Let me start this post by stating in all honesty and without any sarcasm usually associated with...well, at least SOME of my missives herein: I firmly believe the United States Postal Service is one of the great things about this country.
Seriously...you can mail a package across the country with Priority Mail in 2-3 days for like $4.00. That's amazing. And I use it all the time, since I do eBay selling all the time. That delivery confirmation thing they do has saved me a number of times from unscrupulous purchasers who email me and write "I never got my package." I whip out that little receipt, type in its number on the USPS website and voila! I can tell the douchebag liar when it was delivered.
So when it comes to sending packages, I have no complaints with the Post Office.
Receiving packages...well, not so much.
I have this mailman. He was the mailman for our building for a long time, and he's a real crotchety bastard, never saying hello when spoken to, always carrying with him a boom box in his letter carrier cart thingie, on which he plays opera. Yes. OPERA. In all caps.
He has a thing about delivering packages to our building. Well, it's not really a thing. He just doesn't do it. When I get a package, as I did Monday and today, he puts a little pink slip into my mailbox, which tells me he tried to deliver it, but gosh, gee, he just couldn't, and it's back at the local Post Office, and I can go pick it up if I want, or he can redeliver it.
But I know he'll never redeliver it, so why bother? Because I've figured out what he does. Using Amazon.com's delivery tracker and geometric logic, I know that my packages NEVER. LEAVE. THE. POST. OFFICE.
Yep. That's his trick. Before he loads up his mail cart and cranks up the opera music, he sits down in the PO and checks all the packages he's SUPPOSED to deliver as part of his JOB, and fills out his little pink slips. Then he brings all the mail he WANTS to carry, and drops off the slips for the packages he DOES NOT WANT to carry. And I know this because I check Amazon, and you can tell when the delivery was "attempted." It's always around 10:30am. And in all the years he's been a mail delivery person here, he never shows up in the building to actually deliver mail until AFTER 2:00pm.
I'm told Opera Mailman is going to retire soon. He was taken off this route for a while--I'm hoping because of complaints--but now he's back on this week. The other mail delivery people actually BRING our packages and drop them off in the downstairs office, which is open weekdays from about 9 to 5, minus lunch breaks. Tomorrow morning I will detour to the downtown Post Office to pick up my package before I go to work. I will feed the meter quarters, since the meters last 12 minutes only per 25 cents, and I will walk into the Post Office that time forgot, where sometimes you can stand for a half-hour waiting to even approach a window and hand over the fabled pink slip.
Last holiday season, I did this trip into Purgatory 11 out of 13 times to pick-up packages. The kicker is these are packages I paid delivery charges on, which to me at least, means they are supposed to come to MY HOME ADDRESS. I am stymied by the whims of a crazy mailman (this is a quote from one of his colleagues, told to a friend of mine in the building, not merely an observation of mine) who refuses to do his job and instead delivers pink slips asking us to do his job for him.
I have a nice pink slip for him. I hope the Post Office does, too.
