Latest / United We Scan / Happy 1 year Anniversary and So much More

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Happy 1 year Anniversary and So much More · United We Scan

• 0:15
  Welcome to the United We Scan Podcast, the podcast by rural
• 0:19
  carriers. For rural carriers, the views
• 0:22
  expressed in this podcast do not reflect the views or opinions of
• 0:27
  the United States Postal Service or the National Rural Letter
• 0:30
  Carriers Association. We ask that you please consult
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  leave a comment or question for us below.
• 0:54
  Thank you. Now here are the hosts of the
• 0:58
  United We Scan podcast. Welcome back everybody.
• 1:03
  Episode 49 kind of a big one for us.
• 1:07
  This is our one year anniversary.
• 1:10
  Woo Hoo for United we scan. We have made it one year, guys.
• 1:17
  A lot happened in that year. Absolutely.
• 1:22
  A lot has happened in this one year, but we're still here.
• 1:26
  And yeah. And you guys think we still
• 1:29
  would have been here this far out?
• 1:32
  Oh no. Do we get Step 2 now?
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  Oh, what table are we on? We're kind of, we're mixed.
• 1:42
  We got a couple table tours and a couple table ones.
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  Can we just kind of split it in the middle and did?
• 1:49
  A1A. Average.
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  Average it out. Yeah, yeah.
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  No, no. We'll do better than the Postal
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  Service. We'll double everybody's pay.
• 1:58
  There we go. There we go.
• 2:01
  I I I I think everybody on table one wouldn't mind averaging with
• 2:05
  table two and and splitting the difference.
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  I don't know but. Yeah, I know I don't.
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  Think I don't think anybody on table one should be upset if
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  everybody on table two was moved up to table one at the same step
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  that they're currently supposed to be at on table one if they
• 2:25
  were on table one to begin with. Oh, I wouldn't complain one bit
• 2:30
  as a table tour. But nobody on table one is
• 2:34
  willing to give up what they got for anybody on Table 2.
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  Exactly. They wouldn't have to give it up
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  if we all just got moved up to table one.
• 2:45
  Yeah, yeah, that's, you know, wishful thinking there.
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  Of course, we'll have to see what contract negotiations do.
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  And to answer the previous question that somebody asked of
• 2:57
  did we think we'd be here at this point as the optimist in
• 3:01
  the group? Yes, I believe we would have.
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  I believe because of the message that we are sending and how we
• 3:08
  send that message to get everybody involved and get
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  people educated in the craft, we have a purpose here doing this
• 3:18
  podcast. I wouldn't have joined this
• 3:22
  podcast if it didn't have the positive message to the craft to
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  get the craft up and get the craft moving and getting the
• 3:30
  Craft involved. The message that everybody here
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  shares together is that no matter what, at the end of the
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  day we are the world craft. We're all in this together.
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  Absolutely, absolutely. So we'll start off with just a
• 3:49
  quick recap of our banter and then a few of us have a few
• 3:54
  things to say tonight. So Josh, how was your week?
• 4:00
  Fairly well found out that while I was off last weekend my arrow
• 4:05
  key got broke, so I'm without an arrow key and have to wait on
• 4:09
  one or meet up with someone in the middle of the route.
• 4:14
  So tomorrow I think I'm just. If they don't have one for me,
• 4:19
  I'll take my curbside delivery and all the parcels and deliver
• 4:23
  the parcels and they can figure it out on their own.
• 4:27
  I see that now, but I'll probably end up having to wait
• 4:30
  anyway. Done something to my back in the
• 4:33
  last week and 1/2. So I've been getting I got
• 4:37
  myself a back brace and been living off of Motrin and muscle
• 4:42
  relaxers the last two weeks. Oh.
• 4:44
  That's not fun. Oh no it's not.
• 4:48
  Dad, do you go to the liquor store to get your muscle
• 4:50
  relaxer? I do have some of that kind,
• 4:58
  however I do. I have stripped for one.
• 5:03
  I do. I'm supposed to take it every
• 5:05
  day to help keep my shoulders and neck some sensing up to
• 5:10
  prevent migraines from triggering.
• 5:13
  I just have been keep forgetting to take it.
• 5:16
  So I have some extras until my refill, Until I'm ready for a
• 5:22
  refill, so I've been able to double up.
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  James, how was your week? We can tell it's coming up on
• 5:28
  the most important shopping season of the year.
• 5:32
  Volumes are up, packages are up. I don't think I ever saw the
• 5:38
  average that my 4241 A told me. I get in parcels this week, had
• 5:45
  several rounds of box holders and directs and had this really
• 5:50
  really crappy piece of junk weed Mailer that came in.
• 5:57
  The same way you know that it's illegal.
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  No, it was an advertisement and every door direct mail.
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  But this thing was larger than a flat when you had it.
• 6:09
  Standard the flat sheet of paper that it was and when you folded
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  it, it was shorter than a letter.
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  So it was a pain in the backside because you had to fold it into
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  quarters to hold everything together and throw it in the
• 6:20
  box. But it was just don't these
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  people think when they make these mailers of how to make it
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  easier for us to deliver them? No, they're oversized.
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  They're oversized in the trays. They're oversized flats.
• 6:36
  And don't get me started on some of those magazines that people
• 6:39
  send out, like Cranes Detroit and what's the other one hour
• 6:44
  HOUR? That magazine, That one always
• 6:48
  sticks out of my case and I then I can't see the address
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  underneath it, Don't need to remember the address now I know
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  exactly where it goes. But so other than that, it was a
• 6:58
  pretty good week, Nothing too major going on.
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  But I heard that there was a scanner update that people
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  actually really like. So I think we'll be talking
• 7:09
  about that first when we get to the actual conversation.
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  Yes, we will be. I did notice the update
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  yesterday. Bill, how was your week?
• 7:21
  Oh God, I I love going there. They pay me to be there.
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  They entertain me. They're stimulating
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  conversation. There is intellectual
• 7:32
  discussions, there's respect and.
• 7:35
  I think you got into my narcotics.
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  And then the alarm goes off and I wake up.
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  Not typical week, but you know, my office was one of the
• 7:49
  original Target offices because of the fact that we are a Target
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  marketing area. So the volume of catalogs this
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  week jumped exponentially in regards to the season.
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  And and people may be thinking, Oh yeah, we're not getting as
• 8:06
  much, you know, during the year because you know.
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  Everybody does everything online.
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  Let me tell you, I have at least 35 addresses that get 2 inches
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  of catalogs every damn day and then on on top of that our DPSI
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  might I might get 3% first class and the rest is all all
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  advertised material. This this week I averaged 7
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  trays of DPS every day. On Monday I had 12 and it was
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  just like. All advertisements, you know,
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  the gutter services, large lawn services, the minute maids and
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  all that. I was like please let me see
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  something that says first class on it please.
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  But parcels have also picked up. I'm I'm taking you know anywhere
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  from 7 to 10 trays of mail out and then the you know 14 to 15
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  trays. At first I did did get my.
• 9:06
  Sub trainee out with me on Friday.
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  Oh that was so glorious. My my ears were bleeding by the
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  end of the route. You know, not because he was
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  asking questions because he's been in our office for about 5
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  months training on other routes and and seeing different
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  techniques. But boy, you wouldn't know
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  anything about this guy. And at the end you could write
• 9:28
  his obituary because he told me his life story.
• 9:34
  But you know, hey. Yeah this this year's going to
• 9:36
  be challenging. We're losing one of our good,
• 9:38
  well, we already lost one good sub to be a regular and we had
• 9:41
  another sub convert to regular. He was, he's OK, but now he's on
• 9:45
  his own. We have a great sub who is will
• 9:48
  be quitting. Saturday's going to be his last
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  day and we have two competent Subs left and four cherries who
• 9:56
  are going to die when they see Christmas in Westchester and oh
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  oh by the way, our area, Delaware, PA 2.
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  Is not allowed to get rental van because of last year.
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  They didn't report the mileage so the rental companies are
• 10:12
  denying them vehicles. So where are all these parcels
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  and how or are these parcels going to be delivered without
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  extra vehicles? Because we're short already on a
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  day-to-day, daily basis. The last CRCA to you is their
• 10:25
  vehicles. Yeah, you know what I'll tell
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  them to do then. Bite me dough boy.
• 10:33
  Well, as you all know, I was sick last week.
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  I called in on Monday. Yeah, the day after holiday.
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  I called in again on Tuesday. I did go back Wednesday, served
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  out my last three days as an RCA.
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  Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I went down to Flint to the
• 10:49
  machine shop to go watch Pop Evil on Friday night and
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  reported back to work yesterday. First day as a regular and it
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  was a shit day, plain and simple.
• 10:59
  Advos came in. Flats were super heavy, and who
• 11:03
  the hell needs two different Uline catalogs?
• 11:06
  I had two tubs of just ulines, and yeah, it was.
• 11:11
  I got two bundles of Advos delivered.
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  Stop delivering those so I could be back by 5:30.
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  I only had 163 parcels. Friday I had 178 and I was done
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  at 3:30, but I didn't have Advos and my mail was a heck of a lot
• 11:27
  lighter. That and I really wanted to get
• 11:28
  out of the office so I could drive down to the concert.
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  But yeah, so as of yesterday, I'm officially a designation 71,
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  and I worked my K day 'cause I don't have a sub.
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  Oh. Sorry, Congrats.
• 11:43
  Yeah, yeah, I'll. Be working?
• 11:45
  My, I'll be working my K Day for the foreseeable future.
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  Congratulations. You're already in 2080.
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  Trouble. Yeah.
• 11:53
  Right, right out of the gate. There we go.
• 11:57
  But I am feeling a lot better. I still have a little bit of a
• 12:00
  cough here and there, so I'm going to apologize ahead of time
• 12:03
  if I do end up coughing. I've got my bottle of water next
• 12:06
  to me. So we're good there, but I am
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  feeling quite a bit better than I was last week, that's that's
• 12:11
  for sure. Congratulations, you're losing
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  money. Yeah, I was already kind of
• 12:17
  going through. And doing the math with
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  deductions and I'm going, wow, yeah, that's that's gonna hurt.
• 12:26
  It gonna sting. It gonna sting.
• 12:28
  It really is. I logged into light blue today
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  just to see if I could put anything in and I can't.
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  Yeah, it still tells me I'm not eligible for the benefits.
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  So I have a little bit of time. I'll kind of make up for it and
• 12:42
  I got 60 days so probably wait till the 1st of the year get
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  through Christmas. That's that one.
• 12:52
  Mom, can I borrow some money? I have nothing.
• 12:54
  Go away. I get that all the time.
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  Anyways, it's don't get me don't get me started.
• 13:01
  Mama Bear has been poked. I'm.
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  Going to say, did we? Before we get into anything,
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  this is our anniversary. Did we want to reminisce?
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  Talk about where we came from? You know why we're here?
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  I think we saved that to the end.
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  Yeah, let let's let let's. We're going to put that at the
• 13:19
  end to make people wait. I'm not going to start off the
• 13:22
  episode like that. I will.
• 13:26
  OK, just. Yeah, yeah.
• 13:27
  No, I think first and foremost, right now the biggest thing out
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  there we have going on is the rural activity scan update on
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  the scanners. From the sounds of it, not every
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  single scanner had it active as of yesterday from what I have
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  been reading on the social webs. It wasn't my office.
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  We did have advos. They came address so they had to
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  go under the flats walking sequence.
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  And I guess you find out in your office who doesn't put them in
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  first thing in the morning because after you hit depart to
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  route you after you clock in that's the only option you have.
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  You clock in and then you have your start your.
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  That's where your box holders and your flat walking sequence
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  is. And then your start load, end
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  load and there isn't in and out to lunch available in depart to
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  route after you hit depart to route your box holders and.
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  Park The route doesn't show up until you've done.
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  Your start. Load one.
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  Yes, the first start and end load.
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  Excuse me? Yeah, I wasn't I It was a bad
• 14:31
  day yesterday so I didn't closely pay attention to it.
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  However, once you hit your start load.
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  When you come back in, the only thing that pops up is enload, so
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  it won't let you do anything else until after you hit enload.
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  For those of you that had box holders and every door directs
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  and flats walking sequences and you didn't notice it before you
• 14:53
  hit, before you did, your did you park to route and you wanted
• 14:57
  to do it when you get in the truck?
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  You know when you're half remember halfway through the
• 15:00
  route or when you got back to the office?
• 15:03
  It's not there. It is part of the office duties
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  now. So those of you that were unable
• 15:09
  to put them in, make sure you remember to do that.
• 15:11
  Monday. We had a couple of them in our
• 15:13
  office. I had a note on my clipboard
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  when I got back, they said how did you put in your walking
• 15:18
  sequence your, your, your Edvos? And I'm like, why?
• 15:21
  Why is this a question? You ever wanted to put them in
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  the scanner and Oh well, she said she couldn't find it on
• 15:27
  there. And one of the other carriers
• 15:28
  that was in the office said, yeah, mine wasn't on there.
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  I'm like. It's under the office studies.
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  You had to put them in before you hit depart to route.
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  So you better start paying attention, folks.
• 15:38
  Yep, and. The other going to say that if
• 15:42
  you hit the three lines or dots in the top right corner it
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  should bring all the function. You know everything up.
• 15:50
  I didn't. Check.
• 15:52
  It so I can't speak for that. I didn't see it until after I
• 15:56
  got home last night, so obviously I didn't have my
• 15:58
  scanner to look. I did not until I was a back to
• 16:03
  the office and if once you hit return to DU and you hit those 3
• 16:06
  little bars, it does not bring up the full menu.
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  It takes you back to the menu where I ask you what the updates
• 16:14
  are and all that other stuff. It does not once you hit return
• 16:18
  to unit. That I do know for sure, because
• 16:20
  I tried to hit it to see, to bring it up, because I was like,
• 16:23
  oh wait, let's try this, but it won't do it.
• 16:26
  So it's not showing. You your your activity scans for
• 16:29
  the day after you hit the return to DU.
• 16:32
  It does, but it's just a summary.
• 16:36
  When you go into the summary after, you just can't get back
• 16:40
  to the main out the whole main Rex menu once you hit return to
• 16:46
  unit. OK, now under your summary, and
• 16:50
  I've seen a lot of people talking about this.
• 16:53
  Because, well, I had six trips to the door, but it's only
• 16:56
  telling showing me that I had two.
• 16:58
  No, you only went in and at two different times went in.
• 17:04
  It's given you the summary of that activity, not the number of
• 17:09
  activities. Yeah, exactly.
• 17:12
  So if you had, so if you went to the door at three different
• 17:16
  locations and you had two trips to the door each time for an
• 17:20
  equal of 6. And you go under your summary,
• 17:23
  it's only going to show 3 because that's how many times
• 17:26
  that you went to that specific function.
• 17:29
  Right. Yeah, under that function,
• 17:31
  right? Yes, like mine showed, I had
• 17:33
  three start loads, three and loads.
• 17:36
  And I was thinking, man, that's all I did.
• 17:38
  But then I remembered I had two hampers ready to go.
• 17:41
  I wheeled the one out, went and loaded, came back in and grabbed
• 17:45
  the second one came. Loaded that by the time I came
• 17:48
  back in I had a third hamper full.
• 17:50
  So I just grabbed that and went out and loaded because I'm not
• 17:52
  marking packages anymore. So I just grabbed that third
• 17:55
  hamper, put the empty one in the spice and went out and loaded
• 17:58
  the third one. So yeah, I only actually had
• 18:01
  three start, load, end loads so it seemed like more, but that's
• 18:05
  what it told me I did so. And it's in the same way with
• 18:09
  your dismounts too. Yes.
• 18:12
  Right. Yep.
• 18:13
  Like for example, since I don't have my truck because it's still
• 18:16
  in another office which has my hand truck in the back of it, it
• 18:21
  takes me 3 * 3 trips from the truck at my apartments to get
• 18:26
  all the mail and everything and parcels and everything over
• 18:28
  there and that's whip tubbing everything out.
• 18:32
  So I went in there and did authorize this from three trips.
• 18:35
  And when I went and looked at the summary, it only shows the
• 18:38
  one in there, not the free total trips.
• 18:41
  So it's per occurrence, not total times.
• 18:45
  Exactly. It's per occurrence for each
• 18:47
  individual and. He brings up an important point
• 18:52
  in regards to having a little hand truck.
• 18:55
  For those people who've never used a hand truck, management's
• 18:59
  not capable of supplying you a hand truck and demanding that
• 19:03
  you use it. Nor are they required to give
• 19:06
  you a satchel and expect you to use it to minimize your trips to
• 19:10
  your CB US. So if anybody gets pressured
• 19:13
  into that, call your local union representative, ADR or Dr. and
• 19:19
  file a grievance on that. That was not part of your
• 19:22
  function for the last 25 years, five years, one year, two years,
• 19:27
  whatever. Now they're trying to
• 19:29
  micromanage us to the point where you know, oh you can, you
• 19:32
  can carry more in a load. No, the way you've done it under
• 19:37
  the mini mail survey program, just like if you did it under a
• 19:40
  mail count, if that's the procedure that you have applying
• 19:44
  to your practice every day, then you doing it.
• 19:47
  Exactly. And fight it you.
• 19:49
  See, like I've since I got this route, I got my, you know, got a
• 19:54
  hand truck for myself, a collapsible one, and I use it
• 19:58
  because it's a pain in the ass. And the back walking, you know,
• 20:02
  doing the multiple trips back and forth to the CB, you know,
• 20:05
  to the one location from where I have to park until I get my
• 20:09
  vehicle. With that in, I'm going to have
• 20:11
  multiple trips every day. And if they start saying
• 20:13
  something to me, I'm like, well, if you got my got me my
• 20:16
  equipment back, I wouldn't have an issue anymore.
• 20:19
  But until then I'm going to have multiple trips.
• 20:21
  Yeah, I have my own personal hand truck that I keep in in my
• 20:24
  truck with me, but. I don't necessarily use it for
• 20:27
  my discounts because honestly my two CBU discounts, I everything
• 20:32
  can fit in the crook of my arm because it's not a lot.
• 20:36
  I primarily keep it because I've got those that order the big,
• 20:41
  big heavy stuff and sometimes it's a hike from my park point
• 20:44
  to the delivery point and I am not going to hurt myself trying
• 20:49
  to carry it, you know? So that's the only reason why I
• 20:51
  keep my hand card is for the big heavy parcels more or less.
• 20:56
  Use it all that much, but yeah. That's a personal decision too.
• 21:00
  Oh, absolutely. You know that that for me is,
• 21:02
  you know, a safety thing for me especially like I said, when my
• 21:04
  park point is quite a can be a hike and I'm got that 50 LB.
• 21:08
  Box of dog food or I've got somebody's brand new kitchen
• 21:12
  sink that's absurdly large and heavy.
• 21:16
  Yeah, I, you know, I want a little bit of.
• 21:18
  Safety or the bed frame that has to go around to the front of the
• 21:22
  condo buildings because there's no doors on the back, You know,
• 21:25
  stuff like that. Yeah.
• 21:27
  Well, you know, for heavy, big things like that, yeah, I would
• 21:29
  use it. Also, you know, my apartment is
• 21:32
  320 some units and my park point to the closest set of doors is
• 21:39
  30 point or 30 feet. So that's you know, decent
• 21:46
  distance to have to walk the tub with the mail, the tub with the,
• 21:50
  you know parcels and then any larger parcels that may not fit
• 21:54
  in the tub where I can get it with one trip most days with the
• 22:00
  the cart and on marriage mail day that's an extra 3 tubs.
• 22:03
  So yeah, no, I definitely see the plus in the new scanner
• 22:08
  menus and especially with the clock insurance, the clock outs,
• 22:11
  the start, load, end loads. I I, you know, definitely an
• 22:16
  upgrade. Could it be tweaked a little
• 22:18
  bit? Yes.
• 22:20
  I mean, it's not going to be 100% perfect, but it definitely
• 22:25
  is the step in the right direction for sure in my
• 22:28
  personal opinion. Well, according to management,
• 22:30
  it's close enough for government work.
• 22:32
  Yeah, exactly, they said. A step in the right direction.
• 22:36
  So there was there was another topic that we wanted to bring up
• 22:40
  that somebody brought up over our.
• 22:42
  Conversation on last week's episode and as you know we like
• 22:45
  to update if we get new information and one of the
• 22:50
  things that they that we missed was the HSA Health safe savings
• 22:54
  accounts that you can actually get into as well.
• 22:58
  So it's another. No, I brought up in regards to,
• 23:04
  you know, how much money you know you can save.
• 23:07
  What was what was the thing that they brought up, Kristen?
• 23:10
  It was the FSA. It was the flexible spending
• 23:12
  accounts. Flexible spending accounts,
• 23:14
  yeah. Flexible Spending account.
• 23:15
  My bad. Dealing with HS as today, so I'm
• 23:19
  sorry about that. And they're and they're similar
• 23:21
  to, but you know there there are minor differences in them and
• 23:26
  you know you have to research them in regards to how they
• 23:30
  apply to your personal individual situation too.
• 23:35
  Yes. A lot of these things nowadays.
• 23:38
  Allow for, you know, the writing off the cost of care dependent
• 23:42
  care, which previously they didn't and and there's a lot of
• 23:47
  over the counter medications that you can also use on your
• 23:51
  flexible spending accounts or your HSA.
• 23:55
  So you know, read in detail what those programs allow you to
• 23:59
  deduct from your your costs. OK, at your money.
• 24:04
  Yeah, definitely. I was looking into him too,
• 24:06
  because I I had mentioned something to the other half
• 24:09
  about doing it. And he's like, well, the way you
• 24:12
  spend money, he goes, I highly suggest you do that.
• 24:17
  That way you have it. When you need to go get a new
• 24:19
  pair of glasses or, you know, dental appointments, something
• 24:23
  happens or you got a copay that you got to pay and you just
• 24:26
  don't have the cash for it. He goes, yeah, I suggest you do
• 24:29
  that. I said OK.
• 24:31
  OK. And then the thing about it is
• 24:33
  that you can spend the money before you've actually paid it
• 24:35
  out of your payroll. So you know, once, once you get
• 24:38
  on the program and your kidneys braces and you got to put out
• 24:43
  $3500 for it, they'll take it out in January and then you pay
• 24:48
  it through the year and you never miss it because it comes
• 24:50
  out of your paycheck before you see it.
• 24:52
  Yep. And the one nice thing with our
• 24:54
  Plex spending is they have both the flex spending for healthcare
• 24:59
  and for dependent care. So you could set it up if you
• 25:03
  have young children in daycare or like your parents and adult
• 25:10
  daycare. I believe you can use it for
• 25:12
  that also. As long as they are listed as a
• 25:15
  legal dependent, yeah, yes. And you, you won't laugh about
• 25:19
  it because daycare is expensive. My, my, my sons.
• 25:25
  My son's spending $400.00 a week for daycare.
• 25:30
  Now you're you're taking that out that that's 20,000 a year.
• 25:34
  So if he turns around and gets that deducted out of his
• 25:37
  payroll, that's $20,000 pre tax that you're getting taken out
• 25:44
  and then you're getting the whole money given to you
• 25:48
  untaxed. Yep.
• 25:50
  That's a nice way to get it. I completely agree.
• 25:54
  As somebody who wears eyeglasses and has a teenager who has been
• 26:01
  referred for braces and most recently wisdom teeth removal.
• 26:06
  And then with the another new teenager who yeah, I don't know
• 26:11
  she's covered under her dad's insurance.
• 26:13
  So I'm still, I know when I get my health health insurance under
• 26:17
  the self plus family I'm probably just going to go ahead
• 26:19
  and put her under there. So she's duly insured on the
• 26:22
  health wise. But and but what Kristen, the
• 26:25
  one nice thing about with our flex spending, when you set it
• 26:29
  up, you can set it up to automatically reimburse you.
• 26:34
  So for any, you know just your vision and dental or just your
• 26:40
  medical or any or everything that falls under.
• 26:44
  And whenever something's processed through the the
• 26:47
  insurance, whatever they consider your copay, they
• 26:50
  automatically reimburse you to whatever account you have a set
• 26:55
  up to go to. Yeah.
• 26:57
  Yeah. So there is some good
• 26:59
  information there on the FSA that, like I said, I didn't go
• 27:03
  back and listen to last week's episode.
• 27:05
  So you know, we've touched on that a little bit more for you
• 27:08
  this week. All right.
• 27:10
  The one other option you have with the Flex spending depending
• 27:15
  on who your provider is if they're willing to work with you
• 27:19
  that way, you can submit a claim to have the provider paid
• 27:24
  directly. So if your provider will allow
• 27:29
  that to wait instead of having to pay the copay right then and
• 27:33
  there. If they'll allow you to wait and
• 27:36
  submit it that way, then Flex you know Flex spending will send
• 27:41
  them the the check directly. That is good to know.
• 27:46
  All right guys, what other fun things do we have?
• 27:49
  Is this is our one year anniversary.
• 27:53
  One year we've made it. No, it's not episode 52 because
• 27:59
  we did take a couple weekends off with stuff going on.
• 28:02
  It is episode 49. Yeah, we had some conventions
• 28:06
  going on where we didn't have. The updates for that, we had
• 28:11
  some other stuff, other issues going on with people that came
• 28:15
  up that we couldn't do actual broadcast, but overall, 49
• 28:19
  episodes in one year, getting a ton of people listening to the
• 28:23
  podcast and getting the information out there.
• 28:26
  It has been an amazing journey for all of us and it's all
• 28:30
  thanks to you listeners, you guys listening to us commenting
• 28:35
  on our Facebook groups, on our posts on our page.
• 28:38
  And things like that. Getting involved.
• 28:41
  The biggest thing about This Is Us getting you guys involved in
• 28:45
  the union, getting you involved in the craft, helping to fix the
• 28:50
  issues in the craft, letting you know that there's other people
• 28:54
  dealing with the same stuff you are and you're not alone.
• 28:57
  You're never alone, not as long as we're here.
• 29:00
  Absolutely. You know, we don't have, we
• 29:04
  don't have the pomp and circumstance of being.
• 29:09
  Amazing leaders of a union, but we're leading you guys in this
• 29:18
  podcast. Hey, we're human.
• 29:21
  That's all we can do. We make mistakes.
• 29:24
  We try to correct them as we make them, and it gets called
• 29:27
  out to us. We have no problem saying I am
• 29:29
  sorry. I misspoke.
• 29:31
  I misinterpreted whatever it needs be.
• 29:34
  You know, we're human. We all make mistakes.
• 29:37
  We own up to them. And the nice thing is that, you
• 29:40
  know, we, we are judged by our peers.
• 29:42
  We, we are on equal footing as everybody listening now or, you
• 29:47
  know, during the week. And you know that we're aware of
• 29:51
  your, your trials and tribulations, 'cause we're going
• 29:54
  through them on a daily basis with you.
• 29:56
  So it's not like having somebody sitting at a desk saying, oh,
• 29:59
  it's not that bad, Well, you know, we're in the same damn
• 30:03
  seat you are. We're we're never going to sit
• 30:07
  here and say some. We're never going to sit here
• 30:10
  and say something is a carrier's fault.
• 30:12
  We're never going. To I might, I might.
• 30:15
  Well, you can say it's my fault, Bill.
• 30:17
  That's OK. I'm all right with that.
• 30:18
  But I'm not going to say that you don't have the volume.
• 30:22
  You actually do. I'm going to say, OK, what can
• 30:26
  we do to fix your situation? What, what can we look at?
• 30:30
  What can we figure out to make this better instead of?
• 30:34
  Turning around and saying, oh, it's not that big of a deal, it
• 30:37
  is a big deal, it's a big deal to you and if it's a big deal to
• 30:41
  you, it's a big deal to us. Yeah, because we care.
• 30:45
  We really do. I mean, people reach out to us
• 30:47
  individually all the time. I mean, I know my notifications
• 30:51
  go off constantly. I try to get back to everybody
• 30:54
  as I as I can. I try and a lot of the stuff I
• 30:57
  bring up to the guys saying hey you know here I want some
• 31:00
  additional input before I get back to them or.
• 31:03
  You know, I know they listen. So let's cover this and answer
• 31:06
  them on the air. You know, we do that a lot.
• 31:09
  I just had three in the last hour.
• 31:13
  I've had one today. I had a few yesterday.
• 31:17
  Yeah, we're always open 24/7. We may be asleep, but we'll get
• 31:22
  back to you when we wake up. Yeah, and I never answer them
• 31:25
  when I'm driving, so. Yeah, I would say a lot.
• 31:28
  We're out on the route and you know we get back to you when we
• 31:31
  can. My my, my my Bluetooth just sits
• 31:35
  there and goes ping ping. Ping is like my my Bluetooth, my
• 31:41
  watch. You know, if it's something
• 31:42
  important, I'll glance at the watch and be like, oh, I better
• 31:45
  get back to this person the next time I'm pulled over at a
• 31:49
  dismount or something, you know? But if and when I ever find my
• 31:53
  Bluetooth again, it's like I'll be listening to something and
• 31:58
  it'll be like Discord. Discord, Discord, Discord.
• 32:05
  I have I literally and I'm going to say this now is for the
• 32:10
  majority all my notifications, just about all my notifications
• 32:15
  are muted on my phone because I just get so many.
• 32:19
  Anyways, well, I think our server is the only one that's
• 32:23
  not muted for me. Mine is muted, I will admit it.
• 32:28
  My discord is muted. But you know, I do check it
• 32:31
  often enough to to know, you know, if when I'm on the route,
• 32:35
  I hardly check it. You guys know that.
• 32:37
  I mean, I'll go, I'll get home or, you know, I'll get back to
• 32:40
  the office and go use the restroom.
• 32:42
  And I check it and I'm like, wow, I missed 30 posts.
• 32:46
  OK when we catch up here. And I told you guys, if you want
• 32:50
  me, you better call me because I'm not going to respond to, you
• 32:53
  know, every little ping and Ding I get in my ear for a text or an
• 32:56
  alert and you know. Exactly.
• 33:01
  You all have your special ringtone in my on my phone, so
• 33:05
  oh boy, Unless, unless it's the Imperial Death March from Star
• 33:09
  Wars, You know, I'll pick it up. That would be your wife.
• 33:13
  No, that's management. That's management.
• 33:16
  OK? That would be the office.
• 33:17
  I used to have that also on like 3-4 phones ago.
• 33:22
  And now you don't. I just never reset it.
• 33:26
  Now my my wife's ringtone is the.
• 33:28
  Girls like boys like me, you know?
• 33:34
  I don't have any special ringtones set up.
• 33:36
  I used to do that and I had, you know, everybody had their own
• 33:42
  and I just haven't even done that anymore.
• 33:44
  It's just one ringtone I look and see.
• 33:46
  Nope. Don't want to talk to you and.
• 33:48
  My, all my boys, they're they're a sweet child of mine.
• 33:52
  And then the rest of the family is we are family.
• 33:56
  And anybody work related and Dolly Parton's 9:00 to 5:00.
• 33:58
  Nice. The only ones I have were like I
• 34:05
  said management in the office was the Imperial March and then
• 34:09
  I had one for my wife. It was it's from the from Doctor
• 34:15
  Who. The one character would be like
• 34:16
  hello sweetie. And I had that as a ringtone for
• 34:21
  my wife. And other than that, that was
• 34:23
  all I really had set up. Oh oh, cute story time.
• 34:27
  Cute story time. This is a red flag.
• 34:29
  Cute story time. My wife let my son play with her
• 34:35
  cell phone one day and he got this ringtone that came up says
• 34:38
  there's an asshole calling asshole on the phone.
• 34:41
  There's an asshole calling one Sunday.
• 34:46
  Hit her at church. She didn't turn the phone off
• 34:49
  and I called her. Boy, did that church get quiet.
• 34:59
  That's that's almost as bad as ripping a fart in church.
• 35:03
  I used to have that ringtone, yeah.
• 35:06
  Especially on the wood wooden seats, you know?
• 35:08
  Uh huh. Those ones that really reverb
• 35:13
  and the people at the end of the pier feel it, yeah, yeah.
• 35:16
  And then your mother turns around and smacks you for doing
• 35:19
  it when she did it. I'm sure your wife let you know
• 35:25
  all about it when she got home. No, she let her son know all
• 35:30
  about it when she got home. I I only did one ringtone change
• 35:35
  on mine and that was for notifications.
• 35:37
  And that was when I was a firefighter EMT and a paid on
• 35:40
  call and we had an app that would actually populate our
• 35:43
  calls on our phones. And so I turned around and I
• 35:46
  found the loudest. Most ear wrenching sound I could
• 35:50
  find, which was a Star Trek red alert that would wake me up from
• 35:57
  a dead sleep. That's the only sound that would
• 36:00
  wake me up from a dead sleep. But it was also exciting
• 36:02
  because, hey, it's a fire call. I'm going to get paid.
• 36:06
  Well, that too. But it was more about having fun
• 36:09
  with having fun with big fire engines and big hoses with
• 36:12
  water. It's like what I was in the
• 36:16
  Navy, I was on the crash and salvage when we went to when we
• 36:21
  went to general quarters. Oh, OK.
• 36:24
  Yeah. When we, when the ship would go
• 36:26
  to general quarters, I was on the crash and salvage team.
• 36:30
  It was a, you know, a guided cruiser.
• 36:33
  So we only had one helicopter pad on, you know, on the back of
• 36:38
  the ship. So we used to say we only come
• 36:40
  out, we only go to the flight deck for barbecues one way or
• 36:44
  another. So being that it's our one year
• 36:49
  anniversary, you you guys were in this before I even joined in
• 36:54
  on this, you guys were involved in this.
• 36:56
  So do you guys want to talk about why we got through into
• 37:00
  here and where where we came from on this podcast I Know
• 37:06
  Loaded Question. Kristen, you want to go first?
• 37:10
  Yeah, I would think. All right.
• 37:13
  I I'm going to put this out there and I am, yeah, I need to
• 37:20
  say this and I think a lot of us, it needs to be said now
• 37:25
  before things go any further than where they have and they've
• 37:29
  got and we've ignored it, a lot of it.
• 37:31
  All of us have Josh, Bill and myself, as well as a few others.
• 37:40
  A few others, one of our Farmer Co hosts as well at the time.
• 37:44
  We started on the World Deviation podcast with the World
• 37:50
  Deviant and you know, Bill was on there before I was.
• 37:55
  I had been part of the Misfits Facebook group at the time and
• 38:01
  did a couple of the Punta Cana trips, the last one that I went
• 38:06
  to. Rural Deviant was present for
• 38:09
  that one. So I got to spend the week in
• 38:11
  person with him and shortly after that I decided to hop on
• 38:16
  and and became one of the additional Co host as well.
• 38:19
  Josh was on there as well as two and you know so that kind of was
• 38:25
  a little bit familiar with everybody if you know those that
• 38:28
  had listened in the past knew who we were and where we had
• 38:31
  come from and then after National Convention of 2022 when
• 38:37
  we did our. In Orlando, FL.
• 38:40
  Yes Josh, when we did our post convention podcast we we kept it
• 38:48
  further low key for us for that podcast.
• 38:51
  We had our reasonings, there was information put out from
• 38:56
  National Convention that the well, the current three of us,
• 39:01
  four of us at the time, had nothing to do with these
• 39:04
  information being posted. On Facebook of proceedings of
• 39:08
  National Convention. We had nothing to do with that
• 39:11
  whatsoever and we kept the post convention episode down to our
• 39:18
  experiences. It was Joshua's the 1st timer.
• 39:21
  Bill ran for office. I ran for for national office as
• 39:25
  well alongside Bill. So we kept it really as to what
• 39:31
  our experiences were. During the course of National
• 39:35
  Convention caucus in general, I know Bill and I both got slammed
• 39:41
  with questions pertaining to the World Deviation podcasts.
• 39:46
  And you know that it is what it is.
• 39:49
  They have every right to ask us whatever questions they want,
• 39:52
  and I know I had a member of my state come to me when something,
• 40:00
  some papers came out. To be shared.
• 40:04
  I do believe it may have been under the appeals and I, I, I I
• 40:11
  got that mom finger in my face saying these better not get out
• 40:14
  on that podcast of yours. Well the four of us that were
• 40:18
  there had already once we got the appeals we had already been
• 40:21
  outside on a smoke break. We both agreed, now we're we're
• 40:24
  not going to discuss this. This isn't stuff to put out on
• 40:26
  the air. So we had already made-up our
• 40:29
  minds at that time that we weren't going to talk about that
• 40:32
  because it wasn't something that we personally were comfortable
• 40:36
  with putting out there. And so we didn't talk about it.
• 40:39
  And I know a few of the others had been approached by people
• 40:43
  from their state about the podcast as well at National
• 40:46
  Convention. So that's why we kept it kind of
• 40:49
  low key and we just talked about our experiences coming from
• 40:52
  running for national office. It was not Bill's first time
• 40:56
  running. It was my first time running
• 40:58
  Josh as a first timer in general to National Convention world.
• 41:02
  Deviant was not happy with the fact that we did not put out The
• 41:06
  Dirty NIT and gritty and we weren't bashing this person and
• 41:09
  bashing that person and and all that type of stuff and decided
• 41:15
  that he was not going to talk to us anymore.
• 41:17
  It wasn't the fact that we turned from him at that time.
• 41:22
  He decided to put it on a pause because we were not speaking to
• 41:25
  his narrative. He has bashed us many times
• 41:28
  since then. It did take about 6 months for
• 41:31
  him to realize that we had a new podcast, but you know, we went
• 41:35
  after that National Convention in September.
• 41:39
  We kind of let it go and we all stayed quiet for a while.
• 41:42
  It probably been a good 6-8 weeks later I had said I had
• 41:46
  posted in the real deviation discord at the time.
• 41:50
  I said hey guys, I got an idea and crickets got nothing back at
• 41:54
  all. So I I got a hold of Josh and
• 41:59
  Bill and our Farmer Co hosts and I said, hey guys, I have this
• 42:04
  idea and they were all agree with it and it was more about
• 42:08
  educating the craft, educating the program, getting information
• 42:13
  out there, getting the people involved, the format that we're
• 42:16
  doing now. And they all agreed.
• 42:18
  And so it's like, all right, let's pick our brains and, you
• 42:22
  know, come up with a name and go from there, which we did.
• 42:26
  And so we were probably, we'd we'd been recording for about 6
• 42:29
  months before, well before it took off with the Aftermath
• 42:33
  episode that we had. After the first Rex evaluations,
• 42:36
  that's what really put us in the spotlight and put a target on
• 42:40
  our backs. We'll be honest about that.
• 42:43
  It was just before the Rex stuff came out.
• 42:47
  I had ran into James again. I had met him last year in
• 42:51
  Council Bluffs, IA at Mid States and you know I had talked about
• 42:57
  the World Deviation podcast to him then and you know he was
• 43:01
  familiar with it but not a not a fan really.
• 43:04
  And so when I saw him again this past year at Mid States or was
• 43:09
  it. No, it was a booster, wasn't it,
• 43:11
  James? It was a spring booster, the.
• 43:13
  Spring booster, yes. Yep, it was a spring booster.
• 43:16
  And I approached him and said, hey, this is what we're doing,
• 43:20
  you know, if you want to come on and let me know.
• 43:25
  And so we gave him a trial run and well, his trial expired and
• 43:30
  he's still here. We.
• 43:32
  Adopted him. We adopted him with open arms,
• 43:35
  let's put it that way. We all forgot to set up.
• 43:39
  Show him where the door was. I.
• 43:41
  Thought my file was still ongoing.
• 43:43
  I thought I hadn't put the 9090 working days yet.
• 43:48
  You're six months in. We're we're going to call it
• 43:50
  good. Dude, you.
• 43:51
  You've done a lot. Yeah.
• 43:52
  I'm going to tell you. And we are all appreciative of
• 43:55
  you. Yes.
• 43:58
  Now I just, I don't want to derail what your, you know, your
• 44:02
  current trajectory, but you you know, prior to us, you
• 44:08
  contacting all of us and we. Discussing and formatting and
• 44:14
  getting what this is today, what we have now.
• 44:19
  I know you, and I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, Bill at
• 44:23
  least once tried to reach out to deviant and got crickets not.
• 44:29
  He'd never replied. Responded Anything back to
• 44:32
  anybody? Yes, so Aftermath comes out,
• 44:36
  we're on the radar. We now have a target on our back
• 44:39
  and and then he all of a sudden finds out about us and and I'm
• 44:45
  going to put this out there. I'm going to be honest with you
• 44:47
  guys because I know there are several of you that you know are
• 44:49
  still following the Rd. Facebook page and the the forum
• 44:54
  on Royal Mail talk and he has continuously tried to slam US
• 44:59
  one way or another. He is not fond of James at all.
• 45:04
  What you know and we've ignored it.
• 45:07
  We we really have not fed into it at all.
• 45:12
  But you poke the Mama bear too much she's going to awake and
• 45:15
  Mama bear is awake. And I I'm tired of my name being
• 45:20
  thrown out there, even though you don't spell it correctly
• 45:22
  because I know you're going to listen.
• 45:24
  But this is a response that I posted today and I'm going to
• 45:28
  read this word for word and I want you all know it was me that
• 45:31
  posted this. And because he wants to blame us
• 45:36
  for the downfall of the Rural Deviation podcast number one, he
• 45:40
  is no longer a rural carrier. He has not been a rural carrier
• 45:44
  for, I want to say what close three years now.
• 45:48
  His animosity is towards a former national board member.
• 45:54
  I don't know the details. I wasn't involved in all that
• 45:57
  stuff. So I'm not going to say what it
• 45:59
  was. And that stuff that that's his
• 46:02
  story. That's not mine.
• 46:04
  My side of this is we tried to reach out.
• 46:09
  We tried to have that, tried to have a conversation.
• 46:12
  We tried to say, hey, you know, hey, I have an idea, Let's try
• 46:14
  and go this way. No response.
• 46:16
  We got crickets. And you still continue to try
• 46:20
  and slam us because we're not speaking your narrative.
• 46:24
  This is my response today. You can blame us all you want
• 46:29
  for you putting it on hold or whatever you want to call it.
• 46:33
  You failed to have the honest conversation with us.
• 46:37
  You didn't like what we talked about post 2022 convention and
• 46:42
  you ghosted. You were not there.
• 46:45
  You were not the one approached by officials in your respective
• 46:48
  states about the podcast and information being put out.
• 46:52
  I tried to reach out to you to get a conversation started and
• 46:56
  you failed to respond. So I took the conversation to
• 46:59
  the others and we started our own in a different direction
• 47:03
  than what you wanted to hear or do, and then blame us for not
• 47:07
  telling you and then attempt to slam us for anything that failed
• 47:13
  to meet your narrative. It's well past the time for you
• 47:17
  to move on. However, that apparently isn't
• 47:19
  possible. So when you actually want to
• 47:22
  open your mindset and want to have the so-called honest
• 47:25
  conversation, it will, it is too late.
• 47:29
  I we're there's no conversation to have any more.
• 47:31
  We're over a year past this now. Yes, you helped many and opened
• 47:36
  many eyes to things and he didn't.
• 47:38
  I we all honestly can't say. Yes, there was a lot of eyes
• 47:43
  opened, but now you're hurt because we have done it even
• 47:47
  more but in a different approach and it hasn't gone without
• 47:50
  repercussions. Yes, we have all suffered some
• 47:53
  repercussions doing this podcast, but it hasn't stopped
• 47:56
  us, nor we allow it to. That came from the heart.
• 47:59
  Because I am tired of being attacked.
• 48:02
  I am tired of my name pudding out there.
• 48:05
  You've done it time after time after time.
• 48:08
  You have threatened us in ways that we don't need to be
• 48:11
  threatened. You unfortunately, are no longer
• 48:15
  a rural carrier. You're no longer part of the
• 48:17
  craft. I understand the passion.
• 48:20
  We all have the passion here, but this is not a fight that
• 48:24
  anybody can fight from the outside.
• 48:28
  It's not the fight has to start from the inside and it has to be
• 48:33
  done in a way that we can get the people involved to try and
• 48:37
  go for the change that needs to be done to protect our craft for
• 48:40
  the future. And if you don't agree with the
• 48:44
  way that we're doing it, then move on.
• 48:48
  There is no reason to be slamming us because we don't
• 48:51
  meet your narrative. Yep.
• 48:54
  And like you said in that you know, we, I will give him the
• 48:58
  props he did start this. I don't want to say revolution,
• 49:03
  but there's this direction of getting rule carriers on the
• 49:09
  ground involved but in this format trying to, you know, but
• 49:14
  it's the direction he was taking was not the direction that we
• 49:18
  saw would end up with the best results.
• 49:22
  Not at all. You know, I respect every single
• 49:26
  national board position that is part of the national board.
• 49:31
  I respect the position. May I may I agree with
• 49:37
  everything they say and do or the particular person holding
• 49:40
  that position? No, not at all.
• 49:43
  You know, there's differences. There's going to be differences,
• 49:47
  and I may not agree with how they handle something or what
• 49:50
  they do, but I'm still going to respect that position.
• 49:54
  But I I I'm tired of being slandered and slammed because
• 49:59
  you can't get over yourself and your own shortcomings.
• 50:04
  I I, you know, I'm sorry, guys, I had to put it out there.
• 50:07
  You know, the Mama bear has been poked way many times, too many
• 50:09
  times to just ignore it anymore. And as you know, Bill calls me
• 50:14
  Mama Bear. You know, they all consider me
• 50:15
  the Mama Bear. I take care of everybody.
• 50:18
  I help Bill stand up straight when he's falling drunk in the
• 50:21
  bushes trying to take a pee. I am.
• 50:24
  I'm the one that takes care of everybody.
• 50:26
  I'm the one that you know, and I'm going to stand up for
• 50:29
  everybody as well as myself. And I'm going to stand up for
• 50:32
  every single one of my craft members.
• 50:35
  And I'm not going to let somebody that's no longer a
• 50:38
  craft member part of the craft and hasn't been for a few years
• 50:44
  to try and cut us down. Well, you know, there's also the
• 50:46
  legal aspect of libel if you publish it, and that includes
• 50:52
  publishing it on social media, on forum platforms, things like
• 50:59
  that. And then there's slander where
• 51:02
  you actually speak the words and slander the person to another
• 51:05
  individual. Libel can be used for people
• 51:11
  with. Facebook forums like Royal Mail
• 51:15
  Talk, Discord, Other social media apps like Twitter, TikTok.
• 51:22
  You can't sue the social media platform for it, but you can sue
• 51:26
  the creator of that platform and they risk actually losing it,
• 51:31
  especially if they do it multiple times.
• 51:34
  Yes. And I'm pretty sure he's well
• 51:37
  aware of it when they were live streaming ratification meetings
• 51:41
  last year. Yes.
• 51:42
  Do I agree that everybody should have access to that?
• 51:45
  I absolutely agree to it. I don't think anything should be
• 51:48
  hidden, you know, but at the same time, going about it in an
• 51:53
  illegal way. And those were removed, the
• 51:56
  legal department did have the unions, legal department did
• 51:59
  have them removed from the platforms themselves.
• 52:01
  So yeah, you know, it's. And I put it out there, they,
• 52:04
  you know, they were. I'm not going to, I'm not going
• 52:07
  to hide. I'm not hiding.
• 52:08
  You know, we chose to ignore the attacks because we weren't going
• 52:11
  to feed into the drama. I don't want the drama.
• 52:14
  I've got enough drama in my personal life with my teenage
• 52:16
  daughter. My turn.
• 52:18
  Yes. Go.
• 52:19
  Go for it, Bill. Your turn.
• 52:22
  There we go. I I I was enamored with the
• 52:29
  rural deviant at the beginning because of the fact that.
• 52:34
  You know, I would say for most points he was trying to convey
• 52:40
  the right message. It was the way the message was
• 52:43
  being delivered that was somewhat vulgar and offensive
• 52:50
  and not very attractive. Now, I had spent plenty of time
• 52:54
  pointing out the LM 2 reports where National Board members
• 52:58
  were getting, let's say. Quarter million.
• 53:02
  No expensive subsidies for their free living quarters and and and
• 53:11
  that riled me up that you know somebody would be getting a
• 53:14
  $6700 mattress it put into a a free housing unit.
• 53:20
  Our our national constitution says they are to be furnished
• 53:24
  housing. It doesn't say that we are to
• 53:27
  furnish that housing. So you know that that really got
• 53:30
  my interest because I'm in numbers.
• 53:32
  You know type of person. And you know as the Discord
• 53:36
  program went on, you could just follow the narrative in regards
• 53:41
  to the attacks and that's all they were.
• 53:44
  They were attacks. And sometimes I fell into that
• 53:47
  too. But the thing of it is that as
• 53:52
  we progressed and and we came to the 2022 convention, all of us
• 53:58
  had made a conscious decision that.
• 54:01
  We cannot fight this fight from outside of the union.
• 54:04
  To to change this union we have to be, we have to be members and
• 54:12
  we we. If we resend that membership
• 54:14
  through our actions or our words and deeds, then folks, we have
• 54:19
  no voice in this. So we made the conscious
• 54:23
  decision not to discuss all the appeals, especially the ones
• 54:28
  that were. For Dominic Crooks in regards to
• 54:31
  what was it, 85 of them. But there were individuals like
• 54:37
  myself that stood up when people in the audience wanted to charge
• 54:41
  him the $200,000 plus that the union said that they had expense
• 54:47
  fighting these appeals. That was the due process that's
• 54:51
  aborted us by the Constitution when we think that the the the
• 54:56
  Union National Board. Has done wrong by due process
• 55:02
  and the fact that we didn't err the knowledge or the proceeding
• 55:10
  from the 2022 National Convention, it really hurt them.
• 55:14
  Well, I'm sorry, you are no longer a carrier.
• 55:17
  You're a you're a FedEx driver and you don't know the
• 55:22
  situation, so you can sit there and spout all the vulgarities.
• 55:27
  And all the criticisms towards the national board and the Union
• 55:31
  and the post office, but we have to live there every day.
• 55:35
  So if we have to be guarded to a certain extent then we will be
• 55:40
  guarded to that extent just because of the fact you have to
• 55:44
  be able to fight from the inside, not from the outside,
• 55:48
  not as a non union member and not as a FedEx driver.
• 55:51
  I appreciate the fact that I did turn around and and gain
• 55:56
  experience and gain. Contacts from Deviant in regards
• 56:01
  to our current host and program, but other than that you know
• 56:05
  that that the slam me because I didn't like Tristan would say
• 56:10
  follow your narrative, no it's not my narrative and as James
• 56:17
  would point out we would rather be positive and reinforcing and
• 56:22
  educating our rule carrier craft.
• 56:25
  Dues and non dues paying members alike than to be sitting there
• 56:29
  just fountain vile and hate towards a board and A and a
• 56:35
  company. the United States Postal Service that you no
• 56:38
  longer a part of. I tried once to reach out, got
• 56:42
  crickets, got freeze dry dead cricket and guess what?
• 56:48
  That was your last and only chance.
• 56:50
  I won't respond. I won't name them by name.
• 56:52
  And I look forward to, you know, more years of being on this
• 56:57
  podcast and helping the people who are in the craft.
• 57:01
  That's my only concern. Thank you, Bill.
• 57:05
  You know, we could all agree with that.
• 57:07
  Josh, do you have anything to add?
• 57:09
  Well, I think I put my two cents in earlier.
• 57:11
  Being that I joined after all of this, I would.
• 57:16
  You were 15 episodes in when I finally joined, so I haven't
• 57:20
  been here as long as you guys have.
• 57:22
  But I did listen to rural deviation.
• 57:26
  I listened as much as I could, and the message there for me was
• 57:34
  not one that would change the craft as a whole.
• 57:39
  It resonated with some membership, but it wasn't going
• 57:44
  to resonate with enough to make a positive change in this union
• 57:50
  and a positive change for the rural carriers.
• 57:53
  Now, I'm not knocking. I'm not knocking anybody on
• 57:58
  World Deviation. In fact, I would be happy if
• 58:02
  World Deviation decided to start up his podcast again and work
• 58:07
  alongside or work against. It doesn't matter to me.
• 58:11
  It's a free country. He can present what he wants to
• 58:14
  present on his podcast. We're not saying he can't do it,
• 58:18
  we're just no longer involved with it, with the the people
• 58:21
  that were there before. But to go around and just dog
• 58:27
  everybody over doing something they felt was the right thing to
• 58:31
  do is improper and immoral. You're acting like management,
• 58:37
  doing that, putting people down just because you can.
• 58:42
  James. Go ahead, I'm.
• 58:45
  Going to say the the key point you had there is positive.
• 58:51
  Yes. It was, you know, it was not
• 58:54
  necessarily always a positive outlook with him.
• 58:58
  We're at least we're trying to give a positive outlook on
• 59:03
  things. You know, there are a lot of
• 59:04
  things that get us a little riled up sometimes, but we try
• 59:10
  and keep it a positive light to it.
• 59:14
  Because if we don't have a positive light somewhere to
• 59:18
  guide this craft, this craft is lost.
• 59:22
  You can talk about how management's screwing people
• 59:25
  over, how union members aren't responding to carrier problems,
• 59:32
  things like that. But you have to give the Craft
• 59:37
  members something that they can say, I can do this, I can be
• 59:43
  here, I can make it through this because these people are giving
• 59:48
  me a positive outlook that. Things will eventually change
• 59:54
  for the better. We want things to change for the
• 59:57
  better for the craft, because if not, then what the hell are we
• 1:00:01
  doing? And we know and we know that
• 1:00:05
  change is not necessarily going to happen overnight.
• 1:00:08
  You know it it it, it is a process.
• 1:00:10
  It's, you know it's, you know, it's not something that's going
• 1:00:14
  to happen overnight. It's not, and we all recognize
• 1:00:16
  that, but it's it. You know where we want to get
• 1:00:20
  everybody involved. Everybody needs to be educated.
• 1:00:23
  You know, management does a piss poor job of training.
• 1:00:27
  We all know that. If we can at least help guide
• 1:00:30
  you in the right direction to find the proper way of doing
• 1:00:34
  stuff, then that's what we're doing.
• 1:00:36
  We want to be able to help guide you in the right direction.
• 1:00:40
  Anything else, guys? The Eagles go Lions.
• 1:00:48
  No, I I I want, I just want to follow that up with the fact
• 1:00:51
  that the reason we do this not for ourselves.
• 1:00:56
  I I'm in, I'm in a a townhouse where I can't smoke, so I'm out
• 1:01:02
  in the back porch where it's 37°.
• 1:01:05
  So I can have a cigarette and do my podcast for, you know, two
• 1:01:08
  hours. But you know, I I think that
• 1:01:12
  it's worth it. That that we get this message
• 1:01:15
  out, that we help people, that we educate people, we inform
• 1:01:19
  them and and possibly put point them in the right direction.
• 1:01:23
  If if not their local union representative, then you know
• 1:01:26
  where do you, where they can find the information.
• 1:01:29
  Since we've all been decertified, we can tell you
• 1:01:31
  where to go and look for look for the information.
• 1:01:34
  Now we don't have any handcuffs on this anymore.
• 1:01:37
  We're doing this for others, not for ourselves.
• 1:01:42
  Because if you do it for yourself, guess what?
• 1:01:45
  The gain is minimal and means nothing when you help others.
• 1:01:50
  That's true value of being a good person.
• 1:01:55
  And I would like to think that all of us here are good people.
• 1:01:58
  That's right. I know what this last National
• 1:02:01
  Convention, I had a lot of people ask me if I was running.
• 1:02:04
  I initially thought I was going, you know, I probably would.
• 1:02:07
  But then I come thinking, you know what?
• 1:02:08
  I got to get my daughter through her senior year of high school.
• 1:02:11
  I'm not going to run this year and everybody respected that.
• 1:02:14
  You know, my family is important and family is should be your
• 1:02:18
  number one thing. And I, but I did have a lot of
• 1:02:23
  people from all different states asked me are you going to come
• 1:02:26
  back next year? Will you be back next year?
• 1:02:29
  You know, to me that was very I didn't know how to take it
• 1:02:34
  because I it wasn't something I was used to do.
• 1:02:36
  You know, I had a lot of people approach me in 2022 when I ran
• 1:02:40
  as an RCA running for national office.
• 1:02:44
  I took that leap off the high dive into the shallow pool.
• 1:02:48
  I really did. And but I did have a lot of
• 1:02:51
  people even come up to me after caucuses and stuff saying, you
• 1:02:54
  know, we we were liked what you we were hearing from you.
• 1:02:57
  We like what you have to say, but we don't know who you are.
• 1:03:01
  And when you're a non delegate, you can't get up to a microphone
• 1:03:05
  and really talk without having somebody else come up and
• 1:03:09
  suspend the rules to get up and talk.
• 1:03:11
  So that that was, you know, that kind of put me back a little bit
• 1:03:15
  because I wasn't a delegate and I wasn't a delegate this year.
• 1:03:20
  You know, James was a delegate. He was able, he got up there, he
• 1:03:23
  talked you know Bill has been up with the microphone in the past
• 1:03:27
  up and talking and voicing his concerns and issues and calling
• 1:03:31
  out on financial stuff and Bill and I'm going to put this out
• 1:03:36
  there, Bill, sorry. You know Bill was planning on
• 1:03:39
  retiring this, this spring and he he does not know he he is
• 1:03:45
  still with us and he is still with the craft and he's going to
• 1:03:48
  continue with the craft to help pull that momentum forward to
• 1:03:53
  get where we need to be going within within the union and for
• 1:03:59
  the craft. And if I'm not that person, then
• 1:04:01
  we're going to help find the person exactly because we care.
• 1:04:05
  Yeah, because. We need a real leader.
• 1:04:09
  We we don't need these lifelong politicians running our breath,
• 1:04:14
  and that's what they are. It is.
• 1:04:15
  That's that's one of the reasons I stepped up and ran this past
• 1:04:20
  convention, even though I only got 10% of the vote.
• 1:04:25
  The thing you have to realize about that entire thing is I did
• 1:04:29
  not do any campaigning. Prior to that day when I stepped
• 1:04:34
  up on that stage and nominated myself absolutely no
• 1:04:38
  campaigning, the only thing I did was caucus, talk with people
• 1:04:43
  and be there at the convention and got 10% of the vote off of
• 1:04:49
  just talking to people at the convention.
• 1:04:53
  What does that say? Three times as many votes as I
• 1:04:57
  did. When I ran, I got like 38 votes,
• 1:05:00
  so you know you're 134. Definitely beat out my 38.
• 1:05:04
  And you think about that in the aspect of if we had somebody
• 1:05:09
  running for these positions through the whole year, talking
• 1:05:13
  with the craft, getting people involved, getting people to run
• 1:05:18
  for delegate, vote for delegate, go to these conventions and
• 1:05:21
  elect these people, there's a higher chance that new people,
• 1:05:26
  new blood could be put up in those positions.
• 1:05:31
  Sure, that can be dogged on that I only got 10% of the vote.
• 1:05:35
  But you have to take that in the context that that was absolutely
• 1:05:40
  minimal work to get those votes. And I'm not dogging the work I
• 1:05:45
  did because that was a heck of a lot of talking and walking and
• 1:05:48
  things that I did. And they even bought a suit.
• 1:05:52
  I even had a suit for it, but you have to also think about the
• 1:05:57
  fact that it's. People who in any other instance
• 1:06:04
  would have voted the legacy people.
• 1:06:07
  I got 133 people who would have voted for legacy candidates to
• 1:06:14
  vote for myself in just three days.
• 1:06:18
  It can be done, but we need every craft member, every dues
• 1:06:25
  paying voting member to be involved in this.
• 1:06:29
  To get it to happen. And it starts with the delegates
• 1:06:32
  you send to the convention. Starts with your state
• 1:06:35
  convention and those are coming up soon.
• 1:06:37
  Before that, yeah. Actually, the December national
• 1:06:43
  magazine already had the nomination form for delegates in
• 1:06:49
  it. I believe yes.
• 1:06:51
  Yes, it does. Time to start working your magic
• 1:06:55
  to become a delegate. Be involved with people on
• 1:06:57
  social media. To be involved in your office
• 1:07:00
  and in your county or regional meetings, get your names out
• 1:07:04
  there as delegates for your state convention, for your
• 1:07:07
  National Convention. It'll probably be February,
• 1:07:10
  March time frame that you'll get the ballots, yeah, but you'll
• 1:07:16
  have your ballots for, because I believe it has to be 650 or 60
• 1:07:23
  days before your state convention. 60 Mail the ballots
• 1:07:27
  out. 60 days before your state, so you got to get your
• 1:07:31
  nominations in now. If your state has them in your
• 1:07:34
  magazines, look for them. If you don't have have a copy at
• 1:07:38
  home, look on at your state website.
• 1:07:42
  Your state should have. Your magazine, It'll be in the
• 1:07:45
  national magazine with the PO Box that you have to send it to.
• 1:07:51
  And the National Convention will be in the national magazine.
• 1:07:54
  The state ones will be in your state magazines.
• 1:07:57
  But if you want to be involved, be involved.
• 1:07:59
  This is how you do it. You want change.
• 1:08:02
  This is how you do it. Yeah, and I found out last year
• 1:08:06
  that if you want to be a national delegate, you have to
• 1:08:09
  send it to the PO Box for your state, and all those are listed
• 1:08:15
  in the national magazines. Yes.
• 1:08:18
  All right, guys, we want to wrap this up tonight.
• 1:08:22
  Okie Dokie, Sure. Again, I want to thank all of
• 1:08:30
  our listeners. And this year has been, you
• 1:08:34
  know, the first few, you know, the first dozen episodes or so.
• 1:08:37
  You know, it's kind of slow going.
• 1:08:39
  Then the aftermath happened and literally the aftermath happened
• 1:08:44
  and it was a whirlwind ride for a couple months.
• 1:08:48
  I'm going to tell you what a whirlwind that was.
• 1:08:51
  I was not expect that that that episode is still our most
• 1:08:56
  listened to episode right now with and it still goes up on a
• 1:09:01
  weekly basis and it currently is up to 6953 plays that one
• 1:09:12
  episode. On just one, on just one
• 1:09:16
  platform, not the other ones. Actually, that's all the
• 1:09:21
  platforms that it's uploaded on all together but not.
• 1:09:25
  YouTube No, no I am. I don't have the YouTube pulled
• 1:09:29
  up just yet. The Carrier Discretion AKA
• 1:09:32
  Activity scans, which we did after the Aftermath has 6251
• 1:09:38
  Episode Two 6251 Plays I. Think that's one of our most
• 1:09:44
  important episodes right there? Yes.
• 1:09:47
  Hey, pop over to YouTube and see what our plays are on the
• 1:09:50
  aftermath. Cause YouTube we started when
• 1:09:52
  uploaded them quite a bit later on after the fact and.
• 1:09:58
  Which is fine, yeah. After I say we need it on
• 1:10:00
  YouTube exactly, exactly, quite a bit less on there.
• 1:10:07
  Right now, our number one listen to one on YouTube is the Back to
• 1:10:11
  Basics Episode 45 with 106 views for those of you.
• 1:10:18
  For those of you listeners who have deaf friends, the YouTube
• 1:10:23
  versions have closed captioning. Yes, you can go on and and
• 1:10:27
  choose the closed caption. Personally I haven't had the
• 1:10:31
  time to go in and re listen to every single one and type out
• 1:10:36
  the subtitles for everything to list who said what.
• 1:10:39
  I could do that, but like I said at currently at this time, none
• 1:10:43
  of us have time to do that right now.
• 1:10:45
  Probably do that this Spring. If I eventually get a sub, I may
• 1:10:50
  do that. I I I may take a day, you know,
• 1:10:54
  if I haven't, even if it's like a next day or something that I
• 1:10:58
  use later on and have a day where I'm at home by myself and
• 1:11:02
  not having to worry about family, this and that and doing
• 1:11:05
  this and that. Next thing you know where I'm
• 1:11:07
  just trying to catch up on my Mount Everest of laundry pile
• 1:11:12
  there, you know, I'm going through and listening and typing
• 1:11:15
  it all out, so bear with me. But yes, you do have a closed
• 1:11:18
  caption option on YouTube in general or it will just
• 1:11:21
  automatically put them out there.
• 1:11:23
  I did test around that because I do know we do have some Duff
• 1:11:26
  carriers and that we're questioning having that
• 1:11:33
  available. So if you do have a Duff carrier
• 1:11:36
  in your office, you can guide them to the YouTube and they
• 1:11:40
  would have to click on the closed captioning to get it to
• 1:11:43
  pop up for them. Now, does this apply to death
• 1:11:46
  management too? Yes, unfortunately anybody that
• 1:11:50
  wants to listen to it can read the closed captioning.
• 1:11:53
  Yes. So that's everybody in
• 1:11:54
  management and we do have some management that does listen,
• 1:11:58
  I'm, you know, I'm not against they want to listen.
• 1:12:00
  They can. That's fine by me.
• 1:12:01
  Maybe they'll learn something. Maybe they'll make them better,
• 1:12:05
  better managers towards the rural craft.
• 1:12:07
  I don't know. I hope so.
• 1:12:10
  I'll deal with informed management.
• 1:12:11
  That's good for me. It's less likely than violating
• 1:12:15
  the contract on carriers. So on that note, it's Josh, your
• 1:12:19
  final comments for this evening. As Bill said, it's starting to
• 1:12:24
  get cold out there. It's definitely getting dark
• 1:12:27
  earlier. Be safe out there.
• 1:12:30
  Sort of a short week this week. Don't get overwhelmed.
• 1:12:34
  If you do, take a step back, take a deep breath and step back
• 1:12:38
  in. Have a good week.
• 1:12:41
  We'll see you next time. It's been a wild rise since I've
• 1:12:45
  joined this podcast, and getting information out to carriers has
• 1:12:50
  been the bane of being a rural carrier.
• 1:12:55
  But having some place you can go and get positive information
• 1:13:01
  that gets. Corrected when it's Wrong is a
• 1:13:05
  great way to do that. And being part of this podcast
• 1:13:10
  makes me feel that there are people out there that actually
• 1:13:13
  care. We see it not only in the
• 1:13:16
  comments on the episodes, but also in the Facebook page and
• 1:13:20
  the Facebook groups and things like that.
• 1:13:23
  So get involved, take care of each other, because at the end
• 1:13:28
  of the day, we're all in this together.
• 1:13:31
  Well. This is going to be one of them
• 1:13:34
  weeks where you know Monday is going to be a deluge.
• 1:13:37
  Tuesday, Wednesday, we'll see what the plants try to dump on
• 1:13:42
  us. And then you come back.
• 1:13:43
  You have a nice day with your family.
• 1:13:45
  You eat too much, drink too much, and then you get up Friday
• 1:13:48
  morning and you're going to face hell all over again.
• 1:13:52
  Get ready for it. You know it's coming.
• 1:13:53
  And if you're a newbie, hold on to your socks the the next.
• 1:14:00
  Six weeks are going to be fun. There's nothing like Christmas
• 1:14:04
  at the post office, and with all that I've seen on social media,
• 1:14:10
  folks, don't let it overwhelm you.
• 1:14:14
  Just be as safe as possible. Do the best job that you can.
• 1:14:19
  Be efficient. Be courteous.
• 1:14:22
  Be courteous of your fellow carriers.
• 1:14:24
  You don't know what they're going through in their personal
• 1:14:26
  lives. And you know I've always said
• 1:14:29
  that you know, be careful how you treat others.
• 1:14:32
  You don't know what's going on in their lives and you might
• 1:14:36
  trigger something And and I've I've seen it happen in our post
• 1:14:40
  office several times over 25 years where you know somebody
• 1:14:44
  just snaps because of 1 inadvertent little comment.
• 1:14:48
  So be considerate of each other, OK?
• 1:14:51
  Help each other out. Help the RC as and help
• 1:14:56
  yourself. Do Do your scans.
• 1:14:59
  Be familiar with the new Rex scan activity and be safe.
• 1:15:05
  I say this and I mean it. Each and everyone of you is the
• 1:15:09
  most important delivery of the day.
• 1:15:11
  Get home to your loved ones. We care about you and your
• 1:15:16
  family cares about you, and that should be enough.
• 1:15:21
  We know management doesn't. They're all pushing numbers.
• 1:15:25
  They're all pushing reports. We care.
• 1:15:27
  So go out, be safe, get home to your loved ones and God bless
• 1:15:32
  you all. Yep.
• 1:15:33
  As a follow up it it begins this week.
• 1:15:38
  More or less. I want to I hope everybody has a
• 1:15:41
  happy Thanksgiving for those RCASPTFS arcs that have to go
• 1:15:47
  deliver Amazon on Thanksgiving. I I am sorry, I I don't believe
• 1:15:53
  that is right. I have been there.
• 1:15:56
  I, I, I you know, I started when Amazon came into my old office.
• 1:16:01
  You know, I've been there. I, you know, stay safe out
• 1:16:05
  there. That's that's the biggest thing,
• 1:16:07
  is stay safe. Weather's getting colder.
• 1:16:09
  Make sure you're prepared then. The days are shorter.
• 1:16:13
  So we're all starting to work. As dusk is hitting and into the
• 1:16:16
  dark. Make sure you're staying safe.
• 1:16:19
  Remember, safety is the carrier's call out on the street
• 1:16:24
  and don't let management bully you into thinking something
• 1:16:27
  different that the safety is your call 100%.
• 1:16:31
  Again, I want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving on
• 1:16:34
  Thursday. We will be back next weekend.
• 1:16:38
  Until then, have a good week, everybody.
• 1:16:42
  Peace out. Night.