We live in a semi-rural area on the outskirts of our small seaside city. We're not exactly "out in the sticks" and where we live there's actually a fairly organized neighborhood with some 600 homes or so. Even though this is regarded as the "new" part of town, the neighborhood actually began more than 60 years ago when people built summer cabins here because there was great salmon fishing on the bay below, along with outstanding views.
View from our neighborhood...
So, because we're not inside city limits, the US Postal Service uses "Rural Contract Carriers" to deliver our mail... a system that typically works just fine. Our primary post office is located about 5.5 miles (8km) from where we live.
However, as a general convenience to both the USPS and the residents, our mail is delivered to a huge bank of clusterboxes with its own parking lot, near the primary entrance to our neighborhood. There are also a couple of "parcel lockers" in the mail area, for those who receive packages too big to fit in individual mailboxes.
Historically, if there are more parcels than mailbox and locker space to deliver all the parcels, the carriers make an extra loop around the neighborhood to leave the packages on people's doorsteps.
So far, so good. This has never been an issue in the 10-odd years we have lived here.
Section of the OLD delapidated mail shelter and parking area
"New and Improved"... NOT!
So, a couple of months back, the neighborhood association decided that since the current setup of mailboxes and shelters were getting on for 25 years old and the wooden structure was starting to rot and decay, it was time to build a new one.
The benefit of doing so was also to be able to reorganize the individual mailboxes — which had become a bit chaotic due to the 60-odd new addresses that had been added since 1994, and which basically weren't in geographical order.
The mail carriers, the neighborhood association and the residents all thought this was a pretty good idea that would make things easier for everyone involved.
And so — with only minor disruptions — a nice new shelter (this time with a metal roof instead of a wood shingle roof) was built and the mailboxes were reorganized according to the system that made the most sense in terms of saving the mail carriers time and hassle.
All should be well, right?
"Your Package Can Be Picked Up Tomorrow!"
Now... let's just start with the facts that this was done in large part for the benefit of the mail carriers AND we also happen to have been in a situation where people have been ordering more things (AKA: "packages") because they haven't been able to go out, and there has been a "risk" associated with leaving the house.
Keeping this in mind...
... our local Postmaster suddenly decided that the mail carriers servicing our neighborhood needed to "follow the rules."
What does that mean?
Let's go bit above where I said
"if there are more parcels than mailbox and locker space to deliver all the parcels, the carriers make an extra loop around the neighborhood to leave the packages on people's doorsteps."
Weeeellll... there's actually a USPS rule that states that mail carriers may only go 1/2 mile or less from the "point of delivery" (in our case, the clusterboxes) to deliver an item (AKA: "parcel") that won't fit in the mailbox. What's more, there's also a rule that says carriers can only leave packages in a location they deem "safe," and it's very easy to declare that NO place is actually "safe" because of the issue with so-called "porch pirates."
Even though we haven't actually had an issue with porch pirates because there's only one road in and out of the neighborhood and porch pirates don't like to work areas that have a single and easily blocked escape route.
But evidently that's considered irrelevant...
That's the central post office....
So Therefore, Comma...
We now get a steady stream of "USPS pink slips" in our mailbox, letting us know that pretty any parcel larger than a very small shoebox can be picked up the following day at the Post Office.
Which effectively means that NOT ONLY are most of our mail parcels delayed by a day or two, but we have to make an 11-mile (18km) round trip to the downtown post office to pick up our packages, often three times a week!!
This, at a time when "freedom of travel" is still somewhat discouraged, and social distancing is still in effect.
"You must have patience," said the Buddha to the bird....
Now for the HEIGHT of stupidity. I happened to stop by to pick up my mail at a time when one of our regular carriers was there, sorting and boxing mail. There was a "pink slip" in our box, so I went up to her van and asked to pick up the package from her.
She looked sad and sheepish and rolled her eyes as she told me that she was "not allowed" to give me the package, I'd have to go to the post office, even though it was right there in her van!
"But WHY?"
Well, evidently once the pink slip is scanned into the system it creates a record... and she was sincerely worried that she would lose her job if she tried to delete the record and give me the package. Of course, that's not HER fault, so I also rolled my eyes and left it at that...
WTF, over????
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of the week!
How about YOU? Would you find a situation like this as annoying as we do? Or would you consider it a "minor inconvenience?" Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20210610 14:26 PDT
0275/1518
That would really burn my ass! In a time when the groups like the post office are struggling to stay competitive and afloat they should be a lot nicer to people and especially in a situation like that. Our post office group has been getting bad. We have a small business that requires us to ship a shitload of packages a week. That means driving to the good post office is about 15 miles away which isn’t that bad considering some areas. When we do anything there we know it’s going to go well. When we request mail pick up though, there are a couple carriers that are so damn lazy they show up around 630 PM to deliver our mail, have to go through over a hundred units and leave around 8 some nights. They then try to say “there were no packages in the hall” of our building when we check the tracking to see if they picked up our stuff that we need to go out. They’ve done this 5 times so far this year and successfully picked up our stuff I think the other 5. Not too bad but pretty shitty that they can’t do what we ask them but will just outright lie saying they did it. Annoys my wife to no end!
I would lay into the post master about handing someone a package if they are right in front of you. That’s bogus. She shouldn’t have to fear for her job for something so foolish.
I suppose the thing that most annoys me about it is that the post office is really struggling to keep itself afloat... so this is hardly the time to make a bad impression.
The USPS used to contract deliveries for Amazon out here, but the USPS trucks (at all hours) have now been replaced by actual "Amazon Prime" vans that start circulating at 7:00am and are still out and about at 8:00pm. You can say what you will about Amazon, but they do have the whole delivery thing dialed in.
We run a couple of small businesses that involve shipping, as well... and my wife has a Poshmark store (clothing) for shits and grins, and I pretty much take our packages on days when we're going to the stores in town, anyway. It's easier to just drop the boxes at the post office than wait around for a pickup. We still use the USPS because... well, Priority Mail is still one of the best deals going, for many different shipments.
I expect the situation will change soon because we have both a Sheriff and a retired state legislator living in the neighborhood. When Wave Broadband (the local cable/Internet provider) had their Nth multi-hour service outage during the NFL playoffs... well, let's just say that three days later there was a small flotilla of Wave service trucks in the neighborhood completely recabling all the main lines.