THANKS TO USPS LETTER CARRIERS people up and down my street are meeting their neighbors.
Either I visit my neighbors or they visit me.
Why?
I subscribe to the USPS Informed Delivery service.
Informed Delivery sends me an email every day that mail is addressed to my address. Great idea. Not only am I informed that another bill is on its way, but I also see a scanned image of the mail piece.
The other day Informed Delivery informed that I had a fistful of mail on the way.
Our letter carrier not only failed Number Reading 101, but she likes to sleep in. Mail to my address comes anytime after 3:30 p.m.; sometimes after 5:30 p.m. (When the substitute delivers, the mail sometimes arrives shortly after noon, but never later than 2:30 p.m.)
Informed Delivery has an option to report missing mail.
I used it to report that NONE of the several pieces USPS promised to have in my mailbox ended up in my mailbox.
The next day, my next door neighbor rang my bell.
When I answered I saw she had that “fistful” of mail.
I could understand how a letter carrier could mis-deliver mail to an address more than 10 digits different from mine. My understanding is that this woman, known to my neighbor for her surly disposition and disrespect for packages, must have had a third grader take the USPS letter carrier exam for her; she quite obviously cannot read digits (as in numbers, not fingers and toes).
My neighbor’s box and mine share the same post — the assembly looks like a lower case “t” with the two mail boxes on the t’s crossbar.
The letter carrier seems consistent — she puts the mail in a box to the south of the correct box — at least when she’s heading north. Maybe she puts misdirected mail in the northernmost mailbox when she’s headed south. (Our mailboxes are next to the street so the carrier never needs to leave the vehicle.)
I requested a mail ballot for the last two elections (primary and general). I failed to receive either. I went to the Supervisor of Elections’ office and complained.
Turns out the SOE’s office had me in the correct city, but not as USPS would have it. The area in which I live once was in the county but was absorbed by the city more than a dozen years ago; USPS never updated its information so my address is (incorrectly) in another city. Government in action..
- The Supervisor of Elections, after yet another election snafu, just resigned.
I CAN get mail delivered to my mailbox using the correct city PROVIDING the fill 5+4 ZIP code is used. Five digits after the city in which I live and the mail goes to never-never land.
After my neighbor delivered that “fistful” of mail I filed a complaint with USPS.
Via the computer.
Given that letter carriers are protected both by Civil Service and a union, I have no reason to believe anything will change — or perhaps mail to my address will simply “disappear.”
The sad thing is, there ARE letter carriers who do the job and do it with civility.
When we lived in Clearwater FL, we had a mailman who was a great person as well as a great letter carrier. The type person who epitomizes what a letter carrier should be.
There was, briefly, a good letter carrier on my block, but he has gone on to a better route — at least he no longer delivers mail to our box. Accurate. Early afternoon delivery. Personable. Everything a customer could want in a letter carrier.
So far we have escaped having the “letter carrier from hell” — the one who, for whatever reason, decided to quit and in the process, dumped all the mail in his truck on the side of the road.
Sources
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PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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