Post office clerk set to retire after 24 years

WORLAND – Mark Becker is set to retire today (April 30) from the United States Postal Service (USPS) after working for the Worland Post Office the last 24 years.

Becker moved to Worland from North Dakota where he was a food service inspector for seven years in North Dakota. He continued his food service inspection work in Wyoming until he began his job at the post office in the 1996 as a counter clerk.

Becker has been working for the Postal Service since the transition of 24 people sorting out mail, to the more modern technological sorting system which has six people doing the same amount of work that sorted letters for the entire Big Horn Basin. The system was later reduced to just sorting mail for Worland.

One of the more rewarding parts of the job is communicating with the customers, and learning about each and every one of their lives when they come in.

"The people, that is the biggest thing that I am going to miss the most is the customers," Becker said. "They become friends, I know them on a first name basis, I know which P.O. box they have, I know where they live, I know their children, and they are personal friends of mine now."

Becker said that he will miss the customers, but also the people that he has grown up with there because they have become a family over the years.

"We are like a family, there are many of us that have worked together here for my whole career, we have seen each other more than we have our own families over the years," Becker said. "It has been a humbling experience just to work with a lot of them."

According to Becker , the novel coronavirus really has not been the craziest experience he has worked through, and it has not changed his daily routine that much since he has not had to work as a delivery person throughout his career. One of the crazier times that he worked through was post 9/11, where there was an increase in Ricin being mailed throughout the country.

In retirement Becker and his wife plan to work camps in the Big Horn Mountains over the summer if the camps should open up, and reside in Arizona over the winters before returning to Wyoming in the summer.

"I am tired of pushing snow," Becker joked. Becker also hopes to travel and spend more time with his three daughters in retirement.