Barb McMahon treats every package like it’s her own.
This attitude comes naturally to the Fairport, NY, letter carrier, a 20-year USPS veteran.
“I was a stay-at-home mom taking care of kids before I started at the Postal Service, and now I have 500 customers to take care of,” she says.
Delivery Operations VP Kevin McAdams says employees like McMahon represent the dependability customers expect from USPS.
“It takes dedicated and caring employees to deliver the Postal Service brand successfully every day,” he says.
McMahon has three tips for her fellow carriers:
• Be cognizant of cameras. In the age of camera phones and social media, people who serve the public are sometimes caught behaving unprofessionally. “Always act the way you should regardless of whether or not someone is watching,” McMahon says.
• Take your time. “Fight the pressure to rush” through deliveries and use the necessary time needed to avoid tossed and damaged mail, she says.
• Have integrity. “Treating packages with respect is the right thing to do,” she says.
As far as McMahon is concerned, delivering with care is smart business.
“The mail is our product and we have to present it in a cared for way,” she says. “If it’s important to the sender, it’s important to the recipient and it’s important to the Postal Service.”
“Best practices,” a new series on employees who demonstrate on-the-job excellence, appears regularly in Link.