www.roanoke.com

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Bruffy, of Roanoke, is a letter carrier

for the U.S. Postal Service in Roanoke.

In response to letters to the editor by Wayne Harrison (April 23, "Tighten customer service in the Postal Service") and Ed Meadows Sr. (May 9, "Let the Pony Express deliver the mail") concerning postal delivery:

I'm a letter carrier in the Roanoke area. My route consists of 678 possible deliveries. I'm given eight hours to perform my job each day. I begin at 7 a.m. on a normal day. I ready my mail for customers by placing it in delivery order, bundle it out and load it in my truck. I leave for my route by approximately 9 a.m.

I'm given two 10-minute paid breaks each day and 30 minutes nonpaid lunch. This leaves me with a little more than 29 seconds for each delivery. This 29 seconds includes travel time to each address and driving to and from my route. Except for five boxes that I drive to, every delivery on my route is a walking delivery.

The U.S. Postal Service, just like any other big employer, expects the most productivity it can achieve from each employee. The postal service has adjusted our routes to try to achieve this, even if it's at the expense of customer relations and customer service.

In the rush to perform our jobs each day, sometimes mail gets misdelivered. We try to minimize this, but it happens occasionally.

As for trying to get to know your mailman, if he or she converses with hundreds of customers each day, it pushes the carrier far beyond the eight-hour allotted time for each route.

Please take into consideration the challenges every carrier faces each day in trying to get his or her route done in eight hours (traffic, dogs, weather, etc.).

Despite recent letters to the contrary, letter carriers in the Roanoke area are some of the hardest-working people I've ever had the pleasure to be associated with.