Zip Code Red
After a 15-minute conversation with Skyrockets the other night in which each of us claimed that our local post office is the worst in Brooklyn — and I’ve gone to his, but mine is Van Brunt Station, and therefore I will always “win” that debate — I thought I’d open a comments thread to let people vent about the post office.
I will say first that not every outpost is bad. I lived near Murray Hill Station for years and years and I got spoiled by that place. And the problem is not always the post office or its employees; people really can’t expect to come to the P.O. with a bag full of presents, then stand at the window wrapping them and packing their boxes and filling out their customs forms while three dozen people who did all that shit at home wait in line.
But God forbid you get an orange pick-up slip that sends you to Van Brunt Station, for real. You can see the packages lined up alphabetically, but apparently the staff isn’t familiar with the English alphabet, or maybe those packages are just for show and the real packages are three blocks away, because it takes 15-20 minutes for the guy to retrieve one box (and that’s not counting the signature and the showing ID and blah blah blah).
Go on; let it out. ‘Tis the season. Woefully unprepared fellow customers? Two clerks at the windows at lunchtime on December 20? Get it out of your system. I’m here for you.
Tags: city living curmudgeoning
I don’t know WHO assigns the mail to what post offices here in Seattle, but OMIGOD, I want them hung by their thumbs. I used to live directly across the street from the Broadway Post Office, and have moved about three blocks away now. I go there to buy stamps and send packages and so on. But when large packages arrive, the kind I have to pick up? That’s NOT the PO I can pick them up from.
No, it seems my mail originates in a PO a good ten miles away up the hill, necessitating a two bus ride there and back (and hauling those huge/heavy boxes back on the bus is a treat and a half, lemme tell ya!) Nope, they can’t be transferred to the PO that’s three blocks away from my house. Why? Because. AHHHHH! My mail carrier is wonderful, though–she makes two trips a day during the holiday season, and when my husband and I were getting ready to go on our honeymoon, she made a point of dropping off “hold mail” slips so the mail wouldn’t pile up while we were gone. We love her.
UPS and FedEx can kiss my bee-hind. While we were gone on honeymoon, we had several gifts arrive and naturally, we couldn’t sign for them, so I had to go out on another two bus odyssey in the pouring rain to their main branch. The box was so huge I had to take a taxi back to the apartment. There was absolutely no reason they couldn’t have put it on a truck and delivered it, but no soap.
FedEx, meanwhile, kept my husband’s groom’s gifts hostage at their package sorting center in Kent, refusing to redeliver them. After a long and frustrating series of phone calls, we learned they had returned them to the company, since we had “never contacted them” about picking up the package. His lovely and patient groomsmen will never receive their Leatherman tools now.
I moved from one neighborhood to another in Philadelphia and submitted no less than three requests for mail forwarding, but never had a single piece of mail forwarded. The explanation? “It’s the summer holiday season now and a lot of people forward their mail while they’re on vacation and the carriers don’t like to do it” Gah!
Re: Post Office Deliveries, I had won something on eBay that was shipped USPS, delivery confirmation. I was watching the website to see if it was delivered. One day, it suddenly was listed as delivered, but nothing ever came. I called the Post Office regarding this, and they told me that my mailman says he delivered it, and he’s their “best” mailman, so it must have been delivered, and refused to believe otherwise. (If I remember correctly, they said something along with lines of well, we’d expect it of some of the OTHER postmen.) I called again and again, and actually waited home to talk to the mailman, who said he “thought he remembered delivering something to someone last week.”
About two weeks later, I get a phone call from the post office, where the person on the other end told me that they found my package. Evidently the “best mailman ever” had signed the package out as being delivered, then promptly placed it on top of a filing cabinet and never brought it with him. The person on the other end was *slightly* sheepish when explaining the situation. (“He’s usually so reliable!”)
Heh.
Normally my home post office isn’t too bad, and any irritants are caused by other customers (no, ma’am, “misc” will not cut it on the customs form that asks the contents of your overseas package), but I did go in there to mail a letter to a friend serving with the Marines in Iraq, and the clerk cheerily slapped a stamp featuring an image of a PURPLE HEART MEDAL on it, and threw it into the bin. Normally they have two stamps designs available, but she didn’t bother to ask. When he was discharged, I asked him about it and he was like “yeah, we were wondering what you were thinking with that stamp.”
When I was in New Hampshire for college, I ordered a video game and tracked its progress using the tracking number. It arrived at my local post office (at the end of my street) and sat there for an entire week before someone delivered it to me. I stopped in and asked if I could have it and they denied its presence.
My local PO–meh. My letter carrier, I want to marry. In addition to playing fetch with my dog on sunny days, and remembering which of my kids loves pirates, trucks or ponies, he just today brought TO MY HOUSE the cell phone that I had dropped two blocks away and that he realized was mine when he recognized the pictures on it! My husband is completely understanding of my love for “Mr. Tom the mailman.”
If I tried to explain all my horrendous dealings with the Chicago post office, it would take twenty pages and turn me into a seething ball of rage for a good day and a half.
Instead, I’ll make a suggestion. If you happen to be in the near western suburbs and find yourself in need of postal services, try the River Forest post office. The employees there are pleasant, efficient, and genuinely eager to help. It’s like there’s Prozac in the water cooler.
My sister sent me a box of lingerie. Got the notice about the package, went to go get it, was told it was on the truck.
After FIVE of these little visits, they finally admitted they had no idea where that package was. I said “I think Dave opened it & kept the contents – he’s wearing a cute little zebra peek-a-boo number under that uniform.”
Every employee in the place was laughing. My mail was regularly crushed after that, (until I moved) but it was totally worth it.
They hate us too, you know…
To strike a positive note for a moment, my UPS guy is AWESOME. He comes back sometimes to make sure I’m out for the day; for the holidays, UPS gave him a partner to help him out; he’s always cheery; one time he even helped me drag a super-heavy bookcase upstairs, which he didn’t have to do (and I think technically isn’t supposed to do, for some liability-related reason), but he’d taken it off the truck so he knew it would be a bitch to get up two long flights. Love that guy!
Hate: when FedEx takes the package back to HQ. HQ is basically on the median of the BQE, and if it’s a big old thing, you’re fucked re: getting a cab to take you back.
Margaret in CO:
OMG!! Still laughing! I’m going to LOL about that on the train and get strange looks, I KNOW it!! Thanks for the laugh!
For a business-related organization that I help run, I had ordered 200 custom-imprinted water bottles, that were delivered to my house via UPS. I use the term “delivered” loosely. I documented the condition they arrived in here: http://www.sacredacorn.com/bottles/upssaga.htm
Luckily, the printing company sent us another full shipment of bottles free of charge. Unluckily, THAT shipment was ALSO damaged by UPS, but between the two shipments we ended up with enough good bottles for the event we needed them for.
I’ve never had that horrid of a UPS experience before. Just unreal.
Allow me to raise a glass of holiday haterade to the Los Angeles postal system. The latest in their long line of infractions: having only two clerks working [one of whom straggled in 15 minutes after the other] first thing in the morning on December 19, with the queue already ten deep before the doors even opened — including a woman who had two gigantic shopping bags overflowing with padded envelopes that all had to be weighed.
The reason I was in this particular Post Office of the Damned when I should be on my morning commute to work? Rather than leaving the package my parents sent me in the lobby or at my door, which they often do and which they had done with packages belonging to several other tenants in my building, they left one of those damnable orange slips… and I knew that if I signed it, I might not get said package until sometime in the New Year. They have lost, failed to redeliver, or otherwise screwed up my packages so many times that I now usually have anything that doesn’t fit in our tiny mailbox sent to my office. [Except during the holidays, when we aren’t allowed to send/receive personal packages so our mailroom guy isn’t inundated.] What I really want to know, though, is why THAT post office handles my mail, when it’s not in my Zip Code and the one that is is closer/more convenient to where I live.
DHL can kiss my ass. I order gift certificates for Christmas gifts and the company refuses to send them any way other than DHL, even though the company is in Dallas and I am also in Dallas (and no, they wouldn’t let me drive and pick them up). So they send them two day by DHL to arrive early this week, plenty of time before the 25th. It’s now the 21st, multiple emails and phone calls later, and they figured out this morning that they didn’t read the zip code correctly and my package is sitting in their warehouse in Ft. Worth. And, they can’t deliver it until Christmas Eve.
I’m now drained of any holiday spirit I’ve ever had.
@Sars: My UPS guy is also awesome. I live in a small town, and rather than leave packages on my porch steps, where they will be rained on, snowed on, or peed on by the local tom cats, he BRINGS THEM TO MY OFFICE, where I can take direct possesion of them. Love that guy.
@ Shotrock and Marie: I’ve had the same alleged ‘attempted delivery’ of packages a couple of times in Sydney (one time when I had a sprained ankle, which really sucked).
The kicker was when I stormed angrily into my local post office howling about how I had been home and couldn’t have missed a delivery and what were they playing at, and the manager just stared at me gloomily and said, ‘Yeah, the driver probably didn’t even bother trying to deliver it. Lazy bastard.’ Um, what? It reminded me of that ‘Fawlty Towers’ episode where a customer is trying to complain about Manuel, and Basil just starts ranting about Manuel right back at him, all ‘you think YOU’ve got problems? I have to see him every day!’ Sucked the wind right out of my sails, I’ll tell you.
While the dude who works at the post office closest to me is awesome, that PO is not my actual PO. I have no idea why, because it’s so close I could walk if it was a nice day and I was feeling energetic. Furthermore, the USPS recently decided that my mail was no longer going to go through the Norristown (PA) PO, and reassigned me to the Eagleville PO, which is about 15 minutes away. I don’t actually know where I officially live–when I moved here I wrote Norristown, and now I guess I should write Eagleville, but I believe my house is actually in…Jeffersonville? Trooper? I don’t really know. Maybe it’s on the deed or something :)
I was in the Blue Bell, PA PO (not Blue Ball, that’s different) one day, and, hand to god, some lady several people ahead of me in line staggered up to the counter and hoisted up a TYPEWRITER. A gigantic, old-school, manual TYPEWRITER. I don’t know who the hell she was shipping that thing to, but it was massive. And of course not boxed up, grrr.
I also have an ongoing battle with my mail carrier. There used to be a family across the street with the same last name (no relation). I occasionally will get mail addressed to the gentleman of the family, and although I’ve tried “No longer at this address,” “Return to Sender,” “Moved 3 years ago,” and many variations, it usually comes back to me at least once. The last time, there were FOUR rounds. He finally got the message when I wrote, “HE LIVED AT 1503. I LIVE AT 1501. WE ARE NOT RELATED. HE MOVED 3 YEARS AGO. I DO NOT WANT THIS!!!!!” Sheesh. The funniest thing is that this guy has the exact same name as my dad…who died 15 years ago. OK, maybe that’s not so much funny as it is creepy :)
A note on UPS: I have a close relative who works as a loader at a UPS near NYC, and I know for a fact that when they see a box marked “Fragile” they go out of their way to throw it around. So pack your stuff as tightly and with as much bubble wrap as possible!
Chicago post offices are hellmouths. I’m pretty sure every time they do those national post office rankings, I always hear, “Congratulations, your post office people suck the most!!” though it HAS been about ten years since I heard about a mailbox being lit on fire…
The Irving and Southport post office is probably the best, the people are remotely pleasant and it has that supercool WPA mural above the counter. Ashland and Wellington is Suck City. My husband brought them a package, which he had already labeled and paid for (we live in a condo building, so we can’t just leave it for the mailman…and when we catch him delivering the mail, he always refuses anyway), and the woman behind the counter yelled at him and told him to take it to the back door (as in, big heavy metal door hidden behind three dumpsters). He did that, and, you guessed it, the person who opened the door told him he wouldn’t take it. Husband ended up taking the package two blocks over to the UPS store on Barry.
Oh yeah, and don’t get me started on the shower gift that was sent to us six months ago and just arrived on tuesday.
My mailman in Sioux Falls is sort of freakishly on the ball. Through some snafu at the DMV (which, I don’t really think you want to open comments on that, or risk overloading the internet), my voter registration got sent to the right numbered address, only five streets over. Curious. But my mailman figured it out, even though I’d only been here for a couple of months at the time, and delivered it to me so that I could clear things up with voter registration. The lady I talked to there was suitably impressed.
But I think I may just have a connection with mailmen: unlike my siblings, I don’t look very much like my dad, and my parents used to joke that I was the (by then retired) mailman’s daughter, which was funny until I finally caught a glimpse of him in town and I’ll be damned if I don’t look an awful lot like him. Suspicious.
I’m actually really happy with my local PO, but it’s in a small city in Mass. The two people that are usually working the counter (and there are usually two, thankfully) are both very friendly and helpful. The best experience I had was last fall. I needed to pick up a package, but couldn’t remember what time they opened. I took a shot and got there at 8:30. The building is open at that time so that people can go to their PO boxes, but the sign on the door said that the counter doesn’t open till 9. I figured I’d go ahead in and just wait since it wasn’t worth it to drive back home, etc. To my amazement, the counter staff were already there working, and I had my package at 8:35. That was awesome.
The only reason I don’t hate FedEx is because I have the good fortune of working directly across the street from FedEx HQ in my area, so picking up a package there is easy. Before I took my current job, though, I avoided FedEx as much as possible.
I also need to say amen to the posters from Chicago — I’m originally from there too and have had the WORST experiences ever with the post offices and mail carriers there.
I live in a relatively small community (approx. 200K) in southeastern Washington made up of three separate cities. I live in the central part of one and work 30 minutes away in the northern section of another, and even though each has its own PO, the only one you can pick up packages at is in the center of the third one. (20-30 minute drive from either my house or office.)
Wouldn’t be a problem except my father insists on sending everything “signature required” so that when I find the “tried to deliver” notice in the mailbox, I have to take a good 2 hours out of the middle of my day to get there, wait in line while the two “workers” spend more time chatting with each other and locking themselves out of their supply drawers than they do actually assisting the no less than 15 customers in line, wait while it takes them forever to figure out how to match up the tracking number of my slip and my package, and then travel back to my job.
Fortunately for my father, he sends gifts that make the hassle worth it or I might just let the USPS keep them!
Good to see that a fair number of Chicagoans have already defended Chicago’s place as suckiest postal system. Post offices are horrible everywhere, but that horribleness combined with Chicago’s dismal infrastructure yields a totally ineffective mail system that moves at a snail’s pace. Our public schools are routinely used in education classes as a textbook example of a terrible school system, the El now costs THREE DOLLARS to ride (and it moves at approximately 3 miles an hour), and during the 2006 elections, some candidate or another’s supporters STORMED the Board of Elections and started randomly grabbing boxes of uncounted ballots (claiming that the counted ballots, which projected a loss by about 30 percentage points, were inaccurate). Go, Chicago!
Jenn: another Hyde Parker? I’ve actually found that the campus post office is a far more pleasant experience than the other two in the area. I wish my missed packages were held there instead of at the Henry W. McGee branch, which I’m afraid to go to after dark.
Megan, I love the irony, that your destroyed bottles were for a Quality Assurance Association.
Quote: My postal carrier is okay, although I’m positive he’s reading my Entertainment Weeklys and then delivering them when he’s done.
Sars, I’ll see you that and raise you my local post office, where an employee diverted my EWs to his or her home address. When I called the magazine after not getting anything from them for four or five weeks, I was told that an official notice from the post office had ‘updated’ my address.
Also, two apartments ago, there was a guy in my building who coincidentally had the same last name as me. When I moved and had the post office forward stuff on (you know, for real), of course they forwarded that guy’s mail to my new address as well. It took me two separate visits to get them to understand that he was not in fact related to me, but a random stranger with the same fairly common last name.
Another word on the UPS guy. Mine used to specifically come to my apartment complex close to 6:00 PM when he knew most of us would be getting home from work because the managers were notorious for not getting you your packages. He has now moved to the route that serves my office and will yoink my packages out of the new guy’s bag and bring them by the office for me. Love!
I don’t go into the Post Office during business hours, but my Post Offices have found a way to screw up the APM system. I have two post offices about equal distance from my apartment, in opposite directions and on different bus lines. All I need to do business is the machine and the package drop. Invariably, each post office has only one of these things working at a time. Also invariably, I always go to the one with the working package drop and broken machine first so I have to go to the second post office then back to the first post office.
I don’t have any PO horror stories, but I do have a FedEx one. This was a couple of years back, when I lived in suburban Chicago… I order something and it’s sent to me FedEx. Now… I hardly ever was home during the day, so I had signed the whole “leave at door” thing months before. This worked well for a while, until a package just didn’t show. It was slated to be delivered in late November, on a day that was so snowy that it took me a couple of hours to get home thanks to the clusterfuck that happens when you take public transportation and it snows. I called FedEx, because their online tracking said the package was left at the door… The first rep was very unhelpful, saying that if that’s what it said, they were not responsible for the package. The second rep was a bit more helpful, and said to call the merchant and find out whether the tracking number was just the wrong one. I call the merchant, and the tracking checks out. I call FedEx again, and the third rep gives me the same beef about not being responsible for packages once they are authorized to leave at door.
Not being in a good mood, I ask to speak with a supervisor, who “meets me halfway” and says they will file a loss claim with the merchant, and gives me a claim number, instructs me to check with the merchant a couple of days later for a new tracking number. I call the merchant as suggested, and they have no freaking idea on what the hell that was about. Finally the rep at the merchant says “Maybe the supervisor there got it wrong. Maybe you were supposed to call us, and we have to call FedEx and make a claim on a lost package. [I found out later that this was the correct procedure at the time] So let us handle that, and we’re sending you another package with your merchandise in the meanwhile. If the first package does show, please make sure to notify FedEx.”
The second package ships, and I track it implacably (we’re talking checking FedEx.com every hour on the hour). As soon as it looks to be close, I call FedEx and ask them to retain the package at their shipping facility, that I would go pick it up rather than risk another botched delivery. So they do.
But it does not end there. It was pretty cold all that winter. Snow was on the ground from the beginning of November all the way to mid February, when a couple of days of warm weather made the ground thaw enough. As the snow is melting, I step out of the back door of my house in the morning to go to work, but something that looks like the corner of a package is peeking out of the snow that had gathered by the side of the steps (the backdoor at the house is elevated by about 10 in, and there is a stoop like step leading down to the yard proper). Sure enough, it’s a very wet, almost mulch-like FedEx box.
The FedEx guy did not leave it by the freaking large mailbox right by the door, or at the doorstep on front door, nor by the backdoor proper. He just tossed it down by the side of the step near the backdoor as the snow was already accumulating. FedEx was very grateful to hear back from me and to have the package returned to them so they could send it back to the merchant. As for me, that was the last time I ever used FedEx.
It’s been about 6 years, and I still don’t trust them.
The post office by my apartment is what I refer to as Satan’s asshole. The only place I hate more is the DMV. I was there one time waiting in line to mail a package, and one of the employees snapped at a guy (after her supervisor chastised her for jumping into one of the bins to get a package, to which she snapped, “It’s because I’m a woman!”), “Did what I said make you feel uncomfortable? Did I make you feel neglected?” and other comments like that… everyone in line was just watching her, appalled. I was hoping I didn’t get her. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I got the woman who didn’t speak English. I kept sneaking looks at the crazy employee, though, worrying that she was going to open fire on all of us at any second.
This may not be the USPS’s fault, but it’s the alltime late-delivery story I know, so it fits here.
Around 1997, my parents received an envelope marked “Do Not Bend” at their suburban Chicago home, from the US Army. They couldn’t imagine what it could be, but on opening it they found it was my Basic Training (boot camp) class photo from Fr. Campbell Kentucky, and copies supposedly mailed to parents etc. immediately after it was taken.
My Basic Training was in early 1970.
My favorite mail problem was an office of ours to which we were shipping research in bulk. They complained constantly about not getting their shipments. We tried tracking, but nothing got there. And finally I asked them to talk to their local post office, which checked around and found, in a back room, many months’ worth of bulk packages of research that the carrier apparently decided was “too heavy” to bother delivering. He was fired. And now that office gets its research.
I have an uncle and two cousins who work or haved worked for the USPS, and it doesn’t matter how well you mark a package as fragile, or “do not bend”, it will end up being hurled across a room at some point during a pick up game of package football.
My own post office is staffed by two older women who frequently look bored out of their socks, but are at least efficient and rarely surly.
While I’ve never really spoken to my mail carrier, he waves if we pass each other on the road, has never pepper sprayed my dog (the previous carrier tried), and even delivers mail with my name but the neighbor’s address corretly to me without taking it back to the main office first. If I could just get him to stop violently creasing my magazines around my letters, he’d be perfect. Just once I’d like to read my New Yorker without it having fold down the center of it.
Three words: Mail Boxes Etc.
J.
Boy have I got some bitching to do. Until 2 weeks ago I was an exchange student in Italy. It is a lovely country but my god the post office/ mail in general is… I don’t have words. About 2 months in my parents sent me my violin and a bunch of other things, paying a whole heap by the way, ticking the little box next to ‘contains personal items’, insuring it just to be sure and being told that it would arrive in 3 weeks. Cut to a month and a half later (gah!), I recieve a note in the post telling me it had arrived and I could go pick it up. I go to the post office all excited, wait my turn… and am then told I have to pay 250 euros to pick it up. Er, what? Apparantly because my parents had insured it it was classed as comercial items, despite the fact they had ticked a little box saying it wasn’t, meaning we had to pay this tax on it. I had no choice in the end but to pay it. Then when it was my birthday they sent me an iPod and a couple of other things, total value around $500, not insuring it this time so I wouldn’t have to shell out the tax. It never arrived. I checked on my end and was told thast it never left Australia, my parents checked on their end and was told it had entered Italy, we will never know which one was correct.
OK, months later it’s time for me to go home. I’m way over my luggage weight limit so I pack a bunch of stuff, clothes, books etc, into two big boxes to be sent, keeping to the weight and height limits given. I go to the post office, with the proper forms filled out and everything, only to be told that I can’t send them the way I wanted to because they contain used clothes. Contain… used clothes. Right. So I have to choose between 2 other ways, one costing more than the actual items I wanted to send, the other taking at least a month to arrive meaning they would most likely arrive home after I did. I choose the latter and am told to fill out a new set of forms, meaning I had to lug the boxes back to my host parents house because I needed info I hadn’t brought with me. So I come back later with the forms done, boxes ready and what do you know, this new way of sending them has a smaller size limit and my boxes are too big so I have to go home again, sacrifice some items and cut down the boxes and then go back and finally send them. Couldn’t the guy have given me all this information at the same time? The same guy served me each time, he could see the boxes and that they were too big, he didn’t think that maybe he could save me a trip?
Oh, please. Y’all don’t know. I live in a very very small town in Alabama. I have actually had to turn around and go a different way leaving my house because the mail truck and some other car were parked in the road talking. The mailman and some rando, just blocking the street, having a conversation, for *at least* twenty minutes. And, you guessed it, this was *before* the mailman had delivered my mail. I hate her. My Netflix dvds usually take two or three days to get from me to the distribution center, even though Birmingham is only thirty minutes away. They don’t bother delivering the mail somedays, they cram my mailbox full of shit and bend it all up without care, and I have actually witnessed the mail carrier *THROWING* my package toward my door from the yard when it was too big for the box.
Inside the post office, you can expect to wait at least five minutes for someone to just show up at the counter, and you had better damn well feel honored about that, too. Because she is doing you a favor taking your money and (maybe… if they feel like it) delivering your mail. I hate the post office.
I agree with all the Chicagoans…
I once moved within Chicago, and a couple of weeks after filling out the change of address form, noticed I was getting a lot of mail addressed to a woman with my first name and a very similar last name. I also wasn’t getting a lot of mail I expected, ie various bills, magazines, etc. When I went to my local (streeterville) office, they sent me to the main office, where they explained to me that change of addresses were filed by date received, the first two letters of the first name, and the first three letters of the last name. If two people with overlapping letters to their names file on the same day, there’s no way to separate them, and they just randomly get each other’s mail until they can sort it out themselves. In a city the size of Chicago, I can’t believe this doesn’t happen pretty frequently, and it was incredibly annoying to fix.
It does seem like, every time you hear one of those stories about sacks and sacks of undelivered mail being discovered in some carrier’s basement, it’s always in Illinois. I know it gets cold out Chicago way, but fuck’s sake, if you don’t want to deliver the mail, don’t take a job delivering the mail.
But Brooklyn is pretty bad, and there was a story a few weeks ago about a carrier, beloved by his entire neighborhood, getting busted taking people’s Christmas cards and going through them for money. Which on the one hand is pretty evil, but on the other hand, if you send cash through the mail, you’ve kind of got it coming.
The story’s here: http://gothamist.com/2007/12/09/mailman_as_anti.php. Apparently this happened in the 11214 — Bensonhurst. Of all the neighborhoods I’d want to get pinched stealing Christmas money in, that ain’t the one.
I live in Baton Rouge, LA, and the closest UPS pick-up center is in Port Allen, on the other side of the River and about 25 minutes away.
The place is (or was) open *one day a week, for one hour a day – 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. on Mondays. This was just before Christmas, too. I had to ask for the time off work.
One of the employees behind the counter took my tracking slip and those of several other people in line, went to the back, and . . .brought out random packages while asking, “Is this yours? How about this one?”
I have also had the problem with the UPS driver not even knocking on the door – there have been several days I took off work specifically to wait for important packages only to see on the online tracking that “delivery was attempted but no one was home.” No one was home? Poppycock. They tried to tell me that I probably just didn’t hear the delivery dude knocking, but whatever – I live in a one-bedroom apartment, so no mater where I am, I am within a few feet of the front door. Jerks.
Now, normally, my favorite thing at the Post Office is that big clunky metal box you can drop preaddressed Priority Mail parcels into… love, love, love. I have an online business and a good percentage of my orders ship USPS… which means I can do up the postage via Endicia, lick ’em, stick ’em, and march ’em right past the surly long line to the drop box. Postage heaven. Until the day Boyfriend and I were swamped with orders, and neither of us caught the box that had not been labeled.
We hadn’t put a return address on it, because Endicia prints that on our postage-paid mailing label, and the customer’s addy was not on the box either, for the same reason. Into the bin it goes. Back to the day job I go. Then BF discovers the problem, and points out that this particular box is the one with almost $200 worth of product in it… something we can’t exactly afford to just say “Oops” and resend. I call the post office: “It’s only been there two hours. How can I get it back?”
Come down *right now* was the answer, so I bailed on the day job (boss: not impressed) and run across town to find that the errant package had already been picked up and taken to the Big Post Office. Which they could have told me when I called, and now, it’s almost time for Big Post Office to close. I race over there, across town in a different direction, in rush-hour traffic.
At Big Post Office, I explain it all over again, including trying to get it through someone’s thick head that no, it DOES NOT have an address OR return address on it, never mind postage, which is WHY I AM HERE, and finally he gets out a Recall Form. And proceeds to ask me for every single piece of information I had just given him. Evidently, someone would notice my little oversight and put the box in some kind of a holding bin, from which I could claim it the next day. Call this number tomorrow, he said, and make sure they have it before I come get it. Not impressed, but it was my blunder, so I tuck the number in my purse and head home.
Next day, I call the number and a dazed woman explains that the box probably *is* in the bin, but the person who handles that kind of thing is not coming in until 3:00 pm., and no one can check the bin but him. She’ll have that guy call me though… and of course, he doesn’t call. Meanwhile, some nice lady back east is still waiting for her merchandise. We decide to bite the bullet and re-ship. At least the customer is taken care of now, it wasn’t her fault.
Day three, I call again, and finally someone who is not on drugs answers the phone. She kindly explains that all the mail for the entire Orange County, CA area goes through their office, and they get so many messed-up boxes that there is no way ours would stand out. Since the only return address is *inside* the box, it was already on its way to Detroit, one of only two mail centers in the nation that has authority to open mail. We’ll get it back sometime after they process it, she said. I thanked her, hung up, and we vowed to return-address-stamp *every box* as it was packed, in case this ever happened again. Lesson learned!
Our box finally showed up, about six weeks later, at an old PO box address my boyfriend still uses… in Los Angeles. At least they sent it back to the right state.
I just had to pop back in to say that if you are a Chicagoan who wonders where all your lost mail has gone, you should check out a despairing essay by Jonathan Franzen in “How to Be Alone.” I was also told by a tour guide that during the 1992 flooding of downtown Chicago (when workcrews accidentally breached a freight tunnel running under the river), among the many things that floated to the surface were stacks and stacks of undelivered mail, going back decades. On the other hand, I am 85% sure that they have been spot-on both forwarding my mail since I moved and sticking return-to-sender stamps on my 3rd class mail, so somebody down South Side way is doing something right.
My local post office is very conveniently located, but the women working the counter move as slowly as humanly possible. Seriously, snails complete half-mile races before these women can finish up a single customer. They get all pissed off at the drop of a hat and start giving everyone in the room an attitude, but because they are nearly all black women, the only customers willing to say something back are other black women. Everyone else is keen to avoid being accused of racism or misogyny, or maybe they’re just afraid of what will happen to their packages. Even police officers in uniform WITH FIREARMS seem a little fearful.
Also, in a neighborhood with a high Mexican immigrant population, only one person at that location is bilingual (who is also the only guy and the only person with a sense of efficiency), and he’s there about three days a week.
@Ellen: It sounds like you’re familiar with Cullman. GAAAH, the devil’s own rectal polyp of a town. Just a guess, and possibly wrong, but GAAAH anyway.
I live in SW Georgia, in a small but high-crime town, and apparently I should just consider us lucky to have gotten away with having our mail (especially magazines and product samples) pilfered at the post office. I’m just so proud that SOMEONE at the PO can read, albeit on a third-grade level, that I’m not going to say anything to them. I do thank God for payroll direct deposit and online payment options, though. And if they’re stealing my lemon-verbena Tide samples, maybe they’ll. . .I don’t know, use them or something. Yay for cleanliness.
And here I thought E. 85th st. p.o. (10028) was the worst place on earth. I guess compared to some of these, it’s not so bad.
Inept carriers/pretty good post offices story from middle GA: The house I rent has a small “mother-in-law” house behind it on the same property. My house number is 171, the MIL house is 173. For weeks this summer, I was getting all my mail plus 173’s mail. I typed up a note and taped it to my mailbox: “Please leave mail for 171 My Street only. 173 My Street is the house at the end of the driveway.”
Cue several weeks of all my mail going to 173. I called my post office (which, as others have noted, is not the one closest to me but) to explain the situation and the man I spoke to said he’d talk to my carrier. I had little faith, but mail delivery has been spot-on ever since.
In the interim, I also talked to my street’s Neighborhood Watch captain (who knows everything that goes on), who said that the street’s regular carrier had been out for 4 months taking care of his sick wife, so substitutes were alternating covering his route. That would explain the time I was out on my porch and a carrier asked me if he could leave 173’s mail with me because he wasn’t sure where 173 was. Uh, NO.
Agree w/Jen S that the downtown Seattle post offices are just gawd-awful. Broadway may be one of the worst, but the Queen Anne station is just as bad. I used to run a housing community for short-term non-perm stays (3-6 mos on average), and the daily mail delivery was one of the main things that kept everyone going, esp. around the holidays…but the carriers were lazy, stupid, and often times absent. Many a conversation was had with the Postmaster down there.
Now…for mailing packages and whatever else, I love love LOVE the APCs. I’m out in the boonies (Snoqualmie) now, but the Issaquah PO lobby and APCs are available 24-7, so I can roll in at midnight and mail my packages no problem. Only had to stand in line once this year to mail an international box, but was still out of there in under 20 minutes, thanks to the 4 APCs in this PO.
My major complaint is home service. Mangled catalogs, NetFlix envelopes missing the dvds, flat mail and magazines crumpled in the back of the mailbox b/c dipshit figured they’d stuff the package in there AFTER putting the mail in, rather than leave the package in the locked bin or on my doorstep. Missing magazines, late bills…you name it, my carrier is guilty of it. HATE.
Has anyone else noticed that the word “receipt” is spelled as “reciept” on the green and white Certified Mail Receipt form (PO Form 3800, June 2002)? I saw it when I was filing my tax return in September.
I sent a letter to the Postmaster General asking that he get it fixed.
A minion responded and said the person in charge of this type of thing had never noticed, but they would get right on it. How many millions of those green and white slips were handled by PO staff over the years and NO ONE IN THE PO NOTICED? C’mon.
I singlehandedly support at least two PO workers because I write so much personal mail. I was USPS’ biggest fan until the most recent rate changes. Now that the thickness and shape of the envelope have to be added to the equation along with size and weight to determine the amount of postage, I can’t figure out without going to the PO how much it will cost to mail anything. Why make it more difficult to calculate postage? If I cut an article out of the newspaper to forward, I have to pay attention to how many times I fold it in case it makes the size 10 envelope thick? Argh.
My favorite hell hole is the Golden Gate branch in San Francisco. They’re ok for letters, etc, but do not have a package delivered to you through them. They have, in the span of a year, lost THREE packages. I’ll get those orange slips for pick up, but when I go to the post office, they “can’t find it.” It just vanishes. They give me all of these phone numbers, which are completely unhelpful, and then tell me that it “must have been returned to the sender.” GUESS WHAT! The sender is my FATHER, and no he did NOT get it back, and also it is IRREPLACEABLE, and finally if some DISASTER befalls you Golden Gate postal branch, it may or may not have been me.
My complaint isn’t about my local post office, but about merchants who have no idea how a PO Box works, and refuse to ship by US Mail just because “UPS is so much cheaper”, or “FedEx is faster” –ATTENTION!! Companies Who Ship Stuff Out!!: If I list my address as a PO Box, those private companies are NOT ALLOWED to deliver to it. You force them to try to find my house (BAD IDEA, I’m not home daytime + bad neighborhood for leaving packages = NO HOME DELIVERY), or to MAIL me a notice telling me to come pick up my package from their central depot, which is usually miles out of town and I don’t have a car so I have to beg a ride…All this drama when, for a little careful consideration, I could’ve had my pack of needs-to-be-wrapped-and-re-mailed-NOW goodies on my usual Saturday morning mail run to the post office which is only 4 blocks from my home. My local Albany, NY PO station is very good about holding packages for me, the clerks are mostly sweet and polite and they all know me on sight, and yeah, the lines are gawdawful but that’s life.
My beef, grumpily enough, is with post office personnel who were trying to cut me a break. I went to mail some Hannukah candles to darkest Ontario, and discovered that by choosing Express Mail, I needed the long customs form, not the shorter one, plus the stuff on an Express Mail envelope. So, I had to go back and fill out those. Ah, well.
Then the clerk says. Don’t wait in line. Just come back when you’re ready.
Now, I know she was just trying to be nice, but I just couldn’t do it. There were at least thirty people in line behind me. And the clerk took plenty of time once I actually returned to the windows.
Generally speaking, they’re okay where I am, although I might never quite forgive that APC for selling me stamps the day before the price went up…
I must say, I love my local PO in Tempe, AZ. The few times I’ve been there, the line was short and the clerks were super nice. I mailed a small package a few months ago, and my then-two-month-old baby started crying a soon as I walked in the door. I only waited in line for about five minutes, but by the time I got to the window, my brain had completely shorted out from the crying. I got my package mailed, walked a few steps away, and remembered I had letters to send out. I held them up but couldn’t find the words to say what I wanted over the crying, and the lovely lady at the window took them and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of those for you.” Love! Also, I had to mail out Christmas packages for the first time this year, and since everybody has stories like these, I absolutely dreaded it. I had just one small box, but I also have a now-four-month-old daughter, and I just imagined her transforming into a banshee as I waited in line for hours on end. I made it to the PO at 4pm on December 20th..and there were about four people in line. Kiddo slept through it all, and the clerk even found me a cheaper and faster way to mail my package. When one guy a little ways behind me dropped his stack of packages, the folks around him helped him pick them up. My trip to the PO actually made my holidays a little brighter.
Yet another Chicagoan, subject to the indignities of the post office at Broadway and Lawrence. Now, I appreciate the Deco aesthetic of the building, and like to look at the WPA murals of the noble, hard-working farmers, which I have loads of time to do since, though there are ten windows, only two appear to ever be open, regardless of length of line or time of year. There is also a separate package pick-up window, which sometimes you’re supposed to go to and sometimes not, which apparently is decided on the whim of someone back there and not communicated to anyone in line. If you go and you’re not supposed to, you lose your place in line and get yelled at. If you don’t go and you’re supposed to, you have to go stand in a new line of one person (you) and wait for twenty minutes for someone to notice you’re standing there, even though you make eye contact and wave at several employees meandering past, all of whom look through you like you’re glass. And all the while you can see your package, almost within arm’s reach. And signing the little slip left at your house is a fool’s errand – they make one attempt and that’s it.
Although, props to the supervisor who gave me a package of medication sent registered mail by a Canadian pharmacy addressed to my DOG, even when I specifically told them the package had to be addressed to me since my DOG cannot sign for his own packages. Stupid Canadian pharmacy.
A tip for Chicagoans, if you work in the South Loop: the basement of the Sears Tower has a post office that is extremely efficient. They have four windows and four workers. It’s like new math or some shit. Even when the line’s long, it only takes a few minutes.
No problems this Christmas season so far but when I mailed my wedding invitations a few months ago, I had a breakdown and my fiance cowering in terror.
My invitations were square. I knew they required extra postage so my mom and I traipse down to the main post office and weigh a completed invitation on two different scales to find out the weight. We then wait in line and when I show the clerk my invitation, she doesn’t weigh it and just hands me a package of wedding themed stamps for .57 or whatever. All 150 invitations get addressed and put into a blue mailbox a few days later.
And they start coming back. For INSUFFICIENT POSTAGE! And not only do they come back and seriously mess with my RSVP timelines but the USPS put stickers covering the entire address so I don’t even know which ones have come back! A call to the post office leaves with me a CSR that says that I can return my apparently useless special stamps but I had to have my receipt. Who keeps a receipt for freaking STAMPS!
And only those first few came back. Most of the other ones were delivered without a problem and I just remailed the ones that came back since the stamps hadn’t been cancelled and they didn’t come back a second time. The stickers over the address peeled off fairly easily if I took my time and pulled gently.
But UPS alternates between sucking and being awesome. A friend was getting married in my hometown as a destination wedding and had sent her wedding favors with a signature required. On the one day I didn’t have anyone available during the day to sign for it. 5 days before the wedding. So, I call UPS and change the delivery address to my dad’s work since the receptionist is there all day. 5 pm and still no package and 4 days to wedding. I call them again and they tell me its on the original truck and won’t be delivered to the office for two more days. I ask if I can pick it up and I’m told no. I ask if they can try to deliver to the first address since its still on that truck. The CSR said she would call the driver and see if he’d do it.
He happens to be in the neighborhood that it was originally supposed to be delivered to and calls me personally to ask if I want to meet him to take possession of the package or he can try to re-deliver it but it still takes a signature. I asked if there is anyway he can just drop the package off in my parents completely dead, no possible chance of it being stolen, really I promise I won’t hold you responsible and I won’t tell if you sign some fake name neighborhood. He agreed.
And then delivered it in the evening when there were people there and they had said they couldn’t deliver at that time anyway.