transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Welcome to Classes of Mail. Before you listen, you should know that Alan Giegax is not in any sense an official spokesman for the post office, the NALC or anybody else. His opinions are inherently his own, and should probably be disregarded. Same for his guests. Any information you hear on this podcast could be wrong and should not be relied upon for any reason. Enjoy the show.

Speaker 2:
[00:47] Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Classes of Mail. My name is Alan Giegax, and this is gonna be a quick one today. There are a few topics that I wanna cover in descending order of importance. The most important one is I was not cool to a CCA today. I am back on the overtime list, and I've been putting in 10-hour days, and then one eight-hour day. It's been pretty, pretty reliable so far that, you know, four 10-hour days, one eight-hour day, and that's it. But I'm old, and I'm not used to it. I'm getting tired, and today, management gave me auxiliary assistance to do that they claim was an hour 45, and with travel, it took me close to three hours, and that's frustrating. You know, I try to be better now. There was a time, like when I did that auxiliary assistance, I had not taken my lunch yet. And there was a time where I would have thought, well, if I just don't take my lunch, then I can get done and still be off the clock, as long as I hustle, I can be off the clock before I go into penalty over time. And I'm trying to be better than that. I feel like I'm better than that. You know, I've learned over the years. And so I just went at a comfortable pace. I did the job properly and it took longer. And that's the way it goes. And I decided, well, screw it. When I'm done with this, I'm gonna take my lunch. I'm gonna take however long it takes. And if management doesn't like it, tough shit. So that's what I did. Well, when I got back on my route, management sent somebody to find me on my route. More on that in a second. And this person was a CCA who I'm not really familiar with. You know, I'm not a trainer anymore. My branch president removed me as a trainer. And so I don't know the CCA is like I used to. So the CCA comes out to help me, and I say, look, in the back of my van, there's mail for you already ready to go. Just open the back door, grab the mail, and you're good to go. It's two parking loops. And so the CCA goes to my van and stays there for a long time. Like I gave the CCA the keys while I was walking my parking loop. And then by the time I got back to the van, I'm like, okay, she should have brought me my keys by now. What's going on? And the CCA was still there and had just one loop of DPS in her hand, and then a random package in her hand. And she's like, is this all there is? And no, it's not. I told you what was back there. Where did you even get that parcel from? And the moral of the story here is I was frustrated and I was short with her. And she says, hey, don't get frustrated with me. I'm new. And immediately, I'm like, oh shit. That's right. That's what it's like to be new. I've been doing this for 20 years, and I've been out of the training game for a little while now. And obviously on here, I'm making a point to make sure that I explain everything. But there's a context where I know I'm coming into this as a teacher. And going into that auxiliary assistance, having that person come out to me, that wasn't at the front of my mind. It was just like, hey, I need this person to help me so I can get back before penalty. And dude, you know, right away, I'm like, fuck. It's that's how easy it is to forget that in the beginning, this job can be overwhelming. And sometimes you need to stop and just be patient. Like, hey, this is where you're going. This is what it's gonna look like. Don't worry about it. And so what I wound up doing is only giving her one of the parking loops. And, you know, I know already this is gonna take longer than it should. And so that's fine. You know, we'll account for that. But that little slip of, shit, I forgot what it was like to be new for a second. I'm really glad she said something to me and didn't just eat it. And I made sure I found her again later on. And like, hey, thank you very much for coming out to help me. I really appreciate that you helped at all. And, you know, I couldn't get done without you. And so thank you. And I hope that smooth things over. I'm gonna talk to her again tomorrow and make sure that she knows that her help is absolutely appreciated and that she should keep at it. And, you know, I was not being my best self. So we'll see. All right, so that's number one. Number two, rap session is coming up shortly. I'm recording this on Earth Day. No, yesterday was Earth Day. Today is the 23rd. I'm recording this on April 23rd, Thursday. And the rap session is coming up next week, the 30th and the 1st. So anyway, moral of the story is Michael Brazemlee and I are gonna be there. And my buddy Trevor is gonna be there. We're all out of Las Vegas. I know I've talked. It doesn't matter. Anyway, if you're going to the rap session, please find me and say hello. You know, my picture is on the album art or whatever, Four Classes of Mail. Michael's picture is up there now as well. And you can also find pictures of me and Michael on Facebook so that you know what we look like. And please come up, say hello. I absolutely want to meet you. I wanna say hello to you. I want you to say hello to me. I'm also going to the CLC fundraiser dinner. By the way, there's the CLC fundraiser dinner on the night of the 30th. And it's $50, and that includes food and drink. And of course, the remaining proceeds go to help the Concern Letter Carriers, which is something that we want. And so, if you're gonna go to that, make sure you say hi to me there, too. And I am happy to save a spot at a table or sit at a table with you. I definitely make sure there's a seat for Michael as well. But please, if you're going to the Region One App Session, please say hello. I very much want to meet you, talk to you, and so on. I may not know your name, because there's so many people. Please introduce yourself. Hey, Alan, I'm a listener of Classes of Mail or whatever, and I'm excited to meet you guys there. All right, so that's that. And I guess I have four things, because I want to put a bug... Well, no, I'll save that until after the fact. Okay, so the last thing is I need your guys' help. Because this overtime list is really cutting into my free time. And I didn't realize that it turns out I have about two hours of free time every day, because now I don't. And it's from working on the overtime list. And now there are days where, from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, there is not downtime. There is leisure time, but it's often scheduled. And so regardless, the moral of the story is, there are things that I want to do for Classes of Mail. There are things that I want to research to make into good episodes that I just don't have the time to put in the research that I need. And so this is where I'm asking for your help as a listener. If you are interested in helping me research some of these topics, please reach out to me at either classes of mail at gmail.com, or you can find me on Facebook. So Alan Giegaax, A-L-A-N G-E-G-A-X. Reach out to me through Messenger. I accept messages from strangers. I just have to click, see that there's a request and click accept. But please reach out to me. So like for example, one of the things that I'm working on now that's just a lot of research is presidential rulings. So every convention, there is a PDF, or maybe it's in a magazine or something, I don't know. But on the internet, it's a PDF of all the presidential rulings that have come down over the previous two years. And there's a ton of really fascinating and enlightening information in there because it covers parts of our constitution that are kind of vague and are left open to interpretation. And so I really want to go through these presidential rulings and pick out the gems, and look for patterns and see what we can really glean about the constitution and stuff like that. But there's just so many of them that it's a really time consuming process. So if I could just give somebody like, hey, you look at the presidential rulings from this year, you look at the presidential rulings from that year, and then report back to me, whatever you find that's interesting, or whatever patterns you see, or things like that, that would be so incredibly helpful. And we can use research like that in a lot of ways going forward to make Classes of Mail more useful to people. And so I would love your help in that. If you want to be part of the research team, and this is not an obligation, I'll put out, maybe I'll make an e-mail chain or something like that, and say, hey, this is what I want to research for an upcoming episode. Is anybody interested? And then I can just dole out little pieces of research, and you can either take it or leave it. And if you can only do 20 minutes worth of research, well, please, please do that because that's 20 minutes of work that you just saved me. So anyway, if you're interested in that, again, classes ofmail.gmail.com or find me on social media and send me a message. I think that's it. So thank you guys very much for listening. More good stuff to come, but I definitely wanted to get this out before the wrap session because I want you guys to come and say hello to me and Michael. So that's all I got. I will catch you all next time.