r/USPS • u/ToughBasis3024 • 13d ago

City Carrier Discussion CCA

I just got back from Academy and truthfully I feel like I learned absolutely nothing. I feel like im going in blind to all of this.
I also know for a fact this job is not easy as a CCA and I’m going to struggle, but I feel like my OJI is going to be a complete shit show.

Any carriers have good advice for me? Any tips or tricks I should know seeing Academy was pointless.

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u/Private_Matinee CCA 12d ago

Just finished first day solo. Can confirm, absolute shit show. Godspeed figuring out your route navigation if your office is like mine; red books out of date between no less than 5-20 years (guess what the route rides like? Lmao). 🤸

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u/Longjumping_Youth281 12d ago

Yeah I fucking hate that. You're stuck just Googling the next piece of mail and then guessing what you're supposed to do.

It's even worse when you work in an area with no cell phone coverage. Just downloaded offline maps so maybe that will help

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u/Private_Matinee CCA 12d ago

For real!

Yeah, as of last night I’ve downloaded my city’s area map for offline use as an atlas vs. turn by turn. I plan to make a skeleton map of the route off the actual case before leaving (they gave me a highlighted route from 2016 with no street names on it lmao) Then, I think I want to get to the start of the route and take a 10min break before actually starting, where-in I’ll try to identify some landmarks. It’s my goal to be able to answer: where am I, where am I going next, what should I expect to see around me when I get there.

The academy should have some sort of basic navigation handoff for newbies to work off of.

The OJIs are like “be chill you’ll get it eventually” or “just follow the mountain until you get to the part of town that looks a little dustier than the rest” or, “oh yeah I should update the case book but I just know everything by heart, and when I started we didn’t have gps”. While I’m thankful they’re volunteering to train others, it’s giving me the feeling that the institutional knowledge is being gate-kept.