What's the zip code for Memory Lane?

Two things inspired [well, that's being a little generous] me to do this next post. I mentioned earlier that I still dream about my job at the Federal Agency Known for Workplace Violence even though I've been gone from there over seven years now. I also just finished a novel called MAILMAN by J. Robert Lennon [author is actually named John Lennon, which is why of course he uses the first initial. He was born in 1970, I wonder if he had hippie parents, although of course it could be a family name. As usual, I digress.]

MAILMAN is about a fifty-seven year old letter carrier named Albert Lippincott who works in a small college town in New York. The novel is basically a catalog of his various failures and traumas. J. Robert Lennon obviously has spent time either as a postal worker [doubtful, he's written several other novels] or has done his research [there's a lengthy list of acknowledgements at the end] because Albert is like a lot of people I used to work with, and a lot like me during that time of my life, a solitary creature of routine [although he is not nearly as solitary as I was] whose life tends to revolve around a job that he loves and hates at the same time. When that job is jeopardized, his world of course falls apart.

The story is told through a lot of flashbacks, often the events in the novel's present lead to Albert remembering events of his past [usually bad,] such as his failure in college, his mental illness, his aborted attempt to work for the Peace Corps, his romantic flings, his failed marriage, and so on. Albert is a prime example of the overeducated postal worker: someone who went to college [in his case, briefly] but for whatever reason failed to leverage that into a career, and found their way into the post office. That basically describes me and at least a few of my co-workers [although not too many, I imagine you'd see more in a location where there was a higher level of educational attainment on average.]

Anyway, although I never carried mail [which generally is considered the most difficult job in the Post Office, although I would say window clerk is a close second--any position where you're caught between the public and management is not an easy one] I identified quite a bit with Albert, and imagine had I been able to stick around I most likely would have ended up quite a bit like him, although probably less interesting. I had a pretty solid routine which I liked to follow, and I tended to have my life revolve around my job. And unfortunately, I still have fond memories of a lot of my postal career, although not the last year and a half or so of it. BTW, I worked in a mail sorting facility, working with a gigantic machine that sorted magazines and large envelopes, a.k.a. "flats." Back in 1996 I started out doing data entry at something called a "remote encoding center," we keyed address information so that mail could be properly sorted, but technology improved to where that was automated, so I ended up working the flat sorter gig more or less for the rest of my career [from spring 2000 to fall of 2003.]

I don't think I would have been able to stick around even if I'd wanted to. Over the past 15-20 years they have been moving toward increased automation and less of a need for employees. Couple that with the economic meltdown and that spelled trouble for people like me who were fairly late to the party [my "seniority date" was in 1997, and I would have had to make it until 2029 to reach retirement.] It was pretty commonly known even a decade ago that if you didn't already have 20 years under your belt or close to it that you were going to have to find something else at some point in the future; the writing was on the wall even then as far as the long term viability of the USPS.] They probably wouldn't have laid people off, or at least not anyone with the seniority I had back then, but they would have closed facilities and moved people around to where they would have to quit. This has been happening a lot since I left, they've abolished jobs and forced employees to work at a location over a hundred miles away, they've eliminated entire shifts, etc. My last job I had with them was really the only job there that I was good at, when I had to move to other work areas I was stressed beyond belief. So, as bad as stuff is now, and as nostalgic as I am for my former career, I know that long term, leaving was the right thing to do. I certainly have made my share of mistakes since then [getting a master's degree in accounting instead of just an associates is probably toward the top of the list] but I think I am better off than I would have been had I tried to stay.