Busy, yes, but post office handles the holidays

GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Christmas time is peak time for the U. S. Postal Service and at the Glen Ridge Post Office, those people just love to work.
Letter carriers ordinarily start at 8:30 a.m., but lately they have been on the job by 6:30 a.m. Postmaster Paul Camporeale is already there, and he is not alone. The postal clerks have been at it since 5 a.m. But they do that year-round.

“The clerks start processing the mail and the carriers start at 6:30 a.m. with package deliveries,” Camporeale said last week in his office. Sitting in with him was George Flood, of Strategic Communications, U. S. Postal Service.

The borough, Camporeale said, has eight routes. The post office has 20 employees.
“The carriers deliver their packages and come back to prepare for a full route of letters,” he continued, “and more packages.”
In the meantime, additional packages have arrived and are processed. The carriers return around 8:30 a.m. and are out on the street again by 10:30 a.m.
“They take their lunch on the road,” Camporeale said. “Sometimes customers leave little snacks.”
The carriers do not return empty-handed.

“They bring back all the mail collected, occasionally pickups at homes, but mostly from the blue boxes,” he said.
Flood said home pickups are facilitated by flat-rate priority mailing boxes, free at the post office or they can be ordered. Postage is paid online, printed out at home and slapped onto the package, ready for the carrier. Camporeale said his post office gets a decent amount of this type of packaging.
The holiday season also sees an increase in local advertisements and EDDM — Every Door Direct Mail. For as low as 19 cents, a piece of mail can be zeroed into a small area of town. Flood said, for example, pizza parlors and Realtors mail this way.

While all the incoming and outgoing mail is being stamped, carried and dropped, Camporeale is occupied with performance expectations, customer issues and reporting to the district office in Edison.

He does not get many phone calls from customers with issues, but when he does, during the holiday season, it might be because a resident wants to know why the carrier is on the street so early. And if they are on the street early, why is the mail being delivered late?

“During the holiday season, people who use to get their mail at 2:30 now might get it at 4:40,” he said.
The U. S. Postal Service has 17 holiday stamps this year. Four are of Santa Claus and one looks just like the Santa who drinks Coca-Cola. Flood said that was because the same artist did both pictures.

“It was taken from out of his work,” he said. “You have to be very careful.”
Flood said the USPS gets 50,000 suggestions a year for what should appear on stamps. But the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, a group selected by the postmaster general, selects 12 to 15 subjects.
“It’s a reflection of an open society,” he said.

Audie Murphy, the highly decorated World War II veteran attracted 9,000 suggestions, Flood said. If a subject is approved by the postmaster general, it is sent to an art director and created.
Murphy, who died in 1971, received his stamp in 2000 after considerable controversy because it had been rejected while Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny were approved, according to a website dedicated to Murphy.

Camporeale said a person can have postage stamps made to order by vendors who create honest-to-goodness postage stamps with images provided by the buyer. These stamps are very noticable, he said, and mostly people getting married buy them.
“It’s not cheap,” Flood added.

The Glen Ridge Post Office also has its North Pole mailbox in the lobby. About 100 letters to Santa are expected. Camporeale said all letters will be answered. Flood said sometimes it is Key Club members at the high school, or a senior citizen group that responds. This year, the Key Club will be Santa’s helper. Replies will be mailed to the children.

And for the first time, the USPS has created a holiday image to be colored by children, Camporeale said. The picture can be downloaded from the postal service website or obtained at the post office. Once colored-in, it should be dropped off at the post office for a contest. Judging will be done by postal employees. There will be one grand prize winner and three runner-ups. The deadline to submit is Dec. 22.

“We’ve given a lot of the pictures out,” Camporeale said. “All of them will be posted in the lobby. We’re trying to engage the community.”
Camporeale started work at the borough post office this past summer. But he has been a USPS employee since 2004. He is impressed with what he has seen in Glen Ridge since coming on board.

“The relationship our carriers have with the customers, it’s really extraordinary,” he said. “It’s the truth. And I’ve worked in quite a few offices.”

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