I Realized How Much We Still Rely on the Postal Service, After It Decided to Quit Delivering Our Mail

Empty Mailbox

I’m starting to get a little worried now that it’s been more than a week since we’ve received our mail.

We’d stopped it briefly for the holidays, went into the office to pick up the held mail and to restart regular deliveries. That was Dec. 30. We’ve received mail exactly once since then…late in the evening, after 6 p.m., on Monday.

We’ve called numerous times and received a host of excuses: Your mail is still on vacation hold (then why did we receive a delivery?); your mail carrier’s father died and other carriers are trying to pick up the route (that’s proven to be false); and, again, your mail is still on vacation hold, but don’t worry you’ll get your mail today (also not true).

Seriously, what do we need to do? I feel like our mail is being held hostage.

At first, this was just an annoyance. It’s beyond annoying at this point, past frustrating and getting to be worrisome. We’ve now spent quite a bit of time on a daily basis trying to track down our mail and expected package deliveries.

So much of what we get in the mail these days is unsolicited junk that missing a couple days didn’t seem like much of a big deal. But doing an inventory, we can see we’re missing some important things: a key utility document that we need to make service adjustments; a belated Christmas gift; a part we ordered to fix our exercise machine (how am I supposed to get to that weight loss/fitness resolution without that?); and, of course, bills.

The Post Office opens at 9 a.m. We’ll try again. If we can’t get our mail today, I may need to file a theft report.

UPDATE: When Sim went to the Post Office this morning, he was told, “your mail has been delivered.” (Hmm. Then why is our mailbox still empty?) Then the supervisor started investigating and pledged to find it on the truck and deliver it himself within the hour. We shall see.

UPDATE: Hooray! We got our mail later in the afternoon. Still not a single apology, just some explanations about a string of miscommunications with the carrier. My favorite thing to dislike about this was the posture of the supervisor…seemingly pleasant in person (with others present), to openly hostile and outright mean over the phone.