Those cards and letters keep coming
Jingle bells:
The postman
always rings
By Larry Keller
CNN.com/career Senior Writer
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Satchel of mail slung like a rifle over one shoulder, Maurice Peoples steps gingerly over an icy patch of sidewalk -- like a soldier tiptoeing through a minefield.
Peoples, 42, is one of thousands of postal workers toiling in the trenches in the waning days before Christmas, delivering a staggering number of holiday cards and packages.
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QUICK VOTE
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With three delivery days left to go before Christmas, Peoples shows no signs of battle fatigue. "I think it helps get me in the holiday spirit, especially the last couple of days," he says, "because we're trying to get people their presents on time."
With e-mail, fax machines and other means of communicating, Americans don't rely on the United States Postal Service the way they once did. The agency reported a $199 million loss for fiscal year 2000. And another postage-stamp rate hike is imminent -- it will cost 34 cents for a stamp starting January 7.
But the traditional deluge of holiday mail has continued unabated. This year, the Postal Service estimates it will deliver 20 billion pieces of mail from the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas.
 Neither rain nor snow
"It's traditionally increased every year," says Rita Peer, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service in Washington.
The Postal Service has mobilized nearly 40,000 temporary seasonal employees this season, leased an extra 80 aircraft and added thousands of trucks and dozens of trains to combat the blitzkrieg of cards and packages.
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Maurice Peoples
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Peoples is a veteran of these postal campaigns. He worked for 10 years as a letter carrier in California, and has spent an additional decade doing the same job in Decatur, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb.
He arrives at work before dawn. The interior of the Decatur post office has the institutional gray walls and gray-and-beige metal desks and workstations of post offices everywhere. It radiates all the warmth of a prison.
Peoples sorts his mail and hits the street on an achingly bright day cold enough to make a penguin shiver. The temperature: a not-normal-for-Georgia 15 degrees.
Peoples, however, is wearing the earmuffs up on his cap. "It's harder working when it's 100 degrees," he says. "I feel sorry for the guys working up north. I don't know how they do it."
 Cookies, catalogs and dogs
Ample overtime pay isn't the only upside to the holiday crush for letter carriers. A certain number of their patrons give them gifts this time of year.
"People leave candy, cookies," say Peoples, a lanky, easygoing man. "They may leave cash in a card. I had one person give me some old fruit. There was an apple that was half-rotten."
Peoples didn't take it personally. "I don't think he meant it as a prank. The next year, he left me a ham."
The postal service's code of ethics prohibits accepting a gift worth more than $20, or multiple gifts over the course of a year from one source valued at more than $50. It's a safe bet, however, that letter carriers aren't refusing cash presents that exceed the smaller amount.
"It's a relatively common practice for their customers to give them things of appreciation," spokeswoman Peer says. "But we don't want people thinking they have to give something to get good service."
Peoples' route consists of more businesses than homes. He makes about 350 stops. "Most routes, it's about 600 or so," he says. "But businesses take longer."
He parks his truck, stuffs mail for several businesses into his pouch, makes his deliveries, exchanging pleasantries with many of the people on his route. Then he drives to a new location and repeats the process.
You might think this week is the most grueling for Peoples, but in fact he says the worst days were in October and November, when he and other letter carriers worked one-and-a-half to two two hours' overtime most days.
That's because those were the peak weeks for retailers to mail their catalogs and circulars hawking their holiday sales. "Some people might get 20, 25 or 30 catalogs in one day," Peoples says. "That, for sure, is the hardest. It takes time when you're dealing with that much volume. We're dealing mostly with first-class mail right now."
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BIG FIGURES
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It compares in size and sheer numbers of dollars involved to some of the largest of the Fortune 500's corporations. The U.S. Postal Service is one major effort. Let us count the ways.
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Since his route consists heavily of businesses, Peoples has fewer encounters with every carrier's worst nemeses -- dogs -- than some of his colleagues. "Fortunately, I've never even been bitten by a dog," he says in the tone of a man who has walked through a firefight and lived to tell about it.
"A couple of little dogs have bitten me on the back of my feet. I've had a few I've had to spray with the Mace. I don't know if it's the smell of the mail or the uniform. I can see a dog right here" -- Peoples is standing now outside a dry cleaners' shop -- "he won't bother me. But if I'm near his house, he'll go after me. They protect their territory."
 No holiday, image-wise
The postal service has suffered multiple image problems over the years. For awhile, the perception was one of rudeness, especially among clerks. Then "going postal" became part of the American lexicon after a series of much-publicized shooting episodes at post offices.
In fact, results were released in September from a two-year, $4 million independent study commissioned by the postal service that indicated homicide rates are lower at postal facilities than in other workplaces. Taxi drivers and chauffeurs were shown to be the most endangered workers in that study, the details of which were released by Joseph Califano, chairman of the postal service's Commission on a Safe and Secure Workplace.
A stereotype that Peoples would like to correct: "A lot of people think the job is real easy. But it includes preparing the mail before it's delivered -- that can take three or four hours. You're constantly lifting things. It takes a lot of energy."
Not that Peoples is complaining. He gets five weeks of vacation every year. He has ample sick leave. Base pay for city letter carriers ranges from $31,470 to $42,974. It's slightly less for rural route carriers, who make up less than one-third of the postal work force.
"I like the opportunities to interact with people every day," Peoples says.
"I get satisfaction from that. If you treat people nice, they treat you nice."
CNN.com/career Senior Writer Larry Keller is a former postal worker. He carried letters in Solana Beach, California. He joined Atlanta's Maurice Peoples in making the rounds in Decatur on Wednesday. He's been reciting ZIP codes to us ever since.
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