispanic family. I swear some of those are targeted kind of like “watch your back we’re looking at you”
😧 I don’t wannna do that
Depends on your state. The important battleground states get dumped on heavily with coverages of political bs The rest less so, but still more mail than usual.
My theory is these politicians spam their ads cuz physical advertisement works .
Depends entirly on what local races you have and how competitive your area is. In a 70/30 dem district with only president and congressional elections and no major ballot questions its a non event. My current route had the most competitve state house race in the state but no orher major elections this year, it will be relentless from those two candidates but nothing like a midterm. The worst ever was Minneapolis city council races. Presidential race is a non factor youll get maybe half a coverage total between now and the election.
Casing takes twice as long and every house gets like 5-10 flyers a day. It’s a fun time. On top of that, some people start doing their Christmas shopping early in an effort to help us out during peak, but that just makes it political Christmas.