Zele Community Table
East Hopkins Avenue
September 5, 2006
5:30-6:40 PM
Aspen Acting Postmaster Mike Weimer
Barry Schochet; Bob Nix; Lisa Zimet; Keith Hemstreet; Michael Conniff.
Michael Conniff: What’s it like dealing with customers in Aspen?
Mike Weimer: That’s the part of the job you love is talking to the customer. I see the Postmaster’s role as dealing with the community. I’ve got three supervisors for Aspen and Snowmass Village.
MC: When did you start in the Post Office?
Weimer: I started in 1981, 27 years ago. I’m eligible to retire next year. I spent ten years in the Army before I went to work for the Post Service, so my total government service is 37 years.
MC: What will you do when you’re done?
Weimer: I can’t do nothing. I’ve always done a lot of volunteer work, Boy Scouts when my boys were younger, working with youth at church I attend. I took a group on a mission trip to a community center in inner city St. Louis. At a Hispanic center in Woodburn, Oregon, we turned a garage into a sanctuary. I’m always looking for a job to do.
MC: When did you start in Aspen?
Weimer: I live in Wheatridge, Colorado, and they brought me in the first part of last year. They have trouble getting supervisors to come in here. Aspen is an interesting environment.
MC: That’s a euphemism.
Barry Schochet: People behind the counter are somewhat unusual.
Weimer: They brought me in to help the Postmaster that was here. Coming in at Christmastime was really interesting. Aspen has 8500 Post Office boxes, 1700 in Snowmass. That and the nature of the community, people in here for just three to six months, made for an unusually high number of forwards . Temporary forwards are more difficult than permanent, because permanent slowly reduces the amount of mail. With temporary, everything goes through the system. There’s something definitely different about Aspen because a lot of people don’t pick up their mail. We have multiple shelves in the back. If a customer doesn’t have a long-enough box, they have to pay an extra fee or get a bigger box. That takes us an extra 200 hours per week, but it’s much easier just to hold the mail. In most offices, people pick up their mail on a regular basis—they have a small condition of overflow. But the nature of this community is different. Regulations do allow some wriggle room.
MC: What are people usually upset about?
Weimer: Here in Aspen, it’s forwarding. People have forwarded their mail from both homes and their mail is bouncing back and forth between the two. You want to be very careful about how you forward. You can’t forward for less than 15 days. My personal recommendation is don’t forward for less than two months. We also get calls everyday about packages people are expecting that aren’t here. If they have tracking numbers, it’s easy to locate.
MC: Do people blame you for everything that goes wrong?
Weimer: Not always. Usually we find there was something done incorrectly by the sender. Sometimes it’s our fault. We had a package that was delivered to the wrong address. My clerk made a mistake. It had a tracking number, we found out where it was, picked it up and delivered it to the rightful owner.
MC: What is parcel post?
Weimer: It goes by surface transportation. It’s not flown anywhere. If you have a light package, don’t send it parcel post because it will be thrown in with heavier packages.
BS: A letter leaves Aspen, where does it go?
Weimer: Here to Glenwood Spring. In Glenwood, it gets a postmark.
MC: It gets a Glenwood postmark? People in Aspen want an Aspen postmark.
Weimer: We will be getting a postmark here soon…From Glenwood it goes to Junction or Denver. From there it will go surface transportation to a regional area. Otherwise it will be flown. Priority we try to deliver in two days, but from Aspen it’s typically three days.
BS: A letter to the East coast or California goes surface?
Weimer: No, it’s going to be flown from Denver. If it goes to California it will be flown as well.
[Aspen resident BN Nix joins the table.]
BS: You should do a reality television program on the Post Office. It would be great.
BN: I mailed seven letters today to people in Aspen. Why does it have to go to Glenwood Springs?
Weimer: We were just addressing that. It’s an efficiency issue.
BN: Why wouldn’t you just keep the Aspen letters here?
Weimer: It wouldn’t be as efficient. It’s all automated. It takes less time. It actually keeps costs down.
MC: How important is the zip code?
Weimer: It’s incredibly important. If it doesn’t have a zip code, it may not get there. It probably will get there eventually, but it may not.
BN: The post office is actually a major polluter in Aspen. Everybody drives to Aspen to pick up their mail from the boxes. There are thousands of trips made to the post office. If you increased the routes you could cut down on the visits.
Weimer: We don’t deliver to Red Mountain.
BN: So they all drive down in their Hummers and I can’t cross the street.
MC: In Vermont, I used to see Post Office carriers driving in their own cars. They would drive with their left hand and reach out the right window. Do you have any people doing that here?
Weimer: We have one contractor.
MC: Isn’t it a serious issue to take someone’s mail?
Weimer: It is very serious. We would turn it into the inspection service.
MC: You hear people say, what they really want is a job at the Post Office. You have lifetime employment, good insurance and benefits. It’s the one job in America you can count on.
Weimer: That’s a fair assessment. I’m retiring after 37 years with government pension. My son’s retirements are decentralized. They have IRAs.
BN: Well, you know that your kids will never pull the plug on you because you have a lifetime pension.
MC: My last question: in the course of a year, how many postal carriers are bit by a dog.
Weimer: It’s never happened in Aspen. Never. Actually, it’s a big, big problem across the country.
MC: How do carriers protect themselves?
Weimer: We’ll stop delivering to a neighborhood if there is a problem dog until the dog is taken care of. Some people say it’s the uniform. It’s usually the small dogs. We have a slogan, big bites come in small packages.
BS: How much snow would it take to keep a delivery from happening? Like with school, if there is a 10-inch snowfall, school is cancelled.
Weimer: It’s a carrier call. If they can’t get to a box, if it’s not safe, they won’t deliver. We had a carrier who couldn’t deliver because there was a bear near the mail box.
MC: Do you have an Indiana Jones of mail carrying?
Weimer: We have a few carriers who do more than two people could do in a day.
LZ: Do you have a recognition program?
Weimer: Yes. I love the breakfast burritos at Bagel Bites. I’ll get 30 and bring them into the Post Office.
LZ: What are we [Zele]? Chopped liver?
BS: Bagel Bites is right down the street from the Post Office.
LZ: I’ll bring them down. We cater. I’ll deliver it.
Weimer: This is probably the best management situation in Aspen in the past 30 years. There is a real possibility that a decent Postmaster coming in with that kind of support could do great things.
KH: Where is the most requested transfer? Is there a dream location for postal employees?
Weimer: Aspen is very popular, but it’s a lifestyle choice. You would have to accept living in a smaller place than you’re probably used to. But people are willing to trade to be here.