By Stephen Starring Grant
Simon & Schuster 2025
Reviewed by Steve Halpern
In our day to day lives, we depend on millions of workers who toil to produce the goods and services we need and want. One of those services is the delivery of the mail by the women and men who work for the postal service. However, most of us aren't aware of the immense challenges postal employees face every day.
Stephen Starring Grant has a masters degree in fine arts. He parleyed that degree into jobs with marketing companies and lived in New York, Los Angeles, and London. Then, one day his boss informed Grant that his marketing job was over.
At the time, Grant was living in the area of Blacksburg, Virginia. His father moved the family there to take a job at Virginia Tech University. Because of the astronomical cost of living in New York City, Grant moved his family back to Blacksburg.
At this point, Grant felt he needed a job with health care insurance and there was a job opening at the post office. Because of the brutally difficult working conditions, jobs at the post office aren't difficult to get. Holding on to those jobs is a totally different story.
I should say that I was also hired by the post office. While I'm in fairly good shape, I was hired when I was about 60 years old. Grant was hired at the age of 50. Being a starting letter carrier favors workers who are younger.
While I was on probation, I developed a herniated disk in my back. I was in unimaginably excruciating pain. I called out for work. The person I spoke to told me that if I wanted the job, I would need to come to work.
On my way to the doctor's office I needed to rest before I could walk one block. The intense pain caused my blood pressure to jump to 190 while 120 is normal. Needless to say the manager at the post office found a way to fire me, even though it is supposed to be illegal to fire someone for a job related injury.
Just as in my case, Stephen Grant was overwhelmed with the job of letter carrier. The combination of sorting the mail, traveling to the many mail deliveries, and then finding where the mail needs to go can seem to be an insurmountable task for a new employee. One of Grant's older co-workers said she cried every day for three months after she started the job.
Then there is the transportation to and from the deliveries. Grant was a rural carrier and delivered most mail directly from a vehicle. He wasn't issued a post office truck and needed to use his own pickup. The problem is that mail trucks have steering wheels on the right side. Grant's truck, like nearly all vehicles has the steering wheel on the left side.
This meant that Grant needed to do his job as a contortionist. He needed to sit on the right, while steering, accelerating, and breaking from the left side. Had grant been given a postal vehicle, this would have been sweltering hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter.
Stephen Grant and his editors brought together a compelling story. They gave us a vivid portrayal of his many adventures delivering the mail. One story was especially compelling. Grant carried two refrigerators on his back to a home that was way off the main road. On the way to this home, he needed to take off his shoes and socks to walk through a stream. At one point he was waist deep in water.
Grant's book reminded me of several other books that reported on the unimaginable difficulties working people experience every day. One is the late Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain reported on his job as a chef. He routinely worked in cramped hot spaces as fast as he could, juggling many ingredients, surrounded by all kinds of profanity on sixteen hour shifts. The one expression not allowed in his work life was; "That's not my job."
Then there was Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle. This book documented conditions in the meat packing industry in Chicago, published in 1906. Then there was the French author Emil Zola's book Germinal that documented the unimaginably horrendous conditions of French miners published in 1885.
Clearly many working conditions have improved over the years. However, Stephen Grant's book demonstrates that there continues to be profound problems facing workers. We might also say that the problems faced by Grant appear to be minor compared to about 80% of the workers in the world who are paid about $10 per day or less.
This brings me to a story in Grant's book that puts this in perspective. Grant was faced with an abusive customer who refused to cooperate and told Grant to "take responsibility" for the fact that she hadn't received her package.
For the rest of the day Grant was angry and took this out on his wife and two daughters. His family was concerned about him. Then with tears in his eyes he said: "Everyone is worried about me because I'm a goddamned loser."
For me, this story gets to the heart of the problem. Inequality is one of the very foundations of the political-economic system of capitalism. There are workers who toil every day to produce the goods and services we all depend on. Then there is the tiny minority of capitalists who produce nothing, but have more wealth than they could use in 100 lifetimes.
Before Grant found another job in marketing, the savings he had accumulated were nearly gone. This meant that his salary at the post office was inadequate to provide for his family. However, in the past postal employees could have provided a comfortable living for their family members. This underscores the fact that there has been a decline in the standard of living for most workers in this country.
So, for a moment allow me to speculate about the possibilities of what a socialist workers government could accomplish. First, I read this book in paperback because of a recommendation by a sales clerk in a book store. Normally read books on my electronic tablet.
While I respect people who like to read paperback or hardcover books, electronic tablets have many advantages. On my tablet, I can highlight passages and make notes on what I read. This is more awkward with a paperback. I can point to a word I don't understand and immediately get the definition. I don't need to leave the home where I live to purchase an e-book. I can also read the e-book on my cell phone.
Stephen Grant told a story of how he needed to fill his pickup truck with law books a father was sending to his daughter who was a law student. All those books could have fit into one or two tablets that could fit into the glove box of his truck.
So, how can society be reorganized in a much more rational way? We all need to have about eight things for our entire lives. These include food, clothing, housing, transportation, communication, health care, education, and exposure to cultural activities. In order to purchase these goods and services, we need to pay for profits for manufacturing, transport, and sales, then there is the interest to banks, insurance, advertising, corporate law, landlords, and the military. None of those enterprises contribute any value to the goods and services we need and want. Yet we are paying for all those enterprises all the time.
Saying this, we can reorganize the world where all work and commercial activities are centralized. Since largely unproductive work is done in skyscrapers, we can convert these buildings into multi-story farms or garment shops. This would reduce the need to transport commodities all over the world.
Instead of subsidizing enterprises that add no value to commodities, workers governments would make it their top priority to insure that everyone has all the goods and services we need and want. Automotive transport can be transformed into efficient mass transit rail systems.
Today there is a controversy about Artificial Intelligence or A.I. Many people are opposed to this because it would use tremendous amounts of electricity and eliminate jobs. Well, what about all those enterprises that also use tremendous amounts of electricity, yet add no value to the goods and services we need and want?
We are also living at a time when fundamental change is happening. Banks have issued loans that appear to be leveraged to the stratosphere. Because of the war against the people of Iran, the availability of oil and other needed materials has been greatly curtailed. These events can and will have the potential to crash the economy.
In this environment, people are beginning to look for fundamental change. Reading Stephen Grant's book about his experiences as a mailman show us how workers confront seemingly impossible obstacles every day. Understanding this, as well as the immense challenges we face, I believe that a profoundly better world is possible.
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