Before the Days of Automation
Career Summary
Before the days of automation, the clerks were way more highly skilled. They had a lot of schemes, they took a lot of pride in knowing their schemes, working their schemes right, sticking all of the mail right, not having what we call ‘turn backs’ or ‘throw backs.’ There was a real spirit of cooperation and everybody was really, really pushing to get the mail out on time, to get it out by the time the truck left, or the train left or the bus left and, after automation came, a lot of that went away. Then, there was a real spirit of ‘we’ve got to get the mail out!’ and we’ve got to work as hard as we can to get the mail out. We had a big dispatch at 11pm and everyone was pushing as hard as they could to ride up to the very last second to get it all on there. It was a source of pride in their job and that kind of stuff but after automation came, if that thing is sitting there giving you a letter every 8/10s of a second, or whatever it was, it kind of took the pride out of it.
AUTHOR NAME: Troy Smith