Think about being a
young man and you lose an arm in a farming accident when you are 19. Do you
give up on having a career?
“I didn’t have anything lined up when I moved
(to Florida from New Jersey), but I knew I wanted to do something outdoors,” he
says. “I saw my letter carrier deliver my mail each day and decided that’s what
I wanted to do.”
In 1998, Doug Kennedy took the postal exam and
was hired as a rural carrier associate (RCA).
“I was excited and nervous because of my
situation. When I came in here it was overwhelming because everyone had two
arms and doing this job,” Kennedy says with a laugh. “I was kind of like, ‘Am I
going to be able to do this?’ But after a few times, it felt natural.
“It’s difficult to learn a new route. When I
was an RCA, I did almost every route in here. It’s been a long time since I’ve
subbed and sometimes I think, ‘How did I do that?’”
In five years, he became a regular rural
letter carrier. He currently has a route with more than 600 deliveries
Kennedy has worked his entire career at the
Palm Harbor Post Office. Postmaster Nicole Alexander-Harris describes Kennedy
as an excellent employee. “I never have complaints on his route and customers
never have a bad word to say about him,” she says.
The holiday season is usually the busiest time
of year for parcels, but with the recent COVID pandemic, Kennedy says he has
seen an increase in package volume. “COVID is a concern to me but it hasn’t
impacted my work. I practice social distancing, wash my hands and clean the
interior of my LLV more often.
“I like coming to work, and I like the area.
My girlfriend, Katy, works here which makes it nice; she is always willing to
lend a helping hand.”
“We’re happy to have such a fine rural carrier
in our office,” says Alexander-Harris. “He’s a great asset to the Postal
Service.”
Times have
changed since Rural Carrier Doug Kennedy began his postal career in 1998: “When
I first started, we didn’t even have scanners. We used little slips of paper to
keep track of everything, and it created lots of paperwork. I think scanners
are beneficial to USPS and its customers because today everything is tracked.”
