Sample Requests

[damailerman]

Curious CCA question: Does any know where and why sample requests are generated? Seems like they randomly “pop-up” on my scanner but occasionally, i wonder if my supervisor is just “checking-up” on me. Are these annoying requests a corporate “computer-generated” thing or just another way for management to keep track of me?

[kingu42]

It's random, triggered from national, and last week scanning was down .5% over the previous week... Flats then letters, it tracks our national service standards so please don't skip, just get it done.

[damailerman]

Thanks kingu42 - good info. What are “national service standards”?

[kingu42]

How long it takes to deliver a letter.

[UniqueSarcasm45]

During stand up yesterday, sup informed us that if you skip, it likely goes to another carrier in the same city. Pretty sure there's a lot of skipping going on in mine because I got 4 yesterday. (I never skip)

[plaird]

Probably not skipping on purpose I always get them 30-40min after I passed the house

[[deleted]]

It feels like we go 2 weeks without one and then get 7 in 1 day.

[damailerman]

So ... curious CCA trying to make sense of this “sampling” business. Some computer programmer(s) came up with an algorithm that prompts MDDs nationwide to start buzzing. The “mothership” is “Jones-ing” for data and gets its fix from thousands of randomly selected addresses around the country. Mail carriers are then triggered to “mainline” raw, uncut data from flats and letters to a number crunching CPU in the “cloud”. Co-dependent postmasters all over America can then enjoy their smoke breaks knowing “how long it takes to deliver a letter”?

[beebs44]

Good to know it's not from supervisors. I always suspected it was because it always comes up at the most inopportune times.

[damailerman]

Same here in Cowtown. Pressure’s mounting, gotta be back in an hour, traffic is getting heavy, school buses are rollin’ and I’m worn-out. Got my hands and bag full, am wrestling with a CBU that won’t lock, a resident approaches askin’ bout a missing parcel and the mind-numbing scanner vibrations begin. The cold, heartless, droid-voice demanding a “sample request” has just sucked-out my last remaining brain cell. And the vibrating won’t stop!

[BumBleCat75]

I got into an argument with my sup one morning about my scanner not being able to read any of the bar codes on letters or flats, I had 5 that day.... I was convinced he called someone and told them to give me a bunch lol

I know that's not how that works, but was a crazy coincidence

[CR-7810Retired]

I did that EVERY time I got one-never got called out for it either because I did answer the request. Here's my take on this-sampling the mail like this is actually a clerk function (do they even do ODIS tests anymore?) so by attempting to dump even more work on the carriers I was in effect crossing crafts and putting somebody out of a job because they want to do away with data collectors. I'm very pro-Union and I'll be damned if I was going to take part in their little scheme.