Post Office Personnel Shorten Pick-up, Collection Hours

This year, the Academy’s Post Office (PO) instituted a change in their package pick-up times, so that students can only receive their packages between 11:30 a.m. and 3:50 p.m. on weekdays. The window used to be open from 8:00 a.m. to 3:50 p.m. on weekdays, which was a significantly larger amount of time for students to make their way to PO and pick up their boxes.

The PO made the change due to an increased number of packages sent to Academy students.

Because of popular websites like Amazon, with which it is so easy to search for something, order it and receive it quickly, students have been utilizing this resource and ordering more items instead of making the trek to Walgreens. Emily Carroll, a mail-room courier, said that in the last couple of years, PO’s box volume has maybe doubled, or even tripled, because of websites like Amazon.

“We’ve become a big box business and that [is] why we’ve had to tweak our approach a little bit.”

“We’ve become a big box business and that [is] why we’ve had to tweak our approach a little bit,” she continued.

“The process worked for us before when we only received 40-50 boxes each day because it would take a half hour, and it really was a non-issue. But now, especially in the beginning of this school year, we get 135 a day. It [has] just really increased over the past couple of years.”

Not only does the mail room need more time to process the larger number of packages they have received, the shortened mail-room hours have also raised their efficiency in other ways. Now that they can process all their packages and sort them thoroughly before having to retrieve packages for students, they waste a lot less time.

Joe Goudreault, the mail room supervisor, said that before, students would see a package slip in the PO box, and they would go pick it up right away, but then later that day, they would see another slip and pick up another package. Now, since everything is more organized, the mailroom staff has more time to consolidate each students’ mail.

“We try to do our best. We can to try to improve our efficiency and make sure that the students get their materials as soon as possible,” Goudreault said. “We turn it over daily, and some other places, schools and colleges, it takes up to four or five days to process, but we do it in under three to four hours.”

In the past, many students were accustomed to picking up their packages during the Meetings block or after Assemblies on weekday mornings. With the change in mailroom hours, students are left with a green, blue, or red slip that they don’t have the time to redeem. For some students, this has proved to be an inconvenience.

Prep Julian Perez, because he could never make it to PO at the new collection times, had difficulties receiving his iPad, a required school material, from the mailroom during the first week of school. As a result, Perez was unable graph equations on his iPad with everyone else in his math class.

Upper Cesar Zamudio experienced a similar dilemma with PO. Zamudio had ordered a book online for class but because he was unable to pick up his book on time, he was forced to use a older version with different paginations.

“I felt like I couldn't discuss [the text] at all because it felt awkward to be like ‘on page... of my book’ because I was the only one that didn't have the right book. Homework-wise it was weird too because I had to find the correct readings,” Zamudio said.

Upper Kyra Citron often orders large packages and food, which spoil quickly, in the mail. Consequently, Citron felt frustrated by the new mailroom times because she could only pick up her large packages during her frees in order to have enough time to bring them back to her dorm, which is on the south side of campus.

On the other hand, many students have not been very affected by the change in package pick-up times.

“I find the whole system pretty reliable,” lower Jiro Mizuno said.

“PO being closed most of the time doesn't matter because I usually don't need to send or receive things a lot, and if I do it's usually never urgent.”

Because of all the subtle inconveniences this new policy has made, students wonder why the change was made. Most students wouldn’t know about how much time and labor goes into processing a package until it’s ready to be picked up: upper Tessa Vaccaro said, “Honestly, I have no idea how it all works; I’ve never even thought about it.”

Therefore, students are unaware of how hard it is to receive and organize packages each day for a community of over 1000 people.

Goudreault explained how much care goes into each package.

“The package gets taken off the truck from the US post office on 34 Front Street and gets put into a hamper bin, which is the first touch,” he said.

“And then we roll it into the mail-room, touch to sort it, touch to scan it and send an email to the student, put it down onto the table to be processed and labeled to a shelf and then put it on a shelf. Then we take it from the shelf later to give to a student. We touch that box six times before giving it to a student.”

This does not even include the work that goes into sorting other mail and sending mail for the Academy.