Mike Keen struggled in his first day on the job as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service.

By the time he delivered his last letter that day, it was well after dark.

Keen quickly learned to get on a more efficient schedule, which will serve him well as the new postmaster for the Bowling Green Post Office.

Keen, 46, sought to relocate to Bowling Green to be near his parents, who live in Scottsville.

Born in Louisiana and growing up in Colorado and Washington, Keen began his postal career in Portsmouth, Va., in 1987.

“I saw my mailman walk by and I said, ‘That looks like an easy job,’ ” Keen said. “Looks were deceiving.”

Entering the postal service after four years of active duty in the U.S. Navy, Keen worked his way up to being a postal supervisor in Virginia and postmaster in four North Carolina cities.

He was named Campbellsville’s postmaster last year before assuming the same position here in June, earning the job permanently after having served as interim postmaster following the retirement of Ray Lackey.

In his new position, Keen identifies two things he wants to improve – office efficiency and customer service.

“In the morning I see how the current day is looking and what might cause trouble for us in getting mail delivered,” Keen said. “After I feel like we’re covered for the day, I look at yesterday and how efficient or inefficient we were.”

Shortly before he said this, a supervisor entered Keen’s office and notified him that a woman who slipped and fell in the post office lobby several days ago wants to file a claim against the office.

The nature of Keen’s job keeps him mainly inside the post office on Eleventh Avenue, though he has ridden with supervisors on Campbell Lane and Scottsville Road to get a perspective on the challenges they face getting mail delivered in a timely fashion in high-traffic areas.

He recently visited a Louisville Road resident with multiple addresses to help resolve a complaint about mail going to the wrong address.

Working with supervisors and carriers in the 143-employee Bowling Green office, Keen encourages employees to brainstorm ideas to improve efficiency in mail delivery.

In the lobby, Keen is concerned principally with shortening the lines and wait times for customers.

“When I got here there were days when we had carriers still on the street in the city after 7 p.m.,” Keen said. “Most days now we’ve got it to where there are one or two who are still out after 5, which is quite an improvement.”

One of the biggest challenges for this office is serving the transient Western Kentucky University student population, ensuring that students receive their mail while they’re on campus and that it gets forwarded to the right address during summer.

In his spare time, Keen enjoys woodworking, golf and travel, having been to Italy and wanting to visit Australia and Japan.

The owner of two Corvettes, Keen said he grew fond of the Corvette plant when he first visited the area.

“I like the newness of the area and all the development happening, and I appreciate the rolling hills and deciduous trees,” Keen said. “North Carolina was pretty flat – let me rephrase that – very flat – where I lived.”

Despite being a postal employee for 21 years, Keen still looks at what he does with a sense of wonder.

“It’s amazing to me that we take in a mess of mail, organize it, sort it and deliver it every morning and send a mess of it back out at night and we do that day in and day out,” Keen said.