Dan: 0:00

When John Ayala was 18, he got a job as a clerk at a post office in Los Angeles.

John: 0:07

Yeah. My mom was a clerk and I think she's the one who filled out the application for me.

Dan: 0:14

In the proud tradition of moms everywhere.

John: 0:16

Right. 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.

Dan: 0:33

And it did work out. Within six months, he had a job as a mail carrier, which fit him a lot better. Though his new coworkers weren't sure he was going to last.

John: 0:43

They took bets on me. The old timers, they would bet, is this guy gonna make it or is he not?

Dan: 0:50

Even John wasn't sure he'd last.

John: 0:53

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. 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 my coworkers would go and it was just like, alright, I'm gonna just keep trying to do this.

Dan: 1:22

John is a big gregarious guy with a heavy metal ponytail. He became a fixture in the LA neighborhood where he delivered the mail. He was a mail carrier for 42 years and retired in 2026.

John: 1:36

I got still got the long hair, so I was kind of the heavy metal mailman.

Dan: 1:41

So you're kinda like a character. Maybe it made it easy for people to talk to you or something.

John: 1:46

Might be. There you go.

Dan: 2:01

I'm Dan Heath and this is What It's Like To Be. In every episode, walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession, a health inspector, an ice cream truck driver, a diplomat. We wanna 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. John spent most of his career delivering mail in a quiet wooded hillside neighborhood in Northeast Los Angeles called Mount Washington.

John: 2:48

Okay. It's you gotta go up a hill.

Dan: 2:51

Mhmm.

John: 2:51

And then there's nothing but million or $2,000,000 houses now.

Dan: 2:58

Oh, wow. So this is a nice area.

John: 3:00

So it is a really nice area and just going from block to block, you know, I drove to every house. I'd never park and walk 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.

Dan: 3:27

And how did you end up in that area? Were you just assigned kind of randomly?

John: 3:32

Well, when a carrier retires or loses their job, you get to bid on it.

Dan: 3:39

Oh.

John: 3:39

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.

Dan: 3:50

I 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 gonna 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.

John: 4:05

Yeah. Yeah. Like, I just retired, and the person with the most seniority who wanted my route got it.

Dan: 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?

John: 4:28

Okay. Well, when I first started, we used to start at 6AM, which was great. I loved it because then you were off at two-thirty 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 four-thirty. But then I'll tell you, when we started at six o'clock and I was in a band and we were or watching other bands and partying, I always kept a uniform in the car just in case I didn't make it home.

Dan: 4:57

That was wise.

John: 4:59

Yes. And then it became six-thirty and then seven o'clock and then seven-thirty and then eight o'clock which I hated. I hated the eight o'clock time because now I'm dealing with traffic in the morning.

Dan: 5:15

Traffic. The bane of an Angelino's existence. John says the rush hour traffic was part of what pushed him to retire.

John: 5:22

If we were starting at six, six-thirty, seven o'clock, I might still be working.

Dan: 5:28

Yeah.

John: 5:29

Because I just didn't like the traffic.

Dan: 5:31

So back in the early 6AM 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?

John: 5:40

Yeah. There were quite a few. Or the first time I ever called out sick, I called my mom. I was in a hotel after a gig and I I asked her, can you call out sick for me?

Dan: 6:00

And she said, I think I can guess, but she said?

John: 6:03

She said she would.

Dan: 6:05

I don't think my mom would have taken that bait. I asked John how he started his shifts each morning.

John: 6:13

Back in the day, you had to sort out your letters and you had to sort out your magazines and catalogs and which are called flats.

Dan: 6:22

Flats or like clothes catalogs or that sort of thing?

John: 6:26

Yeah. Like say People Magazine.

Dan: 6:28

Oh, okay.

John: 6:28

Yeah. They're called flats.

Dan: 6:30

Mhmm.

John: 6:30

And we had more time back then to do it.

Dan: 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 nineteen nineties, the postal service automated that task with Delivery Point Sequencing or DPS. After that...

John: 6:49

The letters came in order of the way the route is. So you didn't have to be that much time in the office anymore.

Dan: 6:58

Yeah. Yeah.

John: 6:59

So they started adding to the routes.

Dan: 7:02

Oh, I was gonna say that that that sounds like it would be good for you but it sounds like they made up for it by making your route bigger.

John: 7:09

Yeah, exactly. I mean, the routes were four and a half hours to five hours in the eighties.

Dan: 7:15

Mhmm.

John: 7:16

Because you had to do more work in the office.

Dan: 7:19

Mm.

John: 7:19

But then when they added this thing called DPS, you didn't have to do the letters.

Dan: 7:25

Right. And so you go to the your local post office, you pick up your mail and then are you driving the same truck every day?

John: 7:35

The truck is assigned to the route.

Dan: 7:38

Okay. And so you have your own truck and you, you know, stock the day's mail and then you're off?

John: 7:45

No. And then the packages.

Dan: 7:48

Oh.

John: 7:48

Don't forget the packages.

Dan: 7:50

Yeah.

John: 7:51

I think Amazon saved us back in 2008 or 2009, whatever, because we were ready to go under. And then Amazon came and they hired us to do most of their packages. I had about 470 houses I delivered to. And during the peak time of Amazon, I would have over 200 packages to deliver.

Dan: 8:18

Woah. So like almost every other house had a package. That is crazy.

John: 8:23

Yeah. I mean, Christmas time forget it. Forget it. It was a whole different story. It was like almost 300.

Dan: 8:30

And so do you have to load up all those packages or are they sort of prepacked in your car for you or...?

John: 8:37

The packages you gotta load up yourself and I think that's what killed my back.

Dan: 8:42

Yeah. And so would your truck be almost full or was there usually lots of space or like, I'm trying to visualize what the back of your truck looked like.

John: 8:52

So once they put they put shelves in the truck at some point and it got a little better.

Dan: 8:59

Mhmm.

John: 9:00

So I could put things on the shelves. One of my greatest tools was a golf club because I could reach from the front to the back

Dan: 9:09

Oh, that's ingenious.

John: 9:11

And pull the package up instead of going to the back and opening it.

Dan: 9:18

Did you ever wear a step counter when you did your route?

John: 9:21

I wore a Fitbit my last few years

Dan: 9:24

Mhmm.

John: 9:24

And it would be anywhere from 16,000 to 22,000.

Dan: 9:30

Wow. Every day. So that's like, you know, eight to 11 miles basically a day.

John: 9:36

And I drive to every house.

Dan: 9:38

Yeah. And that's the thing about this is not like walking around a track. This is like short spurts up and down bending over, which makes it really probably double or triple that amount of cardio per step.

John: 9:52

Yeah. Because you you know, back in the day, you could leave a package for somebody on top of the mailbox. But in Mount Washington, there was an article about them that they were becoming little Beverly Hills. It was in the LA Times. And then we started having theft. Theft of the mail, theft of the packages. So I always walked up to the door if the package wouldn't fit in the mailbox, you know, ring the bell, have a conversation, get on to the next house.

Dan: 10:28

Right. Right. What kind of conversations happen in those moments?

John: 10:34

Most of the time, it was about sports or music. Just like, how are you doing? What's going on? Once in a while, someone would ask me, have you seen Joe across the street? We haven't heard from him.

Dan: 10:50

Oh.

John: 10:51

And I'm like, yeah, I think he's in the hospital.

Dan: 10:55

Oh wow. So you're almost like the neighborhood grapevine.

John: 10:58

Yes.

Dan: 10:59

I never would have thought about that.

John: 11:02

There was one time I the mail was piling up in one of my friend's mailboxes and I alerted the neighbor that maybe you should check on this guy. And they did and unfortunately he had passed away.

Dan: 11:19

Oh no.

John: 11:21

Yeah. So...

Dan: 11:22

And so you were you were the person who realized it or at least realized something was off.

John: 11:27

Right. Right.

Dan: 11:28

Wow.

John: 11:29

Yeah. And I'll tell you what, the lady who I told to check on him, she wrote a letter to the Los Angeles postmaster and I received a letter with a $5 gift certificate to McDonald's.

Dan: 11:51

A king's ransom.

John: 11:53

For my good deed and it it even wasn't $5, it was 5 $1.

Dan: 12:02

Somehow, I feel like it would have been better recognition just without the $5 McDonald's gift card. Like, if they just said thank you for being thoughtful.

John: 12:10

Yeah. Exactly.

Dan: 12:13

In 2017, the postal service in France started a service called Watch Over My Parents. For an extra monthly fee, mail carriers will check-in during their routes on older residents, people who might have no loved ones nearby. That sense of isolation was something John witnessed during the COVID lockdown.

John: 12:34

All single people, older single people had to talk to was the mailman.

Dan: 12:41

Yeah.

John: 12:42

So, you know, we're we're both wearing masks, we're talking

Dan: 12:46

Mhmm.

John: 12:47

You know, because they didn't have anyone else.

Dan: 12:50

Right. Were there older people on your route that you had the sense that maybe you were the only person they would chat with day to day?

John: 12:59

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you know, it wasn't always day to day, it was, you know, maybe once or twice a week.

Dan: 13:07

Who did you most look forward to running into on your route?

John: 13:11

Just the regular guys. I had a friend on Rome named Ken, his neighbor was Helen, across the street was John and Gretchen, I had Lisa, I had Yale, I had Pat. Oh, Pat. Pat might have been my best friend on the route. I always text him, you know, we used to have this thing called 15. He told me to text him when I was fifteen minutes away and he'll have some snacks for me.

Dan: 13:42

Oh my gosh.

John: 13:43

That was always on Saturday.

Dan: 13:45

And so what would he what would he have ready for you?

John: 13:48

Oh I don't know, peanuts, potato chips, he had a beer but I didn't drink the beer.

Dan: 13:56

Of course not.

John: 13:56

I waited till I got home. I had a nice cooler that I just put it in.

Dan: 14:02

What was Pat like?

John: 14:04

Pat was an older man who was retired and he had told me one day his wife was in the hospital when I was going down the hill. Okay? And then I come back up like an hour and a half later and I go, well how's she doing? She she passed away. And I'm like, I had to give him a hug.

Dan: 14:38

Yeah.

John: 14:38

You know, I didn't know what to do, we both started crying, I gave him a hug. And I mean, things could get emotional out there.

Dan: 14:50

Yeah. I mean you got to know these people for many many many years. Yeah.

John: 14:54

Oh, they were my friends. I mean, it was insane.

Dan: 14:59

After a quick break, the dog factor. Stay with us.

Dallas Taylor: 15:05

I'm Dallas Taylor, host of the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast. On our show, sound designers, musicians, and experts reveal the secrets behind the most iconic sounds in the world. From the "I'm lovin'" it jingle to the sound effects of Star Wars, from the Netflix "tudum", to the music and sounds of Zelda. To unlock your sonic world, follow Twenty Thousand Hertz right here in your podcast player.

Dan: 15:35

We have to talk about the dog factor. I think one of people's first associations with mail carriers is that you seem to be the mortal enemies of dogs everywhere. What do you think of dogs after decades on the job?

John: 15:51

I love them.

Dan: 15:52

Really?

John: 15:53

I love them. I've only been bitten once in forty two years and that was my second year in 1985 and I never been bit again.

Dan: 16:05

No kidding. What was your secret?

John: 16:07

I I got to know. I got to know the dogs.

Dan: 16:10

Yeah. I guess they learned your scent after 42 years, right? I guess you're on like the fourth generation dog at that point.

John: 16:17

Okay. But there was this one little dog that used to bark at me in the corner of the top of his garage while I put the mail.

Dan: 16:27

Okay.

John: 16:27

And I I really hated him every day. And then one day, they were doing construction on the house and he got out and he tried.

Dan: 16:39

Oh.

John: 16:40

He tried to get me.

Dan: 16:42

Oh man.

John: 16:42

But I had my dog spray ready.

Dan: 16:45

Oh, dog spray? Is that sort of like pepper spray for dogs or something?

John: 16:49

Yeah yeah. I had it ready and I gotta say, that's the only dog I sprayed in over thirty years.

Dan: 16:59

So tell me of the story of of the dog that bit you back in your second year.

John: 17:04

Okay. Now we're going back to 1985, I'm in the postal jeep. Do you remember the jeeps?

Dan: 17:14

Sorta, yeah.

John: 17:15

Okay. So I'm going through the mail for the next house, I'm sitting in my vehicle and this dog came up and bit me in the leg.

Dan: 17:27

Wait, you were sitting in the jeep?

John: 17:30

Yeah. I'm sitting in the vehicle.

Dan: 17:32

And it just sought you out for a bite.

John: 17:34

Yeah. And he got me. He got me.

Dan: 17:36

That's not right.

John: 17:37

And then from what I what I heard from neighbors was he also bit the trash truck guy. He also bit, I don't know, somebody else. I just I wasn't paying attention because I'm looking to the left going through the mail for the next few houses

Dan: 17:55

Right.

John: 17:55

And he got me. My leg was the door was open, my leg was out.

Dan: 17:59

So what happened? Like, it bites you and then do you have to kick it or something to get it away or, like, what happened next?

John: 18:06

No. He took off. He took off.

Dan: 18:08

It just had one gratuitous bite and then it was like a hit and run animal.

John: 18:12

No. But I'll tell you what, I've had incidences where a dog has almost got me and I'll get out in the vehicle and get my hands ready and go, let's go. Let's go. You know?

Dan: 18:26

I think another thing that people associate with mail carriers is working in any weather. What's the worst weather you've ever had to deliver in?

John: 18:36

Okay. The worst weather I ever had to deliver in. A couple of years ago in Los Angeles, we had six days of 40 degree weather in a row. And the first day, I'm shivering, I'm shivering. And then the second day I took soup in the thermos and that helped me out a little bit. But six days of 40 degree weather, I did not sign up for.

Dan: 19:12

I feel like there's a lot of people who live in like Minnesota that are chuckling right now. That's a very LA comment about the the 40 degree weather.

John: 19:23

I I didn't mind working in the rain. I I I liked it. I liked it.

Dan: 19:27

Wait. You liked working in the rain?

John: 19:29

I liked working in the rain.

Dan: 19:31

Why?

John: 19:32

It was fun and it was different and we only had it about 10 times out here a year, you know. But what I would do is I would go to the dollar store or something and I would buy plastic bags.

Dan: 19:46

Mhmm.

John: 19:47

And when it rained, I would put the customer's parcel in the bag. And if they weren't home, and I would leave it instead of that getting all wet.

Dan: 19:58

That was such a nice thing to do. And I love that that was like your idea, it wasn't a postal service policy or something.

John: 20:05

Yeah. Yeah. They didn't give us bags, you know.

Dan: 20:08

One thing I wanted to ask you about is, what do your supervisors track about your performance on the job?

John: 20:16

Oh nowadays they they could track everything. It wasn't like that from '84 to, I don't know, just a few years ago. But we have scanners with GPS. They could track they don't want us to back up in the vehicle, they could track that.

Dan: 20:34

Oh really? Why don't they want you to back up?

John: 20:37

Well because it's it's it's unsafe.

Dan: 20:41

Oh.

John: 20:43

But in my route, I had to because I have cul de sacs.

Dan: 20:48

Mhmm.

John: 20:49

But if if it's a little one, they wouldn't say nothing. But sometimes you may maybe you miss a package, you're at the next house and there was a package for the last house so you back up.

Dan: 21:03

Uh-huh.

John: 21:03

And then they'll they'll question you the next day, why did you back up?

Dan: 21:08

You're kidding. Wow. I can't believe somebody would ask I mean, that level of granularity, that's surprising to me. And are they expecting you you said you cover, you know, 470 some houses, like, did they have like a number in their head, like, okay, well according to our logistics, you should finish 470 houses in this many hours in this many minutes.

John: 21:31

Yeah. Usually, mine mine was an eight hour route. It was just eight hours every day. If I needed extra time, there's a form to fill out for if you want overtime or maybe you want auxiliary assistance that day.

Dan: 21:47

Auxiliary assistance would be for what? Like if you had a really heavy package or something or...?

John: 21:52

No. Like if you think you're over for the day of eight hours.

Dan: 21:56

And what what would make you run behind schedule? Just like a long conversation with someone or...?

John: 22:02

If I had a long conversation with someone, I would just take a couple minutes out of my lunch.

Dan: 22:09

Mm.

John: 22:10

You know, because you you take your lunch on the street.

Dan: 22:13

Okay.

John: 22:13

But you knew how much time you needed before you left for the route.

Dan: 22:19

Mhmm. Did you ever get pressure like, my nightmare of your boss is that they're bugging you not to talk to people. John, you gotta stay on track and, you know, speed up the delivery. Let's be more efficient. Did that happen or I'm secretly hoping it didn't?

John: 22:35

No. Because you know what? It's customer service.

Dan: 22:39

Well, I'm glad. My fear is if Amazon takes over the postal service one day, conversations will be squeezed out as waste.

John: 22:49

No. But I never went over eight hours for talking to people.

Dan: 22:55

Yeah. Right.

John: 22:56

You know, if if I did, it was because of mail. And I even had a supervisor at the end, his name Brian, he was cool. He goes, if we thought we were gonna go over, because we were off at four-thirty at this point, call at two and let us know.

Dan: 23:15

Mhmm.

John: 23:16

And I heard him tell the other supervisor, if John needs time, John needs time, we're not gonna mess with him.

Dan: 23:25

Yeah.

John: 23:25

But they they'll write up people who go over sometimes a hour or they go over two hours or something.

Dan: 23:34

So John, we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions. Here we go. What is a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

John: 23:48

Turn him loose.

Dan: 23:49

Turn him loose. What does that mean?

John: 23:51

We get a new hiree, he gets trained at first and then we turn him loose.

Dan: 24:00

Okay. So would you have new hires like shadowing you?

John: 24:05

Not me. Not me. I didn't want any part of that. But a new hire would shadow somebody for the day and then they would take a couple hours of mail and this it was funny because they would take a couple hours and I go, dude, if you could do this in four hours, you're gonna be good. Oh, I could do it in three. Took them five or six, you know.

Dan: 24:33

What do you learn about people from the mail that they get?

John: 24:37

You all you could you know who got a drunk driving?

Dan: 24:41

Oh, yeah. So you know when they get in trouble with the law.

John: 24:45

I do know when they get in trouble with the law. I know when they owe the IRS.

Dan: 24:51

What do what do those envelopes look like? Just the IRS but with some extra warnings on the outside or something?

John: 24:58

No. Nothing like that. It's just something from the IRS. And what was funny, on April fool's day, I would tell if I saw someone, would go, hey. You got a letter to sign from the IRS. He's like, what? What?

Dan: 25:17

What what else did you notice?

John: 25:19

Oh, just I mean, if there's a birthday coming because people get a lot of cards.

Dan: 25:25

Oh, yeah. Mhmm. You probably know if someone's about to go to college because all the view books start arriving.

John: 25:31

The college thing, that that when my son, you know, started getting those, I really started keeping an eye on on that and I would talk to people about, yeah, well where's Edward gonna go to college? We're undecided yet but yeah, that's a good one. Perfect.

Dan: 25:49

What is an aspect of your work that you consistently savored?

John: 25:54

I mean, just the longevity of being able to do it this long. You know, even after two knee replacements, the camaraderie I had with all the guys and and the gals.

Dan: 26:08

But that camaraderie clearly extended not just to his colleagues at the postal service, but to the community he worked in in Mount Washington. There were the characters in the neighborhood.

John: 26:20

I had a guy one time, he was at the end of my route, but he goes, John, if you bring me my check early, I'll buy you a 12 pack.

Dan: 26:32

There was the elementary school where he would go and talk about being a mail carrier.

John: 26:37

The teachers would ask the questions and I would tell them about my job and then, when I left, bye, mister mailbox.

Dan: 26:48

You were like a a school celebrity.

John: 26:50

Oh, yeah.

Dan: 26:52

And when he retired, there was the memory of it all.

John: 26:55

I'll be up sometimes in the middle of the night, and I just think I go the way the route went and I I think about everybody.

Dan: 27:06

Yeah.

John: 27:07

Because I really miss them. I miss them all. Man, that was the best part of the job was delivering the mail. You know, oh, it's in my mind forever.

Dan: 27:27

John Ayala was a mail carrier in Los Angeles. This conversation reminded me so much of the very first episode of this show with Howard Hart, the stadium beer vendor. Howard worked in Baltimore's baseball stadium for over thirty five years and for most of that time, he served the same section of stands. He got to know people, got to know their kids, watch their kids grow up. By the end of his career, he was exchanging Christmas cards with some of the fans that he sold beer to. And John had a similar story, working the same neighborhood year after year. He knew everyone. They talked about sports, they brought him snacks, they came to his shows. He knew who was sick and who was lonely. Notice that in both jobs, none of this was a requirement. The job is to sell fans beers. The job is to deliver people's mail. You could accomplish that job without ever having a long conversation, without ever making a friend. But Howard and John conjured a community that otherwise would not have existed. What's so striking to me is that those relationships, the thing they both cherished most, the thing that made them both tear up as they reflected on their career, those relationships formed because of their willingness to go beyond the job description. The part of the jobs they loved the most was the part they brought. Loading the truck before the day begins, bending, lifting, driving and repeating, dealing with aggressive dogs and bad weather, and keeping a neighborhood connected by showing up every day. Folks, that's what it's like to be a mail carrier. A shout out to recent Apple podcast reviewers, sidedoor, WiWall, Dmeymca, and The Zoop. This episode was produced by Matt Purdy. I'm Dan Heath. See you next time.