The Scouting Report

A few years ago my friend got it in his head that the perfect summer job for him would be as a mailman. He thought it would be a great fit for that time of year: you get to wear shorts, work outside, get some exercise and be done early enough in the afternoon to still have time to enjoy the day. Everything was going well, right up until the time he went in to interview. That was when he discovered that the United States Postal Service does not mess around. According to him they had regulations for literally every move you make, from what side of the street you should park your mail truck on and how many houses you should be able to hit in one swoop before going back to get another armful of mail, to how the tires should be positioned when you are out of the truck. (For those of you wondering, they want them turned towards the curb, so that the car can't go anywhere if the emergency brake fails. I can only assume that was a hard lesson to learn.) Now, as a lot of people do, this particular friend has a habit of exaggerating his tales from time to time, so I thought he might have been over-stating how specific these people were about their rules. That was until this afternoon, when I saw it for myself.

I was working at my desk and the window next to it has a view of the street. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my mail carrier appear. It was not my normal guy, but a very short woman. I didn't think much of it at first, but a few seconds later another person trailing behind her came into my field of vision. He was carrying a clipboard and my first thought was he was another annoying person doing door-to-door political surveys. While those surveyors aren't as bad as the people who are trying to sell you siding (as if that's a split-second decision made on the whim of who is at your door at that moment), they still aren't as welcome as the Publisher's Clearing House people. However, rather than start up towards my front door he just held back a few feet behind the woman who was delivering the mail. After a couple seconds it occurred to me that what was happening was the mail carrier was being evaluated by this man. Now they had my attention and I watched as she finished going down one side of my street and up the other, all the while this guy was 10-15 feet behind her, just observing and occasionally jotting down a couple of notes.

Now, for the purpose of this post we're going to ignore the fact that letting a person you are evaluating know they are being evaluated is the worst way to actually assess their skills, because everyone is on their best behavior when they can see the person grading them. It is when they think no one is watching that they'll start keeping people's Social Security checks for themselves, so stealth would have been better in this situation. Instead, what I want to focus on was just how awkward this had to be for the poor girl delivering the mail. I mean, was she supposed to just ignore the guy or was she allowed to talk to him as she was working? I'm the kind of person who always has a smart-ass remark to make, so having a guy walking behind me and not being able to say anything to him would drive me crazy, but he was trailing her with enough distance that it gave me the impression she was supposed to pretend he wasn't there (which is impossible). If I was that carrier it would have made it much harder to focus on what I was doing. Plus, it seems unnecessary. If you want to make sure they are moving at a good pace I would think sitting in the truck with a stopwatch would be just as effective and not nearly as awkward.

Also, it took every fabric of my being not to run out the door and chase the man with the clipboard down, because I am dying to know what he could possibly be writing on that paper. Was he making sure the carrier didn't linger too long at one house? Or was he concerned she might not be closing the mail boxes tightly when she was done delivering the mail? Also, I want to know if this is like the NFL scouting combine and her sheet had other numbers like her time in the 40-yard dash and 3-cone shuttle drills. Is it important for a mail carrier to have a good vertical jump? And what about her wingspan? In all seriousness, how much evaluation does this job require? Because in my imagination the sheet only had two questions on it: Did the carrier throw the mail down the gutter? (No.) Did the carrier make a serious effort to get every letter to the correct house? (Yep.) Pass. Everything after that would just be nitpicking. Well, I don't know if this helps at all, but I want the USPS to know my mail was delivered just fine this afternoon - no complaints from me. Give that girl an A.