Gretchen serves our community as a clerk at the USPS main branch. She came to Jackson 18 years ago from Vermont, looking for a change of scenery and visiting a friend. Luckily, Gretchen was able to transfer with the US Post Office, quickly adapting to the faster pace of Jackson. She loves everything that Jackson has to offer, from hiking, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, camping, biking, and hockey (which is how she met her husband, who coaches the under 16-year-old girls for the last 15 years).

A day in the life at the post office is comprised of bringing the mail in each morning, completely sorting all the mail – letters, magazines, or flats as they’re called, and packages,  picking up the mail at the blue boxes around town, and helping customers at the front counter, all while making sure the outgoing mail gets sent out every day.  

“90% of the volume comes through the main “new” post office and both UPS and FedEx drop packages off with us. Daily, we see around 1,200 - 1,300 packages alone. The Friday after ‘Prime Day’, we received 2,500 packages. Both post offices in town see between 11,000 to 15,000 depending on the day, not counting the holidays.” 

With turnover as a constant, it’s understandable that the limited staff that the post offices do have, they don’t have the capacity to look up the address for packages that have a missing or mislabeled address.  

“I feel very fortunate to have the stability that is afforded by owning a Community Housing Trust home. My family and I have been able to develop deep relationships in our neighborhood. My husband and I did the commute before we had kids and it’s tough with the logistics – which town do they go to daycare, what happens if I can’t get back to them in time? It’s nice to be in the community that I work in, and I hope that there's an opportunity for more people to get into Affordable housing before they fall between the cracks.”