Glen Ridge post office keeps busy during holidays

GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Doug Wallis, the officer-in-charge at the Glen Ridge post office, said that while the holidays have brought just more of the same to the office, there are changes coming in the near future.

Wallis has been a postal service career man: 42 ½ years with four years in the Air Force counting toward his Civil Service pension. One can tell there is something of the military man inside him. He admits that he is active with his hometown American Legion.

“There are no parcel post routes in Glen Ridge during the year,” he said. “During the Christmas rush, there are one or two routes and for Amazon deliveries on Sunday.”

He said parcel post was up 15 percent during this Christmas. That is about the national average.
Ordinarily, Glen Ridge carriers have a park and loop route, which becomes more difficult during the holidays because of the increase in the number of letters. He said that years ago the post office had two deliveries at this time of year.
He spoke at the post office on Friday, Dec. 16.

“Today there were 18,148 letters that came in,” he said while looking at the latest statistics. “Without the Christmas rush, Mondays are the heaviest, with 14,000 deliveries. The average, for the week, is between 9,000 and 11,000 deliveries a day.”

But the letters leaving Glen Ridge are not counted.
“There are certain things you can’t mail, like batteries,” he said. “We get hit with a mystery shopper. Usually it’s right before the holidays. Knock on wood, we get a perfect score.”

A mystery shopper is a person sent to the local post office by the head office to mail a package or perform another customer-related function and then report back to their superiors who evaluate the quality of the service they received.
But nobody is perfect.

“It all depends on what they are looking for,” he said. “Last month, we scored 91 percent.”

There have not been any suspicious packages left at the post office. At least not recently.

“We’re pretty fortunate,” Wallis said. “But a few years ago, we had a package outside a mail box. That happened awhile ago. It wasn’t addressed to anyone in town. That’s going back five years.”

Local law authorities were contacted as they are for anything suspicious, Wallis said.

With no large businesses in the borough, the only big mailers the Glen Ridge Post Office handles are restaurants in neighboring Montclair and Bloomfield. Wallis said they use direct mailing which singles out areas in a town. It’s cheap postage, he said.

“We haven’t had direct mailing in a few weeks,” he said. “We don’t have many businesses in Glen Ridge except near Mountainside Hospital and the arcade on Bloomfield Avenue.”

Most of the complaints that come to the office involve packages that have not arrived.

“Stealing from the front porch doesn’t happen too often in Glen Ridge,” he said.
But the Glen Ridge office sometimes gets mail that is suppose to go elsewhere.
“Our ZIP code is 07028,” Wallis said. “We get packages for Garfield, Harrison and Elizabeth. That’s up just a little during the holidays.”

The trouble, Wallis said, is that the ZIP code for Elizabeth is 07207; for Garfield it is 07026; and for Harrison it is 07029.

Compliments may be up, too, during the holidays.
“I praise my employees, especially during crucial times,” he said. “When we get sick calls, the others step up. I am fortunate to have a good working crew. Some have been here for over 30 years. It’s like family.”

Wallis said he has 17 regular employees. No one has been hired for the holidays. Customers also offer praise:
“They call up for one thing and say the clerks and carriers are very friendly,” Wallis said. “A lot of Bloomfield and Montclair residents come here because they like doing business with us.”

There is a letter box in the lobby of the post office. The mail deposited here goes to the North Pole. Wallis said the kids get a big kick out of having the box handy. But some things will be changing in the near future.

“I started as a mail handler, in Newark, in 1980,” Wallis said. “I took the clerk/carrier test and came to Glen Ridge in April 1980. My goal is to go to June 1, of this year, and retire. And I’m losing two, good carriers at the end of this month. At the north end of town, Michael Visconti. He’s the shop steward and has 38 years. Donnie Malcolm, at the north end, has 27 years. In the next six months, possibly five but definitely four, are retiring. That’s almost 40 percent of the work force here.”

Wallis said come next Christmas, it is going to be a very different Glen Ridge post office.