Modern Day Mail “Service”

I had a few bills to mail and stopped by the post office on the way to get my allergy shots. They had taped a bin over the mail slot so no mail could be dropped off and they put a sign saying “out of order”. Umm, how can it be out of order. Its just a big mailbox. Did you really mean that you just couldn’t send someone out to empty it so, now to mail something, you have to go inside and drop off the letters there.

The guy in front of me just drove off. Not sure why. I mean if you had letters to mail, why wouldn’t you just park and go in. Was he just going to drive around until he found a “working” mailbox? Is getting out of your car that bad?

I’m old and my experience has been that mail service has really fallen off a cliff over the years. If I go all the way back to my childhood, the mailman was someone we knew. Maybe it was just the location and the fact that he tended to walk the route and our mailbox was on the front porch so he had to walk up to the house but, still, the mail always got there. I remember a few hot days when my Mom would offer him lemonade or some other cold drink because you could tell how hard he was working.

Even in our first house, we had great mail service. The best thing in both cases was the time was sort of predictable. Growing up, mail was typically delivered early in the afternoon. In our first house, it was late afternoon but it was somewhat consistent.

Not so anymore. I guess I could say it is consistent but consistently late. In the summer, it doesn’t matter if it shows up after eight because it is still light and still warm enough that walking down to the box is fine. In the winter, the last thing I want to do is walk down in the cold and the dark. (Slipping on the ice and cutting my forehead open a couple of years ago is a pretty strong incentive to not want to do that). As silly as it sounds, I end up driving down to pick it up but I have to guess at the time if I don’t see the truck.

And, there are days when it is so late that they just skip us. Or we get a partial delivery and then get the rest of it the next day. It’s a random event. You never know when it is going to show up or what won’t be delivered.

I’ve had days when it was just so late I’ve picked it up the next morning. The problem with that is the other day someone in the neighborhood had their box cleaned out by someone driving by and checking boxes early in the morning.

To be honest, all I really care about are the bills. My brother keeps telling me I should get with the times and set up automatic withdrawal so I don’t have to worry about missing a bill or writing checks. Guess I’m just too old school for that. I don’t like multiple entities having hooks into my bank accounts.

It looks like today is either going to be a no mail or a very late mail day. I did sign up for informed delivery so I can see what was supposed to be delivered. There doesn’t seem to be anything really critical so if it doesn’t get here until tomorrow, probably not a big deal (except for the fact that it is their job to actually deliver mail).

And maybe my experience is just a function of where I live. But you still wonder how FedEx, UPS and Amazon can move stuff efficiently and get it to you when it was promised and the post office (which has been doing it longer) can’t seem to keep up.