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Show News about people and their lives Keview Wednesday December 30, 1987 46 No time for relaxation at busy Postal Service LYNDIA GRAHAM visors. Lakeside Review correspondent . LAYTON Many folks may think now the holiday season is over post office personnel can sit back and relax. Not so, said Newell Wilson, postmaster of the Lay-to- n Post Office. The Salt Lake machine can mark 4,000 letters per minute regardless of the way the letter is facing. Older machinery requires that the letter be placed so the stamp is in a particular position in order to mark it. The Layton mail is delivered from Salt Lake in big canvas bags for the clerks to sort. That job takes from a.m. until around 9 a.m. to complete. Each clerk sits at a station with a box for each of the citys routes in front of him or her. Layton currently has 16 city routes and eight rural routes. Some heavy mail customers, such as the mail, major businesses and the hospital each have their own box to speed things along. The street name or number is all the clerks are interested in, and all they look at. They must have all the routes memorized and know where each street is. As they look at the street they file the piece of mail in the proper route box. The clerks are required to pass a test in sorting skills before they can get the job. They must be able to sort 100 pieces of mail in eight minutes with fewer than five mistakes or they cant qualify Wilson said the growth in the Layton Post Office correlates with growth in the city and his office is one of the fastest growing in the state. The recent growth has been such that Wilson said two new zip codes will be added to the Layton Post Office to facilitate mail delivery in the area. Those persons with addresses on Fairfield and west will continue using the 84041 zip as in the past. d Those addresses east of will use 84040 as their new zip and Syracuse residents and businesses will have 84075 as their new zip code. All zip codes are effective Jan. 1, 1988. Wilson said residents in the area will have a year to become accustomed to the new zips but people should get used to them as soon as possible. People should notify their banks, relatives and friends, magazine suppliers, or others who as a clerk. may send mail. The new zip codes may help After it is sorted into routes the . some with the work at the Layton mail is picked up from the seven office, but Wilson said space in the facility is tight and he hopes to see a new post office built by 1 Fair-fiel- sorting stations and placed in a tray. Each tray is two feet long and will hold about 500 letters. Mail is measured by the foot and the volume is recorded. At this point the bulk mail is added. Normally it will be already sorted according to address by the mailer. It can includes adds, papers, magazines or other mail that is sent to large portions of the community. Some routes get more bulk mail than others because some advertisers aim for a specific target consumer and can mail to those areas they feel contain the largest number of those in the downtown area. He said there is more correspondence in general from that area and with the many new homes being developed there it is a trend which will probably continue. The mail is next moved into the hands of the carriers. Each carrier takes the mail for his or d her route to another cubicle. There is a box for every address on the route, in order of delivery, and each piece of mail is quickly sorted in to the proper three-side- slot The carriers come to the post office about 6:30 a.m. to sort their mail. They spend about three hours sorting followed by five hours of street delivery time. If an address is vacant or a mail carrier stands in cubicle to sort the mail into slits for There are eight rural routes and change of address has been made, a marker is in the slot to warn 16 city routes that must be deliv- the carrier of the change. Needered daily. Rural carriers are con- less to say, a carrier must know traded to deliver their route and his route well. their salary depends on the size A After the mail is sorted the second time, it is stacked in trays and is ready to deliver. The carrier picks up parcels and accountable mail such as registered mail, letters with postage due, express mail, C.O.D.s, or certified mail, and then is ready to deliver. : .. 1990; The work load in Layton is he said. The growth in the last three years has exceeded nearly all other areas in the state. We are more like a big city ' post office than people think, he said. The growth has forced us to be better managers to serve customers as well as we have in the past. That management and service . sur-prisin- g, means near round-the-clo- ck work. Many employees come to the post office by a.m. to begin sorting the mail that has been postmarked in Salt Lake city. If a letter is mailed in Layton normally it will be taken to Salt Lake City for posting and will be returned with other Layton mail by the time the first clerks arrive after midnight. A few late pieces may be post-- , marked in Layton but new machinery is Salt Lake can process mail so quickly and efficiently that most is done there, said Ron Bassett, one of the Layton super-1 , Helping post office customers get mail ready are Hope Pritchett (left) and Mary Fields. Retirement is topic Anyone nearing retirement will want to attend a preretirement seminar at The Golden Hours Center, 650 25th street in Ogden, on Thursday, Jan. 14 from 7 to 9 p.m. A Social Security representative will discuss requirements for benefits, how to file a claim, your individual retirement estimate, and other important topics. The seminar is designed for area residents age 60 and over. Space is limited to 30 people, so 3 to preregister. Adcall mission if free. . 625-561- Crews to take trees The ClearCLEARFIELD field City street crews will be collecting Christmas trees on Jan. 6 and 7. For those residents living north of 200 South, the collection day will be Wednesday, Jan. 6. Trees will be picked up on Thursday, Jan. 7, for those residents living south of 200 South. Trees should be placed out near the curb for pick up. WORTH TALKING ABOUT Classified Ads Lakeside Review t V t I of the route. They furnish their own vehicles. In past years the rural carrier ofacted much like a mini-pofice. He or she could provide stamps and could mail parcels for customers. While they still provide some of those services, Bassett said there are fewer distinctions between rural and city routes now. City carriers are paid a wage and drive the familiar post office jeep. All of the city routes have some areas that require the postman to walk to deliver mail. But in the future the walking routes should not increase. Wilson said all new homes built in the city will be required to have boxes at the curb, usually in a combined box system. Some subdivisions already use a common postal box system on each street. The boxes are combined into one unit and each family has a key to their own box. Filling the boxes from behind one big door makes delivery easier and faster for the carrier. Jeff Hoskins, another supervisor at the Layton office, said the clerks, carriers, and other personnel are getting better and better at handling the Christmas rush but the holidays arent the only time employees must hustle. He said January finds a flood of tax notices and mail including mail-i- n contests and its always a st each address on guessing game his route. to estimate how much mail there will be. The fluctuation in the volume of mail means he must staff for a flood but be ready to send people home early if the predawn hours show a light flow of mail for that day. There are so many unknowns, he said. There may be many unknowns but there are some given facts too. Wilsons said one sure thing is the need for more customer parking. The Layton Post Office was built in 1960 and later expanded but is now burgeoning at the seams. Wilson said the jeeps used for delivery are also fighting tight parking arrangements and some of the big trucks used for mail delivery from the office in Salt Lake cant get in to the docking areas behind the present office. He said he hopes to see land purchased in 1988 for the new office. When it is constructed Wilsons said it will probably include a drive-uwindow for customer p convenience. Wilson is a firm believer in the service of the postal service. He said his office takes complaints seriously and he wants people to know he and the 54 workers in Layton work to get a problem corrected. We done, like thanks for a job well he said, but we also want to know we are the postal people service and we are here to vide service. pro- |