
Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow - danso
https://twitter.com/Jennifer__Brett/status/1131298044010483712
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mcflibbles
I worked as a postman for a bit. I'd wake up at 0430, make a short commute,
then sort letters into street/house number order for something like 3 hours.
After the first few days this became mindnumbingly dull. It was obvious 90% of
what I was about to deliver would go straight in the bin so all this drudgery
wad largely pointless. For a while I worked in a pretty rough area (by UK
standards, admittedly nowhere in the UK is really that dangerous compared to
much of the world), and on several occasions I was harassed by members of the
public. Though later I worked in a much nicer area and people were nice to me.

I suspect the main thing about the story isn't how great it is to be a
mailman, but how great it is to be good at people. I work from home and live
in quite a nice community, but I only know a handful of people. This is
basically because unless I have a common interest with someone I don't really
have anything to say for myself. Clearly not something that afflicts Floyd!

~~~
benj111
"I don't really have anything to say for myself"

Kids.

It's amazing how many times people will stop to say hello when a small child
says hello to them. We got invited into someone's garden last weekend to feed
their chickens.

Admittedly we live in a more rural area. Might not work so well on the mean
streets of London.

~~~
mcflibbles
There's no doubt lots of people are closely connected to their local community
through kids friends, their kids schools, their kids sports teams, etc. But
having kids only as a means to talk to people would be a bit drastic!

~~~
lrem
Kids are definitely the ultimate cure for loneliness. A couple years in and
you're likely to beg for some loneliness ;)

~~~
jcaprani
At least once a day

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vowelless
Unlike other commentators, this doesn’t make me feel bad about my cubicle job
working on abstract problems.

It does make me sad about living in a sterile mega city with no form of
community with my neighbors. It makes me miss the days I used to live in a
much smaller town, in my home land, where everyone knew each other, and we had
shared festivals, feasts and fasts together.

Thanks for sharing the twitter thread.

~~~
kasey_junk
This story takes place in Atlanta. The metro area has something like 6 million
people in it. Not a 'mega city' but also not a small town.

Perhaps it's not the city that is causing the lack of community with
neighbors?

~~~
xeromal
This happens in Marietta which is a sizeable city but not Atlanta. It's
outside of Atlanta like how Irvine is outside of LA.

My family lives in Acworth an hour a way and there are chickens wandering
people's yards. GA is a bit different in that regard.

~~~
rhombocombus
As a former Atlantan (I lived in EAV or near it for 12 years) now living on
the west coast I think the trend follows here as well: twenty minutes outside
of Portland and you're in the "sticks." That said, the folks who live in the
further flung suburbs, exurbs, and "sticks" outside Portland tend to be a good
bit nicer than their Atlanta area counterparts in my experience

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nemo1618
Stories like this make you question whether it's worth being paid all this
money to spend your life staring at a screen in a climate-controlled cube
solving abstract problems that provide approximately zero benefit to your
family, friends, and neighbors.

~~~
snarf21
You need to separate your work from your purpose. Think of work as merely
collecting resources to maintain life. Get a hobby or volunteer at a charity
and find purpose there. I've been much happier with putting my "self" into
designing and testing board games. I forget about the dumpster fire after I
leave and focus my energy on something I enjoy creating.

~~~
rdiddly
I'll go ya one better and say _maybe forget your purpose entirely_. Not in a
negative, nihilistic way, but in kind of a Zenny way. You think Floyd here
thinks about his purpose? Well actually it seems like he has decided "my
purpose is to care for these people on my route," so maybe that's a bad
example for my point. Although it's worth noticing, HE decided that. Which
proves, it's totally arbitrary. Meaning is wherever you ascribe it (and
probably nowhere else).

Mainly the idea is not to let "purpose" be a logjam that stops you. Life will
happen to you regardless. Lately I've been trying to free myself from the
endless quest for (please use whiny voice, knit brow earnestly, hold upturned
fists close in front of you, and wiggle them slightly while saying)
_meeeaning_. It stymied me for a long time. But it has to be seen for the ego
trip it is. It's a "get over yourself" moment. Rein in that fanciful and
conceited ego that's always wondering what great and high purpose your
magnificent and important soul was cut out for. All that pressure! Letting go
of it is a bit of a death (ego death). But jeez what a relief. It frees you to
do whatever you want, which ironically is the only way you might actually end
up going on to do something worthwhile. (Worthwhile according to you.)

~~~
achillesheels
How is being anxious at discovering an objective value for oneself (“meaning”)
egotistical? If anything, it is an external reach out of the ego and _away_
from doing whatever you want.

~~~
rdiddly
My thought process is a bit circular and paradoxical, I admit it. I also tried
to be brief, which led to a long list at one point being truncated to the
phrase "whatever you want" which might be misleading. My intent was more like
"anything at all." In other words, meaning is everywhere. Even the post
office. (Or it's nowhere, and that's ok too.)

Wanting your life to be meaningful is still you, caring about your life,
that's the ego part. You can skip the whole meaning thing if you want, and
just start doing things. I dunno, it helped me unblock myself.

~~~
achillesheels
I understand the anxiety and the relief from abandoning a possibly unending
and self-destructive task for "purpose", but it is exactly that energy which
propels humans to do great things. But I agree, meaning can be everywhere.

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Roritharr
You don't have to be a mailman to transform your neighborhood closer to
something as heartwarming as this.

A good friend of mine worked as a programmer, then CEO, now Consultant... but
in his spare time he'd spend all his energy on community projects, organizing
everything, from Kids Halloween Tours in a small german city when that was
very uncommon, to Developer Usergroups, to Startup Events to Barcamps, to
TEDxs and so much more small and large.

Without him my area simply wouldn't be the same and many people know.

All it takes is just someone willing things like this into existence, over and
over again.

~~~
RandomBacon
Does the community have a recognition program? Key to the city?

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DisruptiveDave
This is fucking beautiful. At the same time it makes me a little sad to work
at a desk, hidden from all the people my work impacts. In a city and time
where neighbors keep their heads down when they pass each other and all the
mailpersons wear headphones.

~~~
badpun
The people our work impacts (at least directly) are often „disrupted” (made
redundant) by the new tech. It’s a good thing they don’t know us by name.

~~~
TeMPOraL
English being my second language, I picked up vocabulary from random places.
The word "disrupt" will forever be associated for me with "disruptor", a
weapon for "disrupting" the matter of ships and people, used by murderous
Klingons and backstabbing Romulans.

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colechristensen
Responses to stories like this make me uncomfortable.

I grew up on a small family farm in Iowa. Along with farming my father also
took a substitute job as a rural mail carrier mostly for health insurance.

I can't find a better word than fetishizing to describe how – what I would
call city people – think and talk about the world I grew up in.

Talking about where I came from and reading how people respond to this makes
me uncomfortable at times, and moreso it is incredibly difficult to actually
communicate to people without context how life was because of their pre-
existing impressions.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I didn't read the whole thing, but I read enough to get the sense that it is a
story about a place in America that still has a real sense of community. Many
people today don't really have that anymore and desperately long for it.

My father grew up on a farm and was part Cherokee. My mother is an immigrant.
I grew up some kind of sense of community and spent most of my adult life not
really finding that again.

I have a history of fostering phenomenal growth for online communities of a
certain size which then often seem to collapse and become a shadow of their
former selves after I leave. I think it has to do with me being able to foster
a real sense of community and no one else seems able to sustain that in my
absence.

I typically leave because of being treated abusively, basically. I'm never
seem to be given credit for what I am doing for the community. People seem
unable to recognize what I do and seem to have no idea how to relate to me in
a positive, constructive manner when I am actively fostering a sense of
community, which is something I seem to just have a knack for, having grown up
with certain things.

So I think people just long for a sense of community and it very often comes
out in weird ways.

That doesn't mean your discomfort is unjustified. It's completely justified.

I'm just making an observation about a phenomenon and hopefully that will be
somehow useful or meaningful information for someone reading the comments
here.

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dccoolgai
I can't articulate exactly why, but this is beautiful. I see it as an example
of what social media should have been and hopefully what it still might become
some day.

~~~
criddell
It is beautiful and it I don't think social media can ever be like that.

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philshem
This is a beautiful side of the US.

~~~
always4getpass
*humanity

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ryandrake
Happy story, but I'm also supremely jealous. The thought of retiring after
only _35 years_ of work! That's the outstanding accomplishment here. Either he
has a great pension (remember those?) or has been a terrific, disciplined
saver over those years. My Boomer parents all had generous pensions and they
also retired pretty early. Us younger folks are stuck with crappy 401(k)s that
place our futures in the hands of Wall Street and the stock market and other
"figure it out yourself" investment vehicles. I feel like this is another
ladder that's been pulled up after that generation reached the top.

~~~
the_gastropod
The number of work years needed before you can retire can entirely be
determined by the % of your take-home pay you save. For example, to retire in
35 years (assuming a 0 net-worth), you need to save 21.5% of your money. If
you're on HackerNews, you _probably_ have a high enough salary where that's
absolutely doable. Bump it up to 35%, and you can knock another decade off of
your working career.

You can play around with the numbers here:
[https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement](https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement)

~~~
badpun
This page, like all FIRE stuff, is making rather positive assumptions about
the ROI on savings (they’re assuming 5% over inflation). I, for my
calculations, am personally assuming 0% growth - I just don’t want to end on a
street when I’m 65 or 75.

~~~
the_gastropod
Even if that's true, what's the best strategy? I posit that learning to live
on less is a pretty good one.

~~~
badpun
I agree. My point is that all the FIRE crowd is quitting work way too early,
due to optimistic assumptions.

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dsfyu404ed
Just think, for at least 25 of those years he's been driving the same truck.

~~~
samfriedman
Indeed, the Grumman LLV is very well designed for longevity!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
It's a Chevy S10 that was spec'd with the reliable low power engine and a
different body. It's not really anything special in terms of reliability. The
post office simply committed to keeping them for 30yr then followed through.
It helps that they were working with a purpose built commercial body and not
an "engineered to a price point" stock truck body. Any other similar truck
platform of the era would have fared similarly. The late 80s/early 90s were a
time when the electronics of the 90s were coming to maturity but hadn't yet
snowballed in sheer volume like they did in late 90s and early 2000s.

In any other context the internet would be all "hurr durr, GM builds junk, muh
indestructible Hilux because top gear". Goes to show you how much reputation
and framing matters.

In hindsight the best available platform of the late 90s/early 90s for sheer
reliability (in postal use) would have been a 1st gen Explorer only because
the front suspension is better suited to handling potholes and driving over
curbs all day and the 31spl 8.8 rear axle is complete overkill for the
application (all other differences are minor/negligible IMO).

~~~
noir_lord
> The late 80s/early 90s were a time when the electronics of the 90s were
> coming to maturity but hadn't yet snowballed in sheer volume like they did
> in late 90s and early 2000s.

A very valid point, the ECU's etc around 1990 got a lot of the benefit of
having a modern ECU with a fraction of the complexity and a lot of them where
bulletproof in design.

Fascinating read on the history of computers in cars.

[http://www.chipsetc.com/computer-chips-inside-the-
car.html](http://www.chipsetc.com/computer-chips-inside-the-car.html)

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MagicPropmaker
There's something to be said with our Government personally reaching out to
every resident and citizen, even if to just deliver a letter (yes, I know the
USPS isn't quite the "Government" any more, but it's close). It makes us feel
connected and part of something.

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lupire
I'm curious what sort of magic made her know it was his last day, and move her
to document the day like that. Things like this are beautiful but I don't know
how to create them in my life. It it down to an inherent personality type?

~~~
danso
As a former newspaper reporter who occasionally was assigned to do these kinds
of community features (though nothing this well-done), I remember that editors
and reporters would frequently get pitches (by email or call) from random
folks – because newspapers routinely publish these kinds of stories, and this
was well before social media was a viable place for sharing stories.

The irony here is that the author _is_ a newspaper reporter/editor at the
Atlanta Journal Constitution, and one of the most surprising things about this
to me is how the AJC's website apparently didn't have this story in
traditional article format. The only thing I see is a followup -- a recap of
the original Twitter thread, with the update that Mr. Martin's GoFundMe went
viral:

[https://www.ajc.com/news/think-and-smile-hundreds-
celebrate-...](https://www.ajc.com/news/think-and-smile-hundreds-celebrate-
mailman-retirement/N6cdUdsNhn1Lq09wAF9sPL/)

But when I think about it, I wonder if a traditional article (full of images)
would have worked as well as the Twitter thread? I'm probably more tolerant of
Twitter threads as a format than most people are, but this was one time in
which the Twitter format – this includes the way we interact by scrolling
through Twitter threads – really seemed to strengthen the material.

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chad_strategic
This article makes me happy, oddly enough someone started cutting onions in my
office. I hate when they do that!

I'm going to continue to strive to be a good person, much like Floyd.

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kunjank
I love it. Goes to show that you can have a lasting impact no matter what job
title you have.

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_bxg1
Good to see some wholesome content

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the_arun
This is just awesome! Thanks for sharing @danso!

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ct520
Wow this is awesome!

