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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Our Postal Delivery Service drives me insane

Being a civil servant has got to be a cushy job. Somehow it attracts the most incompetent sorts of folks you can imagine. This not to say they are not very amiable and pleasant when not challenged, but, for the most part they are idiots. This probably the real reason we have so many problems with immigration and tax fraud. It is just easier to walk across the border than to get a VISA and it is easier just not to fill out the paper work than it is to pay taxes.
But, I digress...
I made the mistake of having something I really wanted shipped through the US Postal Service to the shop.
Saturday I got a notice that the package was too big to fit in the mailbox and that I could pick it up at the post office. Now the postmaster at Amity is a pretty nice an competent fellow and sometimes will open the door on Saturdays if I'm expecting an important shipment of 16 mm film.
The rural delivery lady is kind of an idiot. Even though she has been on the route for several years and his seen the mailbox 500 times she still takes the oversized package with her to see if it will fit into the mailbox. Then she puts the pink slip directing you to the post office in the mailbox and takes the @#$%^&ing package with her on her route. So... you can't pick it up until the next day. (Heck, she could chuck it out the windown  and someone would probably bring it to me!)
In this case we are looking at a three-day weekend and I have ordered something especially cool. Something which probably shows why I am always out of money....(click here)
If I would have just used the PO box I would have it by now. Of course you can't complain as she is just doing her job. The previous postal lady used to drive up to the shop and lean on her horn for a minute and if no one came out she left. Now that was good service. AND that was the old days-before idiots took over the world.
When had an incompetent postal lady at our old house as well. She would continually get the mail in the wrong box. Stuff like the neighbor's social security check. After a while I got to where I just delivered the incorrect letters to the neighbors. She was also afraid of Stanley the Great Dane.... Even though she never had to get out to the car. But we knew her so we didn't complain.
When we moved to the farm we moved onto the location of my brother's house and he moved to the farmhouse. That whole setup was too confusing. There were three addresses. The farmhouse and our house were in one zip code, and the shop is in another and that mailbox is at the end of the road. Heaven forbid I put the wrong zip code on something!
Anyway, for us the was a move from the Amity zip to the McMinnville zip. This did not work. For the first year the mail was continually mixed up. When complaining to the post office I pointed out that with our last name they could just toss the mail in any mailbox with our family name and I'd eventually get the mail. The lady looked at me agast and said, "we couldn't do that!" Yeah, incompetence is OK if you didn't mean to do it... if you are just stupid....
Finally I solved the problem by removing the mailbox with the loader tractor and going to a PO box in town Amity. Of course letters sent to the old address are now rejected even though it is a very small town and the mail is hand sorted-because that is the policy...
The PO box is the way to go. One less government employed idiot in the chain...
And you know what really peeves me?
That mailbox out at the road is huge. You could probably fit a small anvil in it. That helicopter is in a 8" square box. It would fit!
Idiots...

4 comments:

  1. We put a large plastic bin just inside of the gate for oversize packages. UPS,FedEx and the USPS all know about it. Do they use it? Well, the lady that drives for Fed Ex is afraid of cows & won't open the gate two feet to reach inside to use the box. Her solution is to hang the package in plain sight on the front of the gate. Why not just toss it in the road to make it easier for someone to pick it up & carry it away? The old USPS & UPS driver would come up to the house. Too much work now I guess. You would think that with jobs so hard to come by today, that everyone would be doing their job as best as possible. Something they should be doing anyway.

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  2. Is Homeland Insecurity protecting us by scrambling deliveries? How will Mr. Coyote get his anvils if they end up in upstate Alabama or downtown Poughkeepsie? Hey look! There is mailbox big enough for a small anvil at the Lehman farm!

    Same deal here. Bank statements, bills, wedding invitations, it all often ends up in somebody else's mailbox.

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  3. Well, I guess we're lucky for now, we've got a pretty good mail-lady. Here it's UPS and FED-EX that have no brains.

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  4. No rural delivery here. I drive 12 miles to town when I want to empty the junk mail and flyers out of my post office box. Occasionally there is something worth the trip in there though. Our Canada Post lady is very tolerant and patient considering how hard she has to work to pack so much mail into such a small mailbox. I really need to get to town more often.

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