Andy’s Story: Delivering the Mail with Consistency & Care

Who is Andy?

Andrew Cummings is 33 and enjoys being athletic outdoors. His athletic experience includes water-skiing, doing half-Ironman and Olympic triathlons, and hiking all forty-eight 4,000-foot White Mountains in New Hampshire at least twice. Andy has also been a volunteer coach with New England Disabled Sports since he was a teenager, helping people with physical disabilities enjoy skiing on Loon Mountain. One of the things he likes to do to relax is send out “Andygrams”: cards with hand-drawn pictures and personalized notes on them. He also enjoys cooking his favorite meals, making salads, and drinking beer.

What is Andy’s job?

Andy works four full days a week at Merrimack College in the facilities department and the mail departments. He works for facilities in the morning, where he maintains the grounds by mowing, mulching, shoveling, raking leaves, planting flowers, and picking up trash. In the afternoon, he sorts mail in the mail room and delivers mail across the campus.

Finding the Job

As a high school student, Andy was in a school-to-work program that supported him to work as an intern at Merrimack College. He did well with the internship, graduated high school in 2012, and began his full-time job in the mail room at Merrimack College. He worked with a job coach at first but eventually learned to do the job completely on his own. He has now worked there for 15 years, and his job coach checks in with him once every three months.

Andy’s Supports

Andy is used to the job and likes having a routine. He and his coworkers have worked together for a long time. His coworkers can support him if he needs that, but he knows how to do his tasks and makes deliveries on his own.

What does Andy think of the job?

Andy enjoys his job and especially likes delivering packages. He enjoys moving through campus, transporting the packages on a dolly, and handing people his Palm Pilot so they can sign for their packages. “On campus, Andy’s a staple. Everyone knows Andy,” says April, his job coach. He also likes his coworkers. Sometimes, he has to go to another delivery point to get packages dropped off by UPS. It is so important to Andy that people get their packages, but he has learned that he needs to bring any unclaimed packages back to the post office. He hopes to continue doing this job in the future.

Advice for Job Seekers and Supporters:

Andy encourages people not to give up looking for a job, or maybe to find a job like his. He and April suggest that professionals be helpful when they can but understand when they might be doing too much. Andy is comfortable saying “no”, or “stop” in those situations. April shared:

“I think sometimes, as professionals, we over-support. We find excuses to help when in reality our goal is to make them as independent as possible. He’s doing great. There’s no need for me to hover over him.”

Andy and April have another strategy: If Andy is struggling to use his words about anything, he will look for a video or song on April’s phone that matches his facial expression or what he’s thinking and play it a few times to try to have it speak for him in a way.