Recent 3 digit meetings

August 27^th was the 3 digit meeting for the MPOO H area. The speaker was Nick Ciummo (pronounced like Chew - mo, who’da figgered?) and I have to admit I feared the presentation would be boring, so I went to see my friends and fellow postmasters. I was wrong. Nick was an engaging speaker and made what could easily have been a boring topic very interesting and fun. He started with some one liners of excuses for doing things wrong in our offices. As he admitted, and we know, it’s difficult to follow the proper procedures when we may not have been told what they are, and don’t know where to find them, and may not be able to decipher the "postalease" if we did find them.

The first topic was building keys. The 1629 form is confusing and is rarely filled out correctly. When I spoke to him about the electronic one on the financial control support site, he said as long as we could show it to an inspector it was ok if it was electronic instead of hard copy. The two items that are most often wrong on the 1629 are the total number of keys available and remarks column. The total number of keys is not the total in the safe, it’s the grand total of the safe plus any issued to employees. The remarks column should indicate how many are assigned, so a key to a storage room that no one has assigned to them would have a remark of 0 assigned. On the other hand, the key to my front door, would show 6 available (I got two "spares") and 4 assigned (me, PMR, Carrier, HCR driver). The 1628 is the individual record of keys, and all assigned keys should be on the 1628’s and signed, so this form must be a hard copy. The spreadsheet version that financial control has on their website has a log to document the semi-annual (twice a year) audit, or Nick said you can just sign and date the back of the 1628 when you review the keys. If you print the 1628 from the blue page, you can print it as a full sheet of paper and be able to log quite a few years of semi-annual reviews on it. It was suggested that if you have to call someone out of the office who just fills in to audit their keys, ask them to tell you what serial numbers and brands of keys they have, don’t ask them if they have a certain key.

The next topic was the 3867 form for accountable items. If you look at the second column, it tells us what needs to be recorded at the top of the column. Express and COD need individual item numbers, all other just how many items (3 Certifieds, 2 Insured…). Since the carrier is required to sign for any arrow keys (metro keys, collection box keys) by serial number on a daily basis, this form can be used for that too, there are many different options for a facility to account for arrow keys daily. The third column has instructions at the bottom of the column, telling us what to record there for return receipts, receipt requesting address, and addressee only (restricted delivery). The carrier must sign (not initial) for all accountables and account for them when they come back, which may be the next day in an intermediate office. When they are accounted for, the Postmaster or clerk clears the carrier by signing the cleared column, and indicates the number of items left notice, delivered, and that the key was returned when applicable (will not apply to intermediate offices as the head out office supplies any keys). While certifieds and insureds do not need to be logged for PO Box section, registered’s do, so the form will be used even in non-carrier offices for that purpose.

The next topic was registereds in the safe for the next day. We should use a 3854 book to assign any registereds to the next person. Just use one page and keep the book handy at the safe, so it should last a long time. If this is not done, the local Postmaster is responsible for any lost items. Just fill it out like the one you use for the HCR driver except the "To:" line at the top of the form should be your local office safe/vault (Clatonia safe), the item(s) is/are the registereds in the safe, and you sign the top line like we do for the HCR driver. When the next person verifies the registereds are there, they sign the bottom line like the HCR driver does, and if they don’t deliver the registered that day, then they do the same all over. Many offices do not realize, a correctly completed Qrtrly Reg Mail Audit will ensure proper handling of registers no matter what size office.

The last topic was the COOP plan. The two sections that have the most issues are 11 and 12. Section 12 is all the contact numbers and it’s rare that we don’t have a district employee change or a new number for that area. Section 11 is a running tally of all the changes made to the form, just keep it simple and type in "updated section 12" or whatever you did in a simple one line statement and then the date (nothing else in the date block,,, just the date). If you have run out of space, don’t delete anything. Just put your mouse cursor after the date in the last date block and press enter on the keyboard. This should pop in another set of spaces to enter the new information.

All in all, I’m glad I went, not just to see my friends and hear Todd, but because Nick turned out to be a great speaker.

By Bruce Ritter, Postmaster Clatonia , NE   68328