1.What did/do you do for work and how long did you work in that position? I worked at the postal service for 36 years. It was not what I had planned for. I did not have much job experience before that.
2. Of the jobs you've had throughout life, which was your favorite? My first job working at Toy City was my favorite because I was a kid. If no favorite, which was the worst? Tell us why you loved/hated your job. I would say there were aspects of my last job I did not like.
I was 14 when I got my first real job at Toy City. It was a small toy store in downtown Santa Ana across from Woolworths. My mom was the company manager under the owner Bill Griffith. There were 9 stores in Orange Country. My mom oversaw the store managers and was a buyer for the store. So one summer I got to work there, and it was both fun and busy work. My mom would drop me off and visit the other stores. I got my training from the store manager named Harriet. There was a lot to learn and I was always busy. My mom went over a lot of the rules beforehand, so I knew what was expected. Keep busy. See what needed to be done. Harriet was nice to me but did not give me special attention. I was a kid in a toy store, so it was a great first job. I helped unpack stock and made sure the invoice matched the product. I put price stickers on the toys/games and books. I made sure everything was in its place. I might have spent a little more time in the book section. I bought several Trixie Beldon books over the summer. I felt so special getting lunch across the street at the grill across the street. The store offered free wrapping, and my mom showed me how to do that. I earned enough money to buy a sting ray bicycle that didn't last the summer. Little brother left it outside and it was gone. I also worked during the Christmas holiday and it sure was busy, but fun! The old cash register was interesting and terrifying because you had to look up the tax and know what keys to hit. Math was always that thorn in my side.
The following summer I had a volunteer at the local community hospital as a candy striper. It was a good experience. I did not work again until the end of my senior year because I was too busy afterschool sports, clubs and homework. I did get some babysitting jobs that helped out.
At the end of my senior year, I got a job and a local pharmacy store. It has a little of everything. It was like a smaller version of Savons, CVS of Walgreens. I worked a lot of weekends. The job at the Toy City prepared me for this job. The cash register was a little easier to work. The manager was nice and so was the owner. I only worked there for a couple of months. My dad let me know the post office was hiring full time students to work for a one year program and it paid much better than the Drugstore. It also had evening hours so I could take classes during the day. We only had to work part time in the evening and full time in the summer. I started it in July and went through the following July. I got married that August.
3. What did your job entail? I sorted mail. We sat/stood Infront of a metal case that had about 48 slots.
It has Orange County cities on the left side, California cities in the middle and some major cities on the right. There was also a half case to the right side for more states, Northern California hold out, International and special hold outs for Special Delivery, Political and even Santa at Christmas time.
Did it require a special education? Not for the Postal assistant job. But in 1975 I got a permanent part time clerk job. I had to past the Civil Service test to get hired. I had to pass a scheme test to pass my probation. I was going to school full time, working and studying for the scheme test. I had to learn about 1500 cities in So California. I then got a random 100 that I had to sort in 5 minutes and could only miss 10. I missed 2. There were not a lot of part time jobs. But when they called me, I was at the top of the list because I had a 98 on my Civil Service test. I took part time, M-F 6pm-10pm. I was able to go to school. I would be throwing/casing business size envelopes. I graduated in 1977 but I decided to stay at the post office so I could start my family. That took awhile.
In 1986 I got hurt and I worked in Nixies troubleshooting mail that was rejected for various reasons. Whole doing that I took a college course on the basics of word processing, spreadsheets, power point. One day Ruth from Marketing asked me if I had any computer experience. That is when I started working in marketing department. I was a clerk working in the admin level. They could not change my salary so I made more money than some lower levels employees. A world opened up for me. The girl that didn't take any office classes in high school end up working in an office. Learning how to manipulate graphics and spreadsheets was so interesting. If I needed help with formulas, I went to finance for help. I worked under the Retail Specialist. Like most jobs, there was a hierarchy. The more I learned, the more that was expected from me and I liked the challenge. The only negative thing was they always threatened to move out injured employees even though we had been retrained to do the jobs. It was all because of the change in hierarchy of the post office. A lot of things had changed since I had start working there. Automation was the main cause of change.
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As Vending Coordinator, I over saw 144 machines for all cities in our districts. I worked with the vending clerks and they sent sales/hour reports to me. I had to log the information into a special program. Our district had the top 10 sales revenue locations in the nation. The only location higher than ours was Grand Central Station NY. I worked with Postmasters and people at Headquarters in DC. I also worked with HQ as we transitioned to the next generation machines that you find in most post offices today. The vending machines were finally phased out in 2010.
This is me in 2009 in front of Postal Vending Machines.
I would come back from Hawaii and start the removal process of these machines.
Political mail always has priority preference. Vote by mail was separated and taken to hampers that went out several times a day to the voting locations. Taxes were also separated too. I remember working one evening collecting mail outside as lines of cars drove by to drop off their taxes the night before so they could get the correct postmark. The thing I really enjoyed was working on the Santa Mail. Normally first class mail was not allowed to be open. But Santa mail that was only addressed with North Pole was. The marketing department would ask for help opening up the mail and sorting them. Kids who asked for food and clothing were set aside and different organizations would take the letters and see if they could help the families. The other letters did not show a need got a letter from Santa back with Santa letter head. Different sections of our post office would adopt families and give them a complete Christmas.
The last day I worked, I looked at the robots working and never imagined they would be in a post office. I walked passed the OCR's. 4 operators fed trays of mail into machines that read addresses, sprayed barcodes and sorted the mail. I remembered working in the early 80's testing a new thing-barcodes. We had to test the accuracy of the barcodes. Letter sorting machines led to business mail sorting machines. So many changes! I stayed there until I retired in 2011.
4. List all the jobs/occupations you have had.
Babysitter
Sales clerk Toy City 1969
Candy Striper 1970
Sales Clerk- Wagner's Drug Store 1973
Postal Assistant 73-74
Treasury(Target) 1975 Hardware department.
Postal Clerk 1975 M-F 6PM-10PM
Department of Social Services 1977(Senior work experience)
Day Camp Counselor Summer 1979 9AM-4PM
Part time Preschool Teacher 1978-79
Retired from Postal Service in 2011
Grandma/Mema 2007-Current
