As the snows of the first big storm of the season pile up outside, Tara Falteisek is surrounded by piles of a different sort.

Behind the lobby of St. Paul's downtown post office, Falteisek is practically walled in by boxes. Inside the boxes? Christmas presents. It's less than 10 mailing days before the big holiday, and it's her job to get the boxes ? and the occasional Hula-Hoop ? routed in a hurry.

So she sorts the parcels, one at a time, transferring them from wheeled bins into giant cardboard containers called towers, each headed to a different post office. When a tower is filled, Mail Handler Gary Graves swoops in with a fork lift and runs it to the docks, where 23 trailer trucks sit waiting, each with its own destination.

Inside the post office, it's this makeshift set-up where the holiday rush becomes real. "We have so many extra trucks coming in, it's crazy," says Falteisek, an expediter with 15 years of service.

Parcels are where real action is
The conveyer belt that normally handles parcels ? officially known as priority mail ? can't handle the holiday volume. So, on this day, the post office has set up two additional areas, called bullpens, to keep the boxes moving manually.

For Postal Workers like Falteisek, the rush lasts about 2-1/2 weeks. It can mean 10- to 12-hour days for seven days at a stretch. Every piece of equipment that can be used is pressed into service.

Workers are transferred in from other departments that are slow this time of year ? such as the "flats" area that handles magazines and catalogs. (Their Christmas rush was in late summer and early fall, says Pat McCann, president of the St. Paul Area Local of the American Postal Workers Union. "If you're putting a catalog out now, you're too late.")

In addition, the downtown post office hires about 75 "Christmas casuals" ? temporary workers who sort packages and help out where needed.

Overnight success
It's on Tour Three and Tour One ? shifts that run from mid-afternoon to dawn ? that things really get hectic behind the scenes. In addition to parcels, that's when virtually all the Christmas cards, holiday letters and other first-class envelopes get processed, McCann says.

All the mail you drop into a street-side box, a mail basket at work or into a slot at your neighborhood station gets routed downtown, then shipped back out the door by 7 a.m. There, it heads to neighborhood stations ? already sorted by routes ? so Letter Carriers can pick up their trays, load their vans, and take the mail door-to-door.

Postal Worker Tara Falteisek sorts parcels in a seasonal "bullpen." Union Advocate photo

Mail volume soars, but . . .
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the U.S. Postal Service handles an average of 150 million pieces of first-class mail a day. That's 50 percent more than the rest of the year. On Dec. 21 alone, it expected to cancel 280 million cards and letters.

The busiest day of the year overall was Dec. 19, when post offices nationwide moved an estimated 900 million pieces of mail, compared with 670 million on an average day.

In St. Paul, the Christmas rush means an average of 500,000 more pieces of mail a day. But, McCann says, "Christmas isn't what it used to be at the post office."

"You don't notice the difference at Christmas anymore," says Patrick Hawkins, a Postal Worker with 21 years of experience. "We used to get a couple of days behind. These machines now, they clear the mail pretty fast."

Workers like Hawkins still put in extra hours this time of year, "but I think it's pretty much because we're short of staff more than anything," he says.

Technology does amazing things
Improved technology means that more than 95 percent of first-class mail can "get worked" almost without a human hand touching it, McCann says.

One result is that staffing is being reduced through attrition. Productivity has increased at least 10 percent a year for the last four years, says plant manager Drew Aliperto.

"Memory is cheap and these computers are fast," says electronics technician Mike DeMotts, who is among those responsible for keeping the machines running.

Sorting machines on the second floor can handle up to 34,000 letters an hour, says Postal Worker Bob Scarrella. The machines read an address and spray on a barcode that gets the envelope sequenced directly into a tray for the specific Letter Carrier who delivers it to your house.

When the machines can't read an address, McCann says, they take a picture of it. The electronic image is sent to Salt Lake City (it used to be Duluth). There, a clerk deciphers it and sends the correct information back to the computer.

Calm before the next storm
There's no better evidence of how different Christmas is at the post office than the old City Division and 030 Prime areas on the 5th floor.

"This is the dinosaur," McCann says, pointing to quiet rows of desks with old-fashioned mail slots that look like something out of a black-and-white movie.

"Fifteen years ago, this place would be jam-packed with people sorting mail by hand. This is where all your Christmas cards used to be." Now, he says, there's rarely enough work for clerks to spend a whole shift in the department.

The real rush, McCann predicts, will come in January, shortly before the Postal Service raises rates. "Businesses are going to dump their mail, trying to get everything they can get at that old rate. That's the only time I think we'll see a real fluctuation."

Adapted from The Union Advocate, the official newspaper of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@stpaulunions.org

Postal worker Bob Scarrella hustles a tray of mail amid sorting machines at the downtown St. Paul post office. Union Advocate photo