Last Day in the Mailroom - (Germany) Day 95

Just another random note hanging on one of the mailroom walls next to the boxes

We had no PT this morning because of "Days of Excellence". One of the nice things about being assigned to the mailroom is that I do not have to go, however I did have to get up, get dressed, and attend a formation our company was having at 0645 before leaving. I can't complain too much though because with a donation to The Army Emergency Relief Fund we were allowed to wear civilian clothes all day. My boss actually made a donation for each of his soldiers so we could all dress in civilians without even having to think about it. So I showed up, waited around for a while, then went back home to get ready for the day.

I worked once again in the mailroom on my official last day being tasked out to help them. I had thought about wearing my kilt since it was civilian clothes day, but I think I'll save that for another day in the office. I spent the morning getting out mail that was not put in people's boxes the day before, then chatted for a while with the boss. I found out some interesting details on the work situation in the mailroom here. There are a total of 8 civilian employees that work there and only 3 of them are permanent. The rest are temporary, there is a hiring freeze for any permanent workers. The temporary folks time is limited and will probably be out of a job before the end of the year. I guess once you get a permanent job with the government, it's best to hang on to it for as long as possible.

I worked customer service by myself once we opened at 1100, my helper the SSG who is going to get med-boarded had some appointments to start the day. It was a lot more comfortable working in civilian clothes and I have to say that I also instantly got a lot more respect from everyone. It's a lot different when you look like a civilian rather than when you are just a PFC working behind the counter. Soon however I will be promoted to specialist, in fact I would have been "pinned on" today at the Days of Excellence but I wanted to have my wife there and she had to work. An easy enough excuse, so they will do a small ceremony with just the office next week. I don't even think any ceremony should be done at all because I did nothing special to deserve it, other than survive for 2 years. I can see having a ceremony for any early promotions or E-5 and above because they have to actually do something in order to get promoted. E-1 through E-4 is just time in service unless you get an early promotion.

So the day went by without any issues and the last couple hours I worked in the back sorting mail that will probably sit in sorting containers for about a week before they get delivered to their boxes. I used to work for UPS a long time ago and we had to make sure everything went out each day, so this is a whole new experience for me…and also why I keep mentioning it (it just blows my mind). I also took a break when my boss came in. We went outside and he gave me my quick monthly counseling statement. Basically good work and in the future he wants to start preparing me to go to the promotion board. I really have mixed emotions about that. On one hand it will be nice to have the higher rank and be an NCO, on the other hand an NCO has a lot more responsibility and crappy work they have to do. It seems NCOs get tasked to do training that has nothing to do with their job, they get tasked with all sorts of other miscellaneous things, and also have a whole level of supervisory work that needs to be done. This means if I ever do get to a place that actually does I.T. work, the chances of me doing it as an NCO is drastically less…and I have no desire whatsoever to stay in the army. We'll see how it goes.

I went home and after my wife and I ate, we left to Mannheim to go watch a movie. Here in Germany at the Mannheim Cinemaxx theatre, they play movies in English and you can also reserve seats via the internet. My wife reserved the seats and we went and watched "The Hunger Games". The theatre is much nicer than the one on post and it also has stadium seating which is also very nice. We had both read all the books, so we were excited to see the movie. The movie was pretty good and kept pace with the book for the most part, but there is just so much more detail in the books. I can see where someone who hasn't read the books may not get as much out of the movie than people who have already read the books. My wife was surprised they served beer in the theatre, I had to remind her we are in Germany…they even sell beer in the McDonalds here!

MRT Training - (Germany) Day 94

The details of our ruck march this morning for PT around PHV

PT this morning was a ruck march around PHV. We ended up going the extended version which ends up going through all the fancy pants officer's housing area. Their houses have garages and are nice and big. It made the ruck march almost 3 miles. The sergeant leading PT said he wanted to have everyone finish it in 45 minutes. His goal is to have us do a six mile ruck march in one hour and 45 minutes. I have to say that I think ruck marches are the stupidest thing ever…especially in today's army. Troops don't ruck around for miles…especially computer geeks.

Since I was scheduled to work in the mailroom, I thought I would get out of the sergeant's time training today just like last week…but right before the end of PT I was told I needed to attend the training and then go to the mailroom afterward. The training started at 0900 and was in a nice conference room that we've never used before. The room was nice and the chairs were comfy, which turned out to be a problem for a few soldiers because they were told to stand up after nodding off. I have come to loathe most army training that we get. It is a complete waste of time and they give us the same training over and over again like they are trying to beat the information into us. Such was the case with our first training brief this morning. It was given by community bank (operated by Bank of America) and was about finances. Every soldier has had this class in AIT and during in-processing here in Germany. Why do we need it again? Why do I have to hear propaganda from a for-profit bank? Personal feelings aside (I don't use banks, they are "for-profit" greedy corporations that contributed to the collapse of our economy and caused the great recession…I use only credit unions…these are not-for-profit institutions) I think if they offer this class, have an independent financial adviser give it and have them give some better information than the interest rates offered by their bank.

The second class was MRT (Master Resilience Training). This class was all about resiliency. We need to be more like tennis balls and not eggs…we need to bounce back up when we get down…we need to be positive…we need to be optimistic…we need to be enthusiastic. I guess they started this training after so many people were having issues during and after deployments. Now it is being taught to everyone in the army, not just soldiers that are deploying. The concept is not a bad one, and if I came in with an open mind I would get more out of it. I just really wasn't in the right frame of mind after the first training brief.

After the training I went to lunch, then headed to the mailroom. I was shocked to see all of the civilian workers actually putting mail in people's boxes. It was crazy…every single worker was busy getting all the mail delivered. This is something I thought would be normal, but it's the first day I've seen it. I was in shock. I worked customer service at the front counter. It was a pretty slow day with customers coming in at a very slow pace. I did learn how to close a person's box and open a new one for people that are in-processing and out-processing. I'm going to know how to do everything, then I'll leave and go back to my other job…lol.

One nice thing about working in the mailroom is that right at 1700 I leave. I don't have to wait for the boss to come and give any announcements and then dismiss us…I just walk out the front door on time…every day. I went home with my wife and we hung out watching TV shows. Now it's time to go lay in my comfortable bed once again.

It's A Diagnostic - (Germany) Day 92

Not sure who SPC Bacaylan is, but I saw this stool in the oversized package 

portion of the mailroom and thought it was pretty funny. My guess is that it's 

for the short people to get packages off the top shelf...lol

PT this morning was my diagnostic PT test. I'm not sure why I have to bother with a diagnostic PT test, but unfortunately I do. I guess they have a soldier do a diagnostic PT test to get a feel where they are at before giving them the official PT test. I passed each event, not anything spectacular..but I passed. I don't know the official scores, but I did about 52 push-ups, 42 sit-ups, and ran a 17 minute 2-mile. This would give me about a 212 for my PT score. Definitely not anything to brag about, but I don't need a high score for anything else. I'm not looking to get promoted to an NCO. Since leaving Korea I feel that my PT has gone downhill a bit. I felt pretty good working out in the gym everyday there, but here we don't do a lot of muscle work…we do however run a lot and I've heard we will run even more in the spring and summer as the weather gets nicer.

Work as usual lately was in the mailroom, but I went into the office first and logged onto a computer to check my email and such before heading over to the mailroom. Once in the mailroom I went to work putting all the mail I pitched yesterday into people's actual mailboxes. I did this until we opened for customers at 1100 and then worked customer service up front. The place has two soldiers working in it. Me and a staff sergeant who is getting Med-Boarded, so he's just doing this administrative work until he gets out. We also have the high schooler I talked about before. There are a number of civilians that work as well, but I'm not really sure how anything gets done without the soldiers and this volunteer. In fact I'm not even sure where the civilians disappear to half the time. It's no wonder why things take so long to get delivered…I see stuff just sitting around all the time.

I finally got signed up to attend the basic motorcycle riders course. This is a required course if you would like to get a license to ride here in Europe. It sucks that they just can't use my motorcycle endorsement from the states since I have already taken the German driving class to get my regular license over here. The problem is because of an upcoming FTX I have to attend, I can't take the class until June. So my motorcycle will just keep sitting in our parking spot until then.

After work I headed home and relaxed. We had pizza and ice cream to celebrate the passing of my PT test!

Slow Mail Day - (Germany) Day 91

This is where I "Pitch Mail" take big piles of unsorted mail and get it 

somewhat organized so it can be taken to the mailboxes grouped together

This morning PT was pretty easy for me. I'm scheduled to take a diagnostic PT test tomorrow, so instead of doing normal PT me and a few others who are taking a PT test tomorrow just stretched and then walked until PT was over. My goal today is to try and take it easy and drink a lot of fluids.

Work was again in the mailroom this week. When I arrived, I found out that a couple of the civilians had called in sick and others had to leave to go pick up mail…so we we're on a real skeleton crew. I was put to work right away "pitching mail". There were piles and piles of magazines and other various pieces of mail sitting in a corner. I had to take it and sort it into boxes. Each box represented a hundred mailboxes (i.e. 100-199, 200-299 etc). I spent the morning doing that until we opened for customers at 1100. At that time I went up front and worked customer service.

I didn't realize until now how slow this mail system can be. Because people called in sick, there was a lot of mail that just would not be delivered today. I did a lot of pre-sorting the mail, but it just sat in those slots all day never making it to the mailboxes. If all the military mailrooms are like this one I now understand why the mail is so slow to arrive.

Nothing real special about the day other than a lot of mail not being delivered. I hydrated quite a bit which in turn caused me to have to frequent the bathroom often. I then headed home and spent some quality time with my wife.

Spending Money - (Germany) Day 87

This morning's PT was a little bit of a run…well I can't really call it a run because we did a lot of walking during the entire process. I ran with the leader conducting PT because I wasn't sure of the route we were taking. He ran last to make sure nobody got lost and because of this we had to slow down quite a bit at times to let others stay ahead. I'm not complaining, I didn't feel like working out at all so a light jog/walk was perfect. I also found out I have a diagnostic PT test this Tuesday.

Work was in the mailroom once again. I spent the first part of the morning stamping what seemed like 5000 pieces of mail as "Undeliverable as Addressed". These were all pieces that were either not addressed correctly or the people have since left and the mail is considered junk mail. I knew a lot of mail was returned, but I was pretty amazed at just how much gets returned from a small office like ours. I can't imagine how much gets returned to senders from large post offices.

The day was uneventful. After all the stamping, I worked up at the counter doing customer service. Even though the pace was slower, time still passed by pretty quickly. I left early, a little before 1600 and headed to the shopping center to meet my wife. We purchased tickets for my kids to fly over this summer. We are pretty excited to see them for the summer, but I have to tell you 3 round trip tickets to Germany is freakin' expensive! There goes the entire tax return…but it will be well worth seeing them. I can't wait!

We also were able to schedule our bed to be delivered. We had ordered one back in January, but due to back order issues and a whole number of things it has taken forever for everything to arrive. We didn't ship our own bed from the states because we were not sure if there would be enough room in the base housing. We've been sleeping on a smaller guest bed we purchased from Ikea here up until now. It will be nice to get a larger bed that is not sitting on the floor. I will then put together both the guest bed and our bed once it arrives.

Once home we packed and prepared for our weekend trip that starts tomorrow. We'll be heading to Edelweiss lodge and resort for a marriage retreat. We get a free stay and will attend some classes in the morning each day, then have the rest of the day off to explore. I also don't have to work at all on Friday so it's a win win situation!

The Postman - (Germany) Day 86

This morning's PT was muscle failure day. We actually did a lot of varying exercises. Of course we did push-ups and sit-ups, but there were others like "the fire hydrant" and "the mule kick" thrown in as well. We also did way too many overhead arm claps (kind of like a jumping jack, but only moving your arms). We basically did it past the point where I couldn't do it anymore. It was a good workout, but we got up and down so much in the muddy grass that our PT uniforms all got pretty muddy. I don't really care about getting muddy, but the problem is I had to take off my coat and lay it inside out to drive home. I also have to wash it all tonight because I only have one coat and one pair of pants. Just a minor pain in the butt.

I continued my work as a mailman today. The day started out placing 3 big stacks of the yellow parcel notice tickets in people's boxes. Once I finished that I hung out with the sergeant at the front desk until opening time at 1100. The sergeant was put here while he is being med-boarded. He was a tanker and now will serve out the rest of his days in the army as a mailman until he gets his medical discharge.

The day went similar to yesterday except for the fact that I did not give out any wrong boxes and I was also much more proficient at finding everything. Later on in the day a young high school kid joined our group and helped out. His dad (a major in the air force) told him to volunteer and then he would buy him "stuff". So far the kid said he hasn't received any "stuff" even though he's been volunteering since July. My guess is that his dad wants him to learn a work ethic. He was a nice enough kid and did a good job.

Not much exciting until the end of the day when a guy came in and handed me a parcel ticket that was about 3 weeks old. I searched for the item, but it was nowhere to be found. He wouldn't take no for an answer, so I had the high schooler double check. Still a no go. My guess is that the guy already picked it up, or it was sent back or something. Still this guy wanted to see a manager…one of the civilians came up and tried to help the guy and then finally a higher level manager as well. I don't know what the guy wanted, the package was not there and I couldn't just shit one out. Finally the upper management guy told the guy we would keep an eye out for him and he finally left.

1700 came around and I left as well. Headed home with my wife and started on schoolwork once again. I came to the conclusion that I will not be able to learn how to program java via this online class. All I'm doing is getting farther and farther behind while the class moves on. I can learn a lot of things on my own, but any programming class will have to be done in a normal classroom environment. The decision came after this last week of struggling to just keep my head above water in the class. I'll be looking into what other options I have, but will most likely switch to a different degree. Anyway right now I need to study to take my Apple recertification exam. So much to do!

Going Postal - (Germany) Day 85

This morning PT was some cardio in the gym and then a few sprints outside. Nothing major except my legs were still a little sore from the stairs and ruck march last week.

Today started my 2 weeks of working in the mailroom. Our shop rotates people to work in the mailroom for some reason. I don't really mind though because I'll be doing something I guess. I showed up and was put to work sorting mail out of big bags into slots. Each slot was for about 100 mailboxes, so it was just kind of grouping them together for people to take to the actual customer mailboxes later on. After that I sat around for a bit before being told I could go to lunch. I took my lunch in the food court and after an hour and a half headed back.

Once back in the mailroom I was then told I'd be helping customers. This process involves taking the customer's ID card and their note that states they have a parcel to pick up. I then find the parcel based on the number that is on the slip given to me. I then scan the slip, scan the card and give the customer their package. The process is fairly easy, but when it gets busy it can get a little tough. I forgot to compare the names from the ID to the package a couple times and found that I gave a box to someone who shouldn't have received it. The problem was that the parcel slip was placed in the wrong box, so the wrong person brought it up. I'll do better tomorrow.

The other parts of the job are to take boxes that come in and sort them onto shelves grouped by number. This makes it easier to find when the customer comes in. It stayed somewhat busy all day, with large waves of people coming in at times. This made the time go by really fast which was good. I won't mind doing this for the next two weeks, but it is just another one of those things that the army does which makes me scratch my head. I may sound like a broken record, but I just don't understand how the army can spend so much money training people to do a job (I.T. - a.k.a. computer geek for me) only to have them do some other menial task.

I left work and headed to the PX to pick up a couple things before heading home. I then did schoolwork and watched a couple TV shows with my wife.