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I'm a letter carrier at the Moraine Valley facility in Bridgeview, Illinois. I started there in 1986.

I get the mail ready in the morning. I sort it by household, bundle it up, take it out to the street and deliver it. Sorting the mail usually takes about two to three hours in the morning. We get about two to three feet of flat-sized mail for my route. Flat-sized mail is like magazines or papers. And we get about ten feet of letter-size mail. A foot of mail is about 120 pieces of mail.

Weather can slow you down. Some of the other problems might be time restraints. Your supervisors want you in and out in 8 hours. But with the amount of mail, depending on the time of year, it might take longer. You're always getting hassled about going faster, or trying to go faster, but with the weather, you really can't.

Well for weather, I guess just be prepared with the right equipment. During winter, you make sure you have enough clothes on. You wear gloves and a hat. As far as the time restraints go, you just have to work with your supervisor. You're going to have to ask for some overtime. Or, if they want to send out another letter carrier to help you finish your route in eight hours, they can do that too. You work with your supervisor to figure out how much longer it's going to take. You figure out together whether you're going to need help, or if you can just take the overtime and do it on your own.

Ours is one of the largest facilities in the south suburbs of Chicago, if not the largest. We deliver to six different cities, whereas other facilities will only deliver to one or two other towns. We deliver to Oak Lawn, Bridgeview, Burbank, Justice, Chicago Ridge and Hickory Hills, Illinois. This doesn't really affect my responsibilities at all. It's just that a bigger facility has more people, and I think that affects the management more than anyone else.

We have uniforms that we obviously have to wear. Shirt, pants, black shoes. It's supposed to be kept up nicely. They give you a uniform allowance, so you should have enough money to replace things. And it changes with the weather, too. During the summer you can wear shorts and a shirt. Then during the winter, you have heavier pants and coats that you get through the uniform allowance.

A few hours. Especially for the mounted routes; that's where you spend most of your time once you leave the office between walking. So from the time you leave until the time you get back, you're in and out of the truck for about six hours.

I went to the post office one day, and they had a list that you could sign up to take the test to become a postal carrier. The job I had at the time was really going nowhere, so I signed up to take the test. About three or four months later I was called in.

No. I've been a letter carrier the whole time. You can take a test to become a supervisor, but I had no interest in that. I like being outside and working on my own.

No, I'm pretty content with where I'm at right now.

I have a college degree, but you only need a high school degree to get in. They do look for some college education, but they would take just high school graduates.

It's a good, reliable job. It's something that's going to be there for a while, and I've decided it's something I can retire on.

Probably when my kids are out of school. I could retire in five years, but it will probably be about seven or eight more years before I retire. And I'll get some benefits when I retire, too. You can get medical and a pension.

There are a lot of different people. And we have a very diverse group, too. Just like with any other job, you have people who want to do their job, and people that are very lax in their job. But we all get along. Sometimes we'll go out for drinks or dinner after work.

Good. There are times when it's very stressful. Sometimes it's stressful for people, because the supervisors will get on their case about how they are delivering mail. But if you do your job, you usually don't have any problems.

Walking from house to house. And it can get a little rough walking with the mail. How it works is you bid on routes by seniority. We have quite a few mounted routes, where you drive, but the majority of them are walking routes. Basically, the mounted routes go to the higher seniority people.

I punch in at 7:30 a.m. We check our vehicles first thing in the morning, and then we come in and sort the mail. You usually sort the magazines first, and then the letters. Then you bundle it all down, load it in your truck and you head out. That's usually around 9:30 a.m..

About 6 hours. You get two 10-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch break. Once you go out on your route, that's pretty much the last thing you do for the day. Once you're finished delivering the mail, you're done for the day.

Not much. You're basically doing the same thing each day. But you meet different people each day, and interact with different people each day. I interact with all kinds of different people on my route. I have some businesses on my route, so I've gotten to know people through that. You deliver to houses and apartments, so you're constantly meeting all kinds of new people.

It's unbelievable how much more mail we get. Christmas cards, catalogs, and things like that. And the supervisors will give you a little bit of a break on your time then, but you can probably get twice as much mail as you do on a normal day. I end up taking a lot of overtime during the holidays.

Probably not much. I'm sure some of the rural areas don't get as much mail, and maybe their routes aren't as long. But the aspects of the job are basically the same.

I think incoming letter carriers make around $40,000 per year, and you can get up to about $60,000 per year. If you work overtime, you make more than that too. So there are opportunities for overtime if you want. Other than the uniform allowances, there aren't any other kinds of compensation.

I average between 40 and 50 hours per week. That's a pretty typical number for everyone who does the job.

It hasn't really affected my family life. But I've made friends through work, and we interact socially after work on a regular basis. Other than that, my job doesn't really place any obligations on me outside of the workweek.

No. They'll change the starting times sometimes. It'll go from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. Sometimes it will go to 7:00 a.m., depending on what time they can get the mail to us. But it's basically been the same since I started.

Once you get past your probation time, you're pretty stable as long as you want to work. As long as you don't get in trouble or anything, you're pretty set.

Last time I went on vacation was in November, and it was about a week. Throughout the year, I get five to six weeks of vacation. The most I take at a time is a week. Sometimes during the summer, I'll take two weeks at a time. I usually don't use all my vacation time, I'll save a week or so. And you can carry that over for as long as you work there, so you can build up your vacation time.

Yes. They watch over us to make sure that management doesn't demand too much. Or when management causes trouble, they're there. They work on our contracts. They've gotten us contracts and kept us doing business. The union also works for everybody throughout the country to keep it basically the same job everywhere.

Just getting your job done and meeting the people out on your routes. You really build some relationships with people on your route. I've known some people for a while now. Even when I change routes, I keep in touch with some of the people on my old routes. So you build relationships and friends. They know who you are and you know who they are. And they really appreciate what I'm doing.

Probably the time restraints they put on you. They give you more mail, and they want you back at the same time. Putting up with the supervisors is frustrating. The amount of mail is also sometimes frustrating. It can vary from day to day, and some days it gets kind of frustrating when they give you so much and expect you back at the same time.

Probably automation. Now, they have machines that can sort the mail for you. So we don't sort as much mail as we used to, the machines do a lot of it. So we can get more mail out now. We used to have to case ten to twelve feet of mail a day; we're probably doing half of that now because the machines will do a lot of it. It makes it easier for us, but you're getting more mail at the same time.

It makes it easier for them, but it can also be harder. Easier in the sense that they don't have to case as much mail, but harder in the sense that there's a whole lot more mail that we have to carry on our backs now than we used to on any particular mail day.

You would think so. But the bulk mail has not gone down. Maybe there's less first class mail now, but the bulk mail has always been there. And with the automation, we can get more out per day because we save some time. People are always going to be mailing stuff. A lot of people that don't use the Internet, like older people, still are sending mail out.

Yes. Salaries have gone up. With the economy and union contracts, the salaries have gone up.

They keep saying it's going to, that the mail is going to go down because of the Internet, and people being able to send letters and bills that way. But there are still people that don't use that. They keep saying the mail volume is going to go down, and that's what they're projecting, but I don't see it.

Some of the difficulties of the job. Everyone thinks the mailman's job is really easy, but it's not. The weather can be rough, and walking really puts a lot of stress on your body. People think you just go into the post office, get your mail and deliver it, but there is really a lot more to the job than that.

Somebody that likes to be outside. Whether it's raining or snowing, they can't be worried about that at all. You're going to be out there with 30 or 40 pounds of mail on your shoulder. You have to be pretty active and be in shape.

I'm not really sure what they look for. But I know someone has to be really hard working, and management has to be sure the person is going to show up for work. This job is not for slackers. You also need to have a good head on your shoulders and a good memory. A big part of casing the mail is memorizing where the addresses and streets are.

Yes. You have to be ready to work outside, and you have to be in shape. It's a lot more demanding than a lot of people think. You have to carry around a lot of heavy stuff, so be ready for that.