I'M NOT QUITE SURE HOW IT WORKS (or, more accurately, doesn’t work), but it seems USPS mail delivery gets worse with every price increase.
I HAVE THE POST OFFICE’S Informed Delivery notification; its an email that shows me scanned images of most of the letters I should receive in the day’s mail.
Recently I was informed that I had two certified letters on the way.
They never arrived.
I notified the local PO.
The next day and the day after: No certified mail.
Four days later my Spouse finds a yellow “Sorry we missed you” notice in the mailbox informing us that the letter carrier tried to deliver, one assumes, the two long overdue certified letters.
Normally, the yellow notice would be stuck to the door.
Since my Spouse was in residence all day, and since the notice was stuck in with other mail, it is more than obvious that the letter carrier did NOT try to deliver the certified mail pieces.
It was warm that day, but no rain.
Apparently the walk up the driveway was too much for the letter carrier to undertake.
So much for rain and hail and dark of night, none of which was present when the letter carrier failed to do her job.
- We have decent mail delivery once a week — when the regular carrier has a day off.
My neighbor continually complains about the carrier’s surliness.
Since the carrier is a (un)civil servant with some “time in grade,” the only way we can hope to have improved mail service is for her to bid on an even cushier route. She used her seniority to get her current route.
This letter carrier frequently proves she cannot read numbers. My mail all too frequently ends up in a neighbor’s mailbox (and other neighbor’s in mine).
She has been known to drop mail in my mailbox for people across the lake; different street and substantially different number. (I don’t expect her to remember our surname; we’ve only been here for a decade.)
It’s a shame.
When we lived in Clearwater, our regular letter carrier was Vic. He knew us; we knew him. He was dependable and sociable. Mail service across the board was much better. (There was a heavily inked clerk at the nearby post office that fascinated my sons. He gladly told them about the tattoos.)
It’s not the area in which we live that turns civil servants into uncivil people.
The folks in the Broward County offices have, without exception, been personable and helpful. There ARE places in south Florida where such service would be a minor miracle.
But why a letter carrier.
Granted her vehicle is not air conditioned and, granted, when it rains she gets wet stuffing fliers and other junk mail into mail boxes — I can understand a bit of ill temper and a desire to “get it over with,” but it hasn’t rained all that much lately and while it has been hot — it’s Florida, after all — it has not been THAT hot and unless the carrier dallies at a mailbox, she should be getting a little relief as she moves on. She could have a walking route in an older neighborhood that still has mail slots in doors.
- Trust me, I know what life is like sans air conditioning. We didn’t have it in any of my schools and for a long time my car’s AC was “4-40” — 4 windows open and (at least) 40 mph.
I don’t think I’m living in the past by expecting decent mail service.
I admit most of my correspondence is via email, WhatsApp, and even the telephone. (Not being very sociable, I don’t use the popular social media: Facebook, Twitter, et al and etc., too.) Still, the need for a “real” letter is raison d'être to keep the post office in business. Or perhaps a FedEx, UPS, or other carrier could do the job more efficiently — certainly it could not do worse.
On my agenda tomorrow is:
1. Locate my local post office
2. Visit same
3. MAYBE collect my two long-over-due certified letters.
If I can accomplish that, I will consider it a good day.
If.
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