Memories of Garrett R.D. Merrick: 44 Life History --- Postal Career

I started working at the Post Office in Salt Lake City on 7 September 1971, while I was still getting used to new contact lenses. I worked in the Parcel Post Annex by the railroad tracks. I learned quite a few un-required schemes, did my job well, especially as a caller on the truck unloading belt, on the parcel post carousel distribution, and as an occasional expediter, and earned a quality step increase.

I competed for a training job in the Salt Lake City PEDC, and didn’t get it, but during the selection process met a man was was instrumental in helping me arrange a mutual transfer to the Provo Post Office in July 1974. I had a challenging time working graveyard shift for a year, complicated by hay fever starting to affect me more than it had in the past.

I got to plan the arrangement of the break room in the new East Bay Post Office

I worked swing shift for four years, did a good job on the markup table - after a weak start. After I got the job figured out, I wrote a manual on how to do the job. In October 1979 I competed for and obtained a job as assistant in the Provo PEDC. Two years later my boss’s position was eliminated, and I inherited sole proprietorship of training in the Provo Post Office. It has been a great job for seventeen years, and I believe I have done it well.

I graduated from BYU in April 1978 with a degree in building construction. However, interest rates were so high at this time that not much building was occurring, and having been seven years at the Post Office, we decided that it was not a good time to go into building construction; so, I’ve been at the Post Office ever since. I also completed an NRI home study course in automobile mechanics about this same time.

In May 1990 I was put in charge of starting up and staffing Computerized Forwarding System (CFS) operations in the Provo Post Office. This necessitated two weeks of training in Dallas TX in June. So, we rented a minivan, none of our vehicles being sufficiently sound or suitable for such an excursion, and took the whole family. The trip was challenging, but fun and memorable. We visited a nice mall and had a fun dinner with my CFS instructor at a western restaurant. August and September of 1990 were challenging at work, as I got CFS operations going.

1999 In December, the postmaster decided that I had sufficient time to manage the OSHA

safety program to which we were now subject - even though I had been working nine+hours per day for the last two years. Cheryl♡Anne helped me realize that it was time to change positions. I had previously passed over the Self Service Postal Center (SSPC - stamp vending machines) position, but luckily it came up a second time. I put in bids at both buildings (I like security!) and surprised a lot of people when I bid off the training job which I had held for nearly twenty years. During those years I gained a lot of expertise and assumed a number of jobs that had not originally been part of the training job. I was well aware that my replacement would not be able to do all the things that I had been doing. So, I prepared instructions for a number of them and attempted to farm them out to other employees. I trained a couple of replacements in the next two years.

2000 I assumed my new job and office (no longer the largest office in the building!) in early January. The job also entailed managing and repairing the parcel lockers around town. It took me two years to learn the machines and the job and to get everything well organized and running smoothly, especially the parcel lockers where the records were very poor. I continued studying to pass the Building Equipment Mechanic (BEM) test.