On June 9, 2016, a city letter carrier for the United States Postal Service began to feel ill as she delivered mail, mostly on foot, on a route for a post office in Des Moines, Iowa. She texted a supervisor at University Station, the postal facility to which she was assigned, and told her she felt unwell. The supervisor texted back, “do the best you can,” and the carrier continued with her route. Eventually the letter carrier cut her route short and returned to University Station, vomiting on the way. At the post office, the supervisor told the carrier she needed to go back out and finish the route. The carrier refused and, with the intervention of a union steward, completed necessary medical paperwork and called her husband to pick her up and drive her to an urgent care clinic, where she received a diagnosis of heat exhaustion.