4H Career Chat with Post Master Kelly Wilcher

• Hello everyone. My name is Carly Harden. I’m from Marion County. I’m a 4-H State Ambassador and I have a wonderful lady here today with me joining me. Her name is Ms. Kelly Wilcher. Hi, Ms. Kelly, thank you for joining me today. If you’re ready, let’s get started. - I am. - Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? - I was born and raised in Alabama. I went to school in Sulligent Alabama. I started working when I was 14. You can do that. You can get a work permit, but I started selling snow cones that summer and then I just kept working from then on around school. You know, when school came back in, I would work in the afternoons at video stores and gas stations and stuff like that. After I graduated, I went to Bevill State community college in Fayette and Hamilton campuses, took different classes.

01:08 - And then after Bevill, I went to Auburn for a while and then I went to UAB. So after that I got into the post office and I’ve been there since. - Okay. Have you always wanted to work in a postal service? - No. (Kelly laughing) But I have always admired what they did and never saw that in my future, but it kind of feels natural because it makes sense to me that there is such a service. I can’t imagine our lives without some kind of order of communication and how to find each other and things like that.

01:53 - So it kind of just naturally flowed into that direction. - Okay, When did you start working at the post office in Guin? And did you just automatically become a post master or did you have to work your way up for the position? - Most of the post office jobs, you do have to work your way up. Very rarely do you just start in as a full-time position for example, but when I came to Guin, I was a postmaster at that time, I was actually here for six years before I was officially post master of Guin. I became a rural carrier sub in Birmingham. I delivered in the Hoover area and I found out about the clerk test.

02:48 - So then that meant more hours, more paid benefits. So I put in for the clerk test and scored pretty good on that and I became a clerk. I was a clerk for maybe two, three years. I can’t remember. Then I heard about the supervisor test. So I became a supervisor. I believe I was a supervisor for four or six years and then I became a post master. This is the third office that I’ve been postmaster at, but I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon. - Okay. Next question. What is it a day like being a postmaster, like what’s your routine you have to do every day.

03:39 - - It’s hard to say it as a routine because it took a while for me to realize that the main reason that you need a postmaster is because routine is not gonna happen. You have your basic structure of what you want to happen, but then you need somebody to over look everything and put everything back in its place so that it goes smoothly for the day. So it’s kind of like you wake up and you’re available. So of course we have 20 to 30 reports we have to respond to and we have all these deadlines. We start early, we get the mail in.

04:19 - It’s rush, rush, rush, right in the beginning because you have carriers you wanna get the mail out to and they’re gonna be out on the streets, five, six hours sometimes. And then they have to get out there and get it back in before our truck leaves so that their outgoing mail catches. So anytime that we waste in the morning is crucial. And so it’s push, push, push, get the carriers out and get the PO box mail done and we, of course we help our retail customers, but in the midst of all that, it’s moving out all the problems for the day. Someone may have a flat tire or the computer might not be working in one of the instances, scanners may not be working.

05:05 - I learned one thing to handle anxiety was, do not expect a perfect day ever. I mean, the reason that we have a job is because something needs fixed usually. And so if I go in expecting it to be perfect, I’m not gonna have a good day. If I go in expecting to have problems to solve, it’s not gonna be a surprise and the day actually ends up easier than what I had outlets for. - Okay, so now that I understand that there is different positions for post master and what it kind of requires.

05:49 - In your position as post master, do you only work at the Guin post office or do ever get to travel. - It’s varied throughout my career, depending on what different hats that I wore. At one point I was traveling down as far as Selma to visit businesses or other post offices, to help them with certain things. Right now, my primary location is Guin. We also manage Beaverton post office. And so I’m usually gonna be at one of those offices or at a business that one of those office handles or inspecting a route or inspecting a box, or for example, today we had a late arriving express mail and what that means is somehow it missed the plane somewhere and a plane came in this morning, but it came in after all of our trucks left Birmingham. So there was an express mail piece coming to Guin Alabama that needs to be delivered by three and about 20 minutes ago, we found out about it.

07:04 - So that’s back to that availability issues. You drop everything and you go get that express mail because that customer’s expecting that at three o’clock today. So luckily another office nearby has one and she had called and said she would pick up ours for us. So that’s wonderful. And in those cases then, yeah, I do have to travel to go fix that situation because it’s a service emergency, but if the day goes normal, then I’m just gonna be at one of the two offices. - Okay, can you work well knowing your performance is based on work with yourself and with others around you? - I can, it’s important to be able to trust your coworkers and the people under you to do their job, thankfully.

08:04 - In this particular situation and we have a great group and I trust all of them to make good decisions. They usually, I mean, it took time to learn, but most of the time I’m very proud of the decisions they make because the top two things are safety and customers and of course, time and service. And so they’re weighing out all of those priorities and then they kind of let me know what happens, because when the carriers are out on the streets, they may not have a signal and they’re kind of left to their own devices on making decisions. And it’s not the easiest feeling on them sometimes, but over time they’ve learned. Sometimes they call in and say, what do I do here? And I just say, this is what we can do.

08:56 - And then I guess through those mistakes, everybody has learned, it’s not their mistakes, it’s just through instances of something crazy that come up and they have learned how to confidently make the best decision. So because of them, my job’s a lot easier because what they do I have to answer for and that’s not easy whenever people are out there making crazy decisions. (Kelly chuckling) - Okay, what is the time schedule for when y’all have to be there in the mornings and whenever you have to leave in the afternoons? - On paper, it says five, or generally around that. Here, it pretty much is eight to five and they try to keep that for pretty much all the offices. Sometimes it varies depending on how far your mail truck has to travel from the closest facility, which are established from Birmingham.

09:59 - It stops at about eight offices and Guin is the next to last stop. Then Beaverton is the last stop. So because of them being at the end of that route, that some challenges, and then they’re at the beginning. So it’s like they have the least amount of time to get the mail out, get the mail back in, get it back to Birmingham. So we can do the eight to five, but then when things happen, somebody might be hitting the Birmingham to take mail or it might be a late night that night or some reasons, day after holiday we might come in early to get a headstart on whatever’s coming in for the day, but typically it’s very possible to have eight to five schedule. - Okay, so have you and your fellow employees ever had to work over time or night time, past whenever y’all are supposed to be gone? - Very many times, but it’s usually more of a voluntary thing.

10:59 - It’s not forced overtime, I guess you’d say. - Okay, what are some challenges that you might have as kind of being a role model as a post master? (Kelly chuckling) - Let’s see. What are the challenges that I personally have? - Yes. - Well, I have an introvert type personality where there’s a lot going on inside, but you may not know that because I’m not speaking, I’m not verbalizing every thought that I have. One of the issues that I have in here that I’ve had to overcome is I can hear a lot of what goes on and if I’m supposed to be focused, learning on a new procedure that I’ve got to train everybody how to do and it’s got all these little details to know, but yet I can hear someone talking about growing their squash and how well it’s going and all this.

12:04 - It’s not that I don’t care about their vegetables, but I can only focus on one thing. So it gets really hard for me to block that out and another challenge I have is time management and compassion, being able to juggle that because I mean, I really do care about our customers and their service and even like an upset customer. I usually have a lot of faith that if they’ll just hang on, they can understand more about whatever their issue is. And then they’re not so upset. It’s just that they don’t understand, why did their mail come at a different time today and after I educate them a little bit more, they’re like, gotcha. They just wanna know what’s going on. So, but I don’t always have a lot of time to give to them, like I want to, because then that puts a lot of stress on me trying to still do my duties for the day, but yet take care of people the way that they deserve. If you’d say.

13:10 - - Okay, what’s the best thing about your job, in your opinion? - It has good pay and benefits. I appreciate that because since I have eaten all kinds of stuff and I have kids and I like to get to the sports things and everything like that. So that gives me less time to work and you wanna get paid good when you work, because one job may take two hours to earn what another job can get you for one hour. And then the benefits when I was younger, I didn’t understand the importance of that as much. Now I understand the importance of that. That weighs just as heavy as the pay raise, because you planning for your future and your health and taking care of your body. You never know if you’re gonna get sick.

14:07 - You never know if this or that is gonna happen. So those benefits that kind of cushion around you and plan for you when you’re not even realizing it are very important too. So I don’t mind work. I enjoy work and wherever I’m at, I don’t care if I’m getting the minimum wage, I’m gonna work hard and so it’s nice to finally have a job that I’m working hard at and it pays me decent for it. So I think that’s one of the biggest benefits of it is that you’re gonna work hard, but you’re gonna get paid good for it. - Okay, one question I have is how has COVID-19 affected you and your employee’s jobs? Like what are the steps that y’all are having to take for y’all’s own safety? - It was scary at first for them and myself.

14:59 - It wasn’t as much for me because I guess I was reading up about a lot of it and I kind of can tell when someone’s not coming from the facts and they’re just trying to scare us and things like that, but I did wonder if everybody is gonna take it serious. They did. That was good, but then I worried about, I didn’t want my employees to feel like they had to go put themselves in harm’s way because to honor their job for me. I didn’t want that for them. So I left it open to them to do what they felt comfortable doing and all of ours, of course, they wanna be here and they wanna work through it and figure it out, whatever it takes. But at the same time, I didn’t know how well they were familiar with germs and staying sanitized and I mean, we have tons of safety health, but specific to that, I didn’t know. So I basically had started out telling them, okay, guys, you’re probably, let’s just look at it this way.

16:05 - You’re going to come in contact with that virus and it depends on your habits, whether or not you’re going to transfer it, to spread it or let it affect your body or take it home. So you need to, focus on not touching your face, keeping your hands clean, all these things, just pretend like the virus is already around you basically and straight out from that they did great. And I think we all fear the unknown. So that’s why I wanted to go ahead and give that to them for just a comfort sort of. But I also put out there for them to not feel like they had to do anything that they didn’t feel comfortable with and everybody has successfully come out of this healthy and it was very scary because one of our clerks, her husband, he lives off oxygen. So, if I go by her desk and I touch her keyboard, because one day I was still a little easy.

17:02 - I didn’t have a fever, nothing, but you have that fear of the unknown. What if something happened on my way in and I had that virus on me and I go by and type in something on her computer and then she carries that home to him and loses her husband because of my carelessness. That really did get to me one day. But then we kind of had to secure our fears with, doing the responsible and being aware and mindful of what we do and everything like that. The carriers, they have parents that are vulnerable and things like that. So everybody has done very well with that and they’re just kind of following our guidelines for here.

17:45 - And we have had probably 30 COVID safety talks to go over in the morning and we have been talked to death about it. So I think it’s hammered in really well mentally. (Kelly laughing) - That’s good. What are your long-term goals as a post master? - I am okay with it if I stay here and just retire from this location, I have considered venturing out to kind of better any of our operations in ways that I can bring a new insight to. One of the reasons I’m comfortable here is it’s close to home and I still have one last in high school. So I don’t want to be traveling and doing things until he’s done with school and kind of more on his own.

18:37 - Then I might feel more comfortable helping at wherever they need me because they definitely need people and it’s changing, it’s changing so much, they say. So it’s exciting to think about, is it gonna be a little bit easier and technology is really bringing in some great factors to it too. - Okay, what advice would you give to a youth that might be interested in being a post master? - I think that anyone who chooses that path will not regret it. It’s beneficial in so many ways. You have no ideal, you’re welcome into, respected, but I believe that it would be more rewarding to them than just being a job, a career, it would reward their life, it would reward their family. I’m very thankful for everything that it’s brought to my life and my family.

19:46 - I’ve learned things about the area, about logistics. And I love things about logistics, about math and other stuff and how odd and even things about odd numbers on this side of the road, even numbers on this side of the road, interstate for North and South, things like that. I mean like odd numbers and even numbers was the interstate. But teaching that to my kids, for example, has been a big factor for me, but just teaching them things about how to understand how a town was built and put together that is really cool. We’re born and we live in our hometown and we never think what made this address be this address, or why is this run this way? And so when I took this job in this organization, I never saw that I would get to see that built, from saying the history of it.

20:51 - So I think that’s very beneficial in many ways. - Well, I wanna say thank you for coming on here today and making me aware of how your career is, and it’s seems really wonderful. It’s been really interesting to talk to you about with it, and it’s been a pleasure. So I wanna thank you again and I hope you have a wonderful day. - Thank you very much. .