You've hear the saying "Before criticizing a man, walk a mile in his shoes." That's just what brings me to write to the editor.
I took up a paper route for the sake of making a bit of "easy money" on top of my regular job. Little did I know how wrong I was about the "easy" part. The upsides are: great exercise and helps to reduce weight, great cardio, fresh air, no need to dress up, no collecting and I get paid.
The downfalls are: Relying on the production team and delivery drivers to bring you the correct amount of subscriber and non-subscriber bundles for each route, heavy papers (on flyer days you can double or quadruple your load to bring a "free issue.")
The early morning start to make the delivery deadline (between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.) barking dogs, gas for our vehicles, the terrible weather conditions: blizzards, below freezing temperatures of -21 to -31 degrees with the wind chill, wet slushy snow.
Parking at the end of the streets and walking to each house to keep from getting our vehicles stuck in the snow, trudging in snow up to our knees, slippery driveways due to no sanding or ice melt chemicals, (our house is guilty of this too) moose in the yards.
We are considerate of making little noise. All of this in order to bring the paper to you by 7 a.m., six days a week. That's how "dedicated" the carrier is.
My mail carriers have nine routes to do; I have three which total 50-52 subscriber papers and makes seven different locations and now takes about 1 hour with good conditions. I thank those willing to take on so many or there wouldn't be a paper at our doors.
Two of the 13 houses on one route have mail boxes, so the "dreaded blue bad" is used in order to keep them dry and to be able to throw them up to your doorsteps to save time. as we do have a deadline to make.
Some of these driveways are pretty long and lots of steps are hard on some of our knees.
So before you criticize what we "haven't done" please keep in mind all that we have gone through to get your paper to you.
From a carrier who has walked a mile in his/her shoes.
Diana Waterston
Prince George
