A Mail Carrier
What It's Like To Be... with Dan Heath
Dan Heath explores the life of John Ayala, a mail carrier in Los Angeles' Mount Washington neighborhood, who served for 42 years. Through ca
Key takeaways
- The job of a mail carrier extends beyond delivering mail—it fosters deep personal connections with neighbors over decades.
- Seniority-based bidding determines route assignments, creating long-term stability in service areas.
Main topics
- Daily routines of mail delivery
- Route assignment through seniority bidding
Notable quotes
"I still got the long hair, so I was kind of the heavy metal mailman."
Conclusion
Being a mail carrier isn't just about delivering letters—it's about showing up every day,
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) When Johnny Yella was 18, he got a job as a clerk at a post office in Los Angeles. Speaker 1 (0:06) Yeah, my mom was a clerk, and I think she's the one who filled out the application for me. Speaker 2 (0:13) In the proud tradition of moms everywhere. Right, Speaker 1 (0:17) but I started off as a clerk, and you're just in sorting stuff. And I was 18 at the time, and I just, I didn't last. I went like a week, and I quit. My mom got mad, and I said, don't worry, don't worry, it'll work out. Speaker 2 (0:33) And it did work Speaker 1 (0:34) out. Speaker 2 (0:34) Within six months, he had a job as a mail carrier, which fit him a lot better. Though his new co-workers weren't sure he was going to Speaker 1 (0:42) last. They took bets on me. The old-timers, they would bet, is this guy going to make it, or is he not? Even John wasn't sure he'd last. I thought I'd do it for a couple of years. save some money, try to get into college, and then I realized I fell in love with the job. Speaker 1 (1:05) It was just so fun, you know, and then I'm in a band at the time and we were tearing it up and I was just inviting people to the shows and they would go and my co-workers would go and it was just like, all right, I'm going to just keep trying to do this. Speaker 2 (1:22) John is a big, gregarious guy with a heavy metal ponytail. He became a fixture in the L.A. neighborhood where he delivered the mail. He was a mail carrier for 42 years and retired. in 2026. Speaker 1 (1:36) I still got the long hair, so I was kind of the heavy metal mailman. Speaker 2 (1:41) So you're kind of like a character. Maybe it made it easy for people to talk to you or something. Speaker 1 (1:46) Might be. There you go. Speaker 2 (2:01) I'm Dan Heath, and this is What It's Like to Be. In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession. A health inspector, an ice cream truck driver, a diplomat. We want to know what they do all day at work. Today, we'll ask John Ayala what it's like to be a mail carrier. We'll talk about what you have to do to get your truck loaded for a route, what you can learn about people from their mail, and how he feels about... Dogs. Stay with us. Speaker 2 (2:40) John spent most of his career delivering mail in a quiet, wooded hillside neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles called Mount Washington. Speaker 1 (2:48) Okay, it's, you got to go up a hill. And then there's nothing but million or $2 million houses now. Speaker 2 (2:57) Oh, wow. So this is a nice area. Speaker 1 (2:59) So it is a really nice area. And just going from block to block, you know, I drove to every house. I'd never parked and walked down the street. I did in my early years. But once I got to Mount Washington, it was just a whole different story. It's a place I could never afford. And it was just my little getaway, you know, for myself. And how did Speaker 2 (3:27) you end up in that area? Were you just assigned kind of randomly? Speaker 1 (3:32) Well, when a carrier... Retires or loses their job, you get to bid on it. Oh. Yeah, and then the one with the most seniority gets the job. And it could have been anyone from Los Angeles. Then the whole 900 zip code you could bid on. I Speaker 2 (3:50) had no idea. You know what's funny is we talked to an airline pilot who said it works exactly the same way with picking like what routes you're going to fly. It's just purely seniority and you get to go in and bid. But I had no idea that there was a similar system for mail carriers. Speaker 1 (4:05) Yeah, yeah. Like, I just retired, and the person with the most seniority who wanted my route got it. Speaker 2 (4:13) I've always wanted to know more about what the rhythms of being a mail carrier are like. So let me just ask you a bunch of nitty gritty questions. Like, what time do you start work and where do you go? Like, where does your day start? Speaker 1 (4:27) Okay, well, when I first started, we used to start at 6 a.m., which was great. I loved it because then you were off at 2.30 and then you had the rest of the day to do stuff. And if you had two hours overtime, you know, you were off at 4.30. But then I'll tell you, when we started at 6 o'clock and I was in a band and we were watching other bands and partying, I always kept a uniform in the car just in case I didn't make it home. That was wise. Yes. And then it became 6.30 and then 7 o'clock and then 7.30 and then 8 o'clock, which I hated. Speaker 2 (5:09) I Speaker 1 (5:09) hated the 8 o'clock time because now I'm dealing with traffic in the morning. Speaker 2 (5:14) Traffic. The bane of an Angeleno's existence. John says the rush hour traffic was part of what pushed him to retire. Speaker 1 (5:22) If we were starting at 6, 6.30, 7 o'clock, I might still be working. Speaker 2 (5:28) Yeah. Speaker 1 (5:29) Because I just didn't like the traffic. Speaker 2 (5:31) So back in the early 6 a.m. days, do you remember? A time when you were up all night, maybe you had a show or something, and you literally just had to go straight to work. Yeah, there were quite a few. Speaker 1 (5:44) Or the first time I ever called out sick, I called my mom. I was in a hotel after a gig, and I asked her, can you call out sick for me? Speaker 2 (6:00) And she said, I think I can guess, but she said, She said she would. I don't think my mom would have taken that bait. Speaker 2 (6:09) I asked John how he started his shifts each morning. Speaker 1 (6:12) Back in the day, you had to sort out your letters and you had to sort out your magazines and catalogs, which are called flats. Flats, or Speaker 2 (6:23) like clothes catalogs Speaker 1 (6:24) or Speaker 2 (6:24) that sort of thing? Speaker 1 (6:25) Yeah, like, say, People magazine. Oh, Speaker 2 (6:28) okay. They're Speaker 1 (6:28) called flats. Speaker 2 (6:30) And Speaker 1 (6:30) we had more time back then to do it. Speaker 2 (6:34) Carriers would spend hours each day sorting the mail into the order they'd run their route. That was called casing. But in the 1990s, the Postal Service automated that task with delivery point sequencing, or DPS. After that... The Speaker 1 (6:50) letters came in order of the way the route is. So you didn't have to be that much time in the office anymore. Speaker 2 (6:58) Yeah,