What It's Like Delivering Mail in a Pandemic
On Tuesday, voters across Wisconsin turned out for the primary election, despite governor Tony Evers's attempt to get the election moved (he and two lower courts were overruled by the five conservative judges on the Supreme Court). From a public health point of view, it was a disaster—the coronavirus outbreak resulted in a shortage of poll workers, and voting locations across the state shut down, funneling more voters into longer lines and fewer voting booths. Milwaukee alone, a city of more than 590,000 people and 70 percent of Wisconsin's black population, went from 180 polling places to just five. This made mail-in ballots all the more necessary, not to mention potentially life-saving.
The United States Postal Service employs more than 600,000 people, and saw its first letter carrier death from COVID-19 in late March. For years, conservatives have tried to privatize the USPS, most recently the Trump administration detailed it in a document called "Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century." If that were to happen, the post office would shift from delivering mail to a for-profit institution, which would effectively be the end of cheap mail as a public service, and might spell ending services to more rural communities. That's likely why the USPS, which is facing a $22 billion hole in its budget as a result of businesses dropping advertising mailers, got short shrift in Congress's $2 trillion stimulus bill. While private corporations got a minimally-overseen $500 billion fund, the postal service got $10 billion that it will have to pay back—a sum that will be hard to repay thanks to complex rules Congress forced onto the USPS in 2006 that have kept it needlessly cash-strapped for the last 15 years.
But the people can't afford to have the postal service shut down, especially during a pandemic. Public health information, prescriptions, nearly all of the medicine sent out by the Department of Veterans Affairs, all of it goes through the mail. And so do absentee ballots, something that's even more necessary now that gathering at polling places is a huge risk to public health.
On Thursday, as he was making his rounds, GQ spoke to Zach (who asked we not use his last name out of concerns for job safety), a Wisconsin letter carrier who has worked for the USPS for 10 years. He described how he protects himself and the people he delivers to while handling a huge influx of Amazon packages and absentee ballots.
GQ: What's it been like delivering mail with so many ballots going through?
Zach: It's been frustrating for sure. It was difficult to not feel a little ridiculous delivering ballots to people that in all likelihood will not be counted, because people won't be able to mail them in on time for whatever reason. The office that's processing all the requests was still swamped, they couldn't get them out in time, and I definitely delivered a few the day of the election and a couple the day after. I think it's ridiculous to put people's health second to what I guess was considered law. It's written into the law, apparently, in the state of Wisconsin that their elections are to be held the first Tuesday of April, and they for whatever reason couldn't move it even though plenty of other states have jumped over that same hurdle and decided to postpone the election. But we have to deliver what we have, no matter how ridiculous you feel delivering it, and I'm sure I'll be picking up a few within the next few days for people who have yet to fill them out. I've had several discussions with people on the route and I encourage them to just send the ballots in with hopes that maybe something will happen, that they will get counted.
How has your job changed since the coronavirus outbreak?
Amazon has just exploded. My route in particular, on an average day I probably get about a hundred scannable packages. And now an average day for me is anywhere from 130 to 150. To put that in perspective, around Christmas time, I'm usually around 200 or so, and that's for the real two-week crunch towards the end. Most of us are under a specific contract where I'm guaranteed eight hours every day, so regardless of whether I'm delivering 500 letters or 1,500 letters, I still have to walk the same distance. And we only have access to public restrooms, whether it's coffee shops or any restaurants, or anything like that, but all of those are closed now, so you have to go out of your way to find the closest one. I think management has done a relatively good job at understanding our days longer. And we haven't had anyone get sick yet, but there are several carriers in my station who have been gone for a couple of weeks now because they felt unsafe working in the system. But if you're not sick, you cannot take sick leave, so you need to have annual leave time left.
What sort of protective measures have you seen implemented?
Being part of the government system, there's a lot of trickle down. Letter carriers in particular are often the last people to get word on how things are going to change. It wasn't until recently that the post office has been keeping us informed as far as what their goals are, keeping people safe, and trying their best to get protective equipments to people. Gloves are readily available, I think we're starting to see more hand sanitizer through the chain, because companies that were supplying restaurants that are now closed have been pivoting towards industries that are still open. Masks, I really haven't seen a whole lot.
How is being a postal service employee different from other kinds of essential services?
First responders and people who worked in health care and stuff like that, their interaction is obviously much more immediate. And they typically know, or at least aware of the fact that they're working with somebody who's particularly been affected with a virus or something. If I pick up a letter from somebody, it's pretty likely that the next person to touch that letter will be the delivering employee. In an average day, I probably deliver between 1,000 to 1,500 pieces of mail. Somebody who is working the DPS machine, which is the machine that sorts all of the letters, they may work with hundreds of thousands a day. So most of the post offices have been concentrating on the interior clerks who work with a much higher volume of mail. I think they've done a decent enough job making protective equipment available to people. I think a lot of it just comes down to the individual worker.
So a sick letter carrier or mail sorter could become a vector. What kind of protective measures do you personally take?
You really need to take multiple pairs with you because you're putting your hands in people's mailboxes and stuff and you really should be changing your gloves relatively frequently because just wearing them doesn't really change anything. It's just basically an extension of your hand, so I think keeping them clean is somewhat difficult. I focus on using hand sanitizer. I've had several customers leave small bottles out for me that I've been able to use. I don't really use any mask at all because my route is all walking outdoors and if you wear them for a while your breath makes condensation that freezes over.
It sounds like you talk to a lot of people on your route.
I take this job really seriously. I think it's incredibly important. The census was going through right now, it's tax season, and so you've got a lot of vital stuff going through the mail. This is an irreplaceable service. So you pretty much have to just put your head down and keep trudging through it.
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Originally Appeared on GQ
