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
“My postal carrier is okay, although I’m positive he’s reading my Entertainment Weeklys and then delivering them when he’s done.”– Sars
My dad swears that our mail carrier does that with his “Chess Life” magazine, even though we all point out that the mail carrier probably could not care less about the newest “Chess Life” issue.
Oh, god. The Ravenswood branch of the Chicago post office is a nightmare. I have had to PRINT OUT post-office regulation pages to show them how to handle business-reply mail. I eventually had to give up using a BRM card because they never got to me. And the BRM guy was never there AND they never gave him messages. Oh, and they took the stamp vending machine out of service for months, yet never put up a sign, so that people would come in, put their money in, and stand there all croggled wondering why they weren’t getting any stamps.
They also told my husband that he couldn’t use internet postage that he printed out from the USPS website unless he mailed it that same day. When he pointed out that he had printed it at 11 p.m., they said “Downtown open til midnight.”
The Devon Avenue branch is great, a bit slow, but good for people-watching as it’s such a diverse neighborhood. (Except I keep hoping that the people who park in front of the hydrant will get ticketed but they never do. You can park at the Home Depot and walk half a block, people!)
My UPS guy is an angel, though — it’s hard to hear my doorbell in bad weather (which Chicago has a lot of) and he just pounds on the door until I hear him. AND he and his wife run a charity in Peru that gives school supplies to children. How awesome is that?
I now live in a small town with pretty much wonderful POs (I do occasionally have to explain that Scotland isn’t England when they’re coding up my UK packages) and quite decent carrier service.
Which seems fair to me, as I lived in Chicago during the height of the post office scandals there, with letter carriers burning and hoarding mail on a regular basis. My building was, for some time, protected from the worst of it by an absolutely saintly letter carrier, but when he left, the new guy would just dump the sack of mail for the whole building in the lobby. And there was apparently some war between the Jackson Park and Hyde Park post offices, so the letter carrier from one would deliberately leave a receipt telling you to pick it up at the other one
When I moved down, with my job, I filled out the change of address form and handed it in. Which the USPS then, for reasons passing understanding, SENT TO THE CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY. Which kindly sent it to us at our new address as indicated on the form, with a puzzled note. I still–I mean–I can’t–it’s for YOU, USPS. It says so right on there. You get a million of these. What would make you think–oh, forget it.
The one I live near now, Pratt Station in Brooklyn, is bad. It’s the sort of bad where if there’s a line of 15 people and there are 2 clerks they’ll have another one set up (for 15 mouth watering minutes) and as soon as they open they send another clerk on break. That’s average bad for Brooklyn, though. The worst PO hands down is the Atlantic Avenue Station. I swear they’re only allowed to hire trainees and problem employees who’ve been shunted out of other POs. Years ago they were closed for a year long renovation and at the end of the reno someone got pictures of them just throwing away hundreds of packages that had been sitting in the building for the entire year. Didn’t try to deliver them, didn’t hide it just pitching them into dumpsters.
On the flip side, I work on midtown on the East Side and the I find the Grand Central Station to be one of the best. The lines are long because volume is high but they always move quickly and they put enough staff on the floor to try and combat the idiots who decide not to wrap and address and insure their packages until they’re standing in front of a clerk.
One of the post offices I used to go to in Los Angeles was the weirdest place ever.
First of all, it was in a kind of strip mall (at least, it was connected to the buildings on either side of it), and yet it was… shaped like a castle. No, I mean with little fake turrets and the top of the building painted to look like crenellated battlements and the whole nine yards. Because… why?
Secondly, it had no parking lot. At all. If you wanted to go there in a car you had to find parking on the street. Which is insane in L.A., because of course EVERYONE IS DRIVING. And naturally, this is less than fifty feet from the intersection of two major thoroughfares.
Also, because of the absolutely psychotic zoning laws in the Valley, there were never more than four parking spaces on that block that were legal to park in at any given time. Have you ever seen twenty enraged Los Angelenos trying to get into four parking spaces at rush hour next to the Intersection of Death? I have. It ain’t pretty.
(Actually, the Intersection of Death is where Sunset Blvd., Canon Drive and Beverly Drive all come together in a hellish vortex that has eaten many an unsuspecting careless driver for breakfast. But the one next to the Magnolia PO in the Valley was definitely in the running.)
I love our mail guys, let me say that first. They are awesome. Thank you, mail guy who brings my big-ass packages to the door *and* makes sure they’re safe from the rain.
However, our local P.O. has its head firmly implanted in its rectum.
There are two drop boxes for the city square, which is the office location for eighty percent of the lawyers in town, plus the courts, child support, and other related, mail-heavy businesses.
So what do they do but decide, without warning, to move our pickup time up from four o’clock to “sometime between two-thirty and three”?
Thanks a bunch, Post Office people – now I’m getting sent to the P.O. two or three days a week to drop stuff off because the lawyers have only been used to “get mail out by four” for about thirty years, and sometimes the business of the day just isn’t concluded by lunch time (which is what it would require for me to have all my mail ready by “two thirty or three”.
My home mail guys are usually pretty good (though for the past few months there have been a number of times we haven’t gotten mail until after 5 p.m.), but the woman who generally delivers to my office building is ridiculous. Just today, I saw her arrive as I left for lunch, around 1:20. Our building has five floors with between five and ten offices on each floor. We’re on the fourth floor and got our mail at 3:45. Is that…normal? Maybe she was loaded down by all the candy she takes from the offices she delivers to, along with every single delivery person we have, who all take handfuls of candy from our bowl even when we put up a sign that said, “Please be considerate and just take one.”
You’re not kidding, Leigh… although I submit to you the San Vicente/Burton/La Cienega clusterfuck as an additional Intersection of Death. You haven’t experienced fear until you’ve somehow gotten caught in that intersection, half blocking oncoming traffic, with absolutely nothing to do about it but pray that the gods of motor travel choose to spare you.
Latest postal service infraction: having no tracking information on the packages that I mailed last week and which should have arrived in time for Christmas because I coughed up the money to send them Priority. They may have disappeared into the Postal Bermuda Triangle, for all I know.
I paid extra money for priority shipping to get my father’s Christmas packages to him. The lady at the window said, “They’ll probably get there on time but if you go Priority, it’ll definitely get there.” So they did get there, today, an hour after he left for the airport. Bastards.
My personal Post Office of the Damned was always the one in the Postal Museum in Washington DC where a clerk once asked me, after I’d stood in line for 45 minutes, if I wanted to “mail that,” but… apparently they were only garden-variety sucky, and not outstanding in any way. I’m a little in love with the USPS right now though because I priority-mailed Christmas cookies from Boston on Saturday hoping for delivery maybe today or tomorrow, and they got to Dayton, OH on Christmas Eve. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but it was a really nice surprise. (Sorry you weren’t so lucky, Meghan!)
THIS is one of the growing list of reasons I am growing to like living in a small town (44883, thank you very much). The post office never has a line longer than 4 people, usually there isn’t a line at all. The workers are helpful, polite, speedy, and remember me by sight even if I haven’t been there in awhile.
While there are days I wish I lived in a big (or even moderately sized) city, I am absolutely spoiled by the small-town service at the post office, banks, gift shops, coffee shop, and library. Thanks for the reminder!
This is shipping related, but I’m not sure if it is the sender’s fault or the shipping company. Has anyone else encountered a problem with recycled tracking numbers? I ordered shoes from Newport News for a wedding I was in, and I checked the UPS tracking number once they sent me the confirmation, and it showed the package delivered LAST YEAR to some entirely different part of the country. I kept checking back because I thought it was an error. After several days, I called Newport News and they said it was a recycled tracking number and I must have checked too soon before they could update the information. But I told them I’d checked several times, over several days, and by their estimation my package should be arriving any time now anyway. Finally the package was delivered, and still the tracking information had not changed. WHAT is the point of a TRACKING number if it does not, indeed, track your shipment?
On a whim, I just checked the tracking number. The package was delivered almost 4 months ago, and at the time I received it it did not show my package’s information, but now it does. I hope the next person to receive this same tracking number does not get too confused by their package being received in CT months or years before it was even ordered…
Well hey now, I was in London in student abroad hell, and the Mail Boxes Etc. in Earl’s Court was just lovely. I had a ridiculously falling apart box that weighed 16kg, and I arrived at 7:30am when they open at 8am. Not only was I given the paperwork to get through while they opened, but they gave me a new box, didn’t charge me for the re-packing I did myself, informed me carefully that not only could I not ship alcohol, but that the transport of it in my luggage to the US would be illegal at the tender age of 20. Such wonderful people, I was able to even get to work ten minutes early. Aaaand UPS got the package there when they said they would.
My mother leaves our mail carrier a present of homemade Scottish shortbread every Christmas. Perhaps this would help others?
My Aunt and Uncle worked at the main USPS sorting center in Denver for 20+ years. They both say that if you REALLY care about things like delivery time and package condition, send your stuff via UPS or FedEx. So there you go.
em-dash: Oh my god I’ve totally done that. I forgot about San Vicente/La Cienega! Pure freakin’ evil, man.
Also: In North Hollywood, pretty much any intersection involving Lankershim Blvd. *shudder*
No complaints with my actual Post Office here in STL, except that it’s kind of a pain to get to (in the middle of a neighborhood and a bunch of one way streets) BUT my mail carrier is something else.
I live in the actual city in a little brick bungalow, I have a mail slot in the wall of my house. And my mail carrier’s goal in life seems to be to see how far INTO my house she can shove my mail. I came back home last night, after being gone 5 days and found all of mail strewn across my living room floor. Everything that is sitting on the table under the mail slot? Also strewn about the floor. I have yet to get a magazine or catalog that isn’t mangled in some way, and I have lived here 4 1/2 years. I still get mail for the previous owner, no matter what I do. I also get my neighbors’ mail, both from the apartment building across the street and my next door neighbor. As a extra special bonus, for some reason 50% of the junk mail I get is addressed to my Mother at my address, even though she HAS NEVER EVER LIVED at my house, and in fact lives in Illinois and has for the last 10 years or so!
HATE!!!
I’ve got a DHL story (I very, very rarely am forced to go to the post office).
I ordered my pretty, pretty laptop from Dell and spent every waking minute checking the tracking information online. When it finally said “on truck for delivery” (to my office), I stopped checking. Until about 5pm, when I realized it really should have been there already.
I checked DHL’s website, which so helpfully informed me that my office was closed at 4:30, when they tried to deliver my package. Uh, no it wasn’t.
I called DHL, and they told me the exact same thing. When I said that I had been there (along with the other 15 people in the building) all day, she said “Well my computer says you weren’t, and the delivery guy is already headed home.” Gee, thanks.
To their credit, when I asked to complain to a manager, she said she’d call dispatch and have it delivered by 6pm that night. Apparently, the guy just decided to go home early that day!
Not nearly enough HAAAATE for the Seattle USPS so let me chime in (albeit late to the party). I’m with Todd re: the Queen Anne office. Good grief. I’ve never seen a slower bunch of incompetent LIARS in my life! I’d love to know why in the world of the USPS it’s ok for someone to charge you for: 2 day delivery, insurance, and delivery confirmation AND then when it takes EIGHT days to get there (marked perishable no less!) just shrug and say “It wasn’t guaranteed ma’am – nothing I can do.†What?! Excuse me, I mean WHAT?!! What did I have to pay to get the guarantee? The counter person assured me that by paying this premium price + bonus extra fees my package would get where it was going within 2 days and yet, when it didn’t – they don’t give one rat’s a$$ about that fact. And NO ONE is accountable. They just don’t care. At all. Of course, I’m the dumbsh!t who keeps going back but No More! Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me about half a dozen more times and I’ll finally learn my lesson and stop coming back. You are dead to me post office! Dead forever. (And let me just say – in theory – I love the post office. I love the idea of letters and postcards and packages humming along, getting where they are going, and making people happy. Of postal carriers whistling a jaunty tune and saying “Howdy!†Sadly if that ever existed, it gone now – lost in a sea of condo flyers and delivery menus, total ineptitude and bitterness, not to mention crumpled “Do not Bend†envelopes and magazines that only seem to land in my mailbox every other issue.)
Two years ago I sent all my Xmas gifts to Minnesota via Priority Mail to avoid having to pack them on the plane. I sent them on 12/13. They got there (severely mangled) on 12/28 – the day after I left. When I went to talk to the post office folks – they only said “We’re sorry but it was a busy holiday season. Next time send them in advance.†This was the year I learned that “Priority Mail†means Nothing. They say 3-4 business days but what they really mean is – when and if we feel like it, sucker.
And once again – what really chaps me is that there is no accountability. You can reasonably state your case and they shrug. You can loudly exclaim how much they suck and they shrug. You can bring in flow charts and receipts and photos of mangled boxes and they shrug. You can bounce off the walls like a maniac and they just shrug. No other business could run with such inefficacy inherent in its culture.
So I’ll pay more for UPS – not that they are any great shakes either – but they at least (so far anyway) tell you when you can actually expect delivery: $18 probably gets it there by 12/22 and $44 definitely gets it there by 12/21. I’ll willingly pay out the nose I guess provided you give me an honest and accurate arrival date.
But if there’s anything that gets me into the true “Bah Humbug!†of the season it’s the freaking post office.
After three separate go-rounds of the FedEx driver deciding not to knock, thus delaying my supply shipment for my business (I CAUGHT him the third time), I sent a strongly worded email to corporate. Two days later I got a box of chocolates and an apologetic note from the local manager. But the driver didn’t knock that time either… heh.
I’m a little afraid of what may happen to my next supply order, though.
(Just remembered one that happened to my housemate recently – she had been expecting a package, it was listed as being delivered, but none of us had seen it. There was a completely illegible scribble on the delivery note when we finally found that. Turned out it said “package in oven.” We were renovating the kitchen and there was a dead oven by the side door waiting to be hauled away. For some reason the postie decided this was a perfectly logical place to put a box….)
@smmoe1997: I wonder if we live in the same neighborhood. I moved into the city of St. Louis proper about four months ago, and the USPS promises me that there is a post office nearby, but I’ll be damned if I can find it. I get the feeling that it’s cleverly disguised as a used car dealership or Italian restaurant or something.
So in my old place, about 30 miles away, I always got all my mail, even though I was an obnoxious mail customer who didn’t always check her mailbox every day, forcing the mail lady to fold it into ever more complex origami shapes to fit into my 2″ by 3″ mailbox. My magazines came with nice plastic covers that kept them dry and intact, things that shouldn’t be folded weren’t folded, and mail was picked up promptly. Not so at the new place. All my Vanity Fairs have come without nifty little plastic covers, and with extensive damage to them. I’m hoping the folks at the post office enjoy reading my magazines (though couldn’t they at least tear out the subscription cards for me?). And most of the time, when I leave mail clipped to the front of my mailbox to be picked up, it’s left to sit there for at least two or three days until the mail carrier can heave him/herself up onto the porch and pick it up. And I only get mail a couple of times a week, so I know that most of the time, the mail carrier sees my house and my one lonely Netflix movie hanging outside and goes, “Eh, screw it.”
[quote] 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! [/quote]
That just pisses me off. What the hell FOR??? Is it necessary for them to have so much animosity towards their customers and their coworkers? I would assume at some point either the sender or the receiver might complain about the broken/damaged items, which will cause problems and wasted time for someone at UPS, somewhere, if not the loader personally who broke it, and possibly cost UPS money if the item was insured.
I don’t care if boxes get accidentally dropped, or bent when something heavy gets set on them – that’s bound to happen, especially when they’re trying to work fast as people want their stuff delivered as quickly as possible. But WHY purposely break things??? That makes no sense to me. It’s purposeless senseless destructive meanness.
Though I must admit I suspected that might be true. When I ship something breakable I just pack it really well and don’t bother to mark it “Fragileâ€. I always assumed that even if people didn’t go out of their way to break it, they don’t necessarily treat boxes marked that way with any more care than your average boxes anyway.
Re: megan and destroyed bottles – I have pictures somewhere of what the box looked like that my bridesmaid dress came in for my best friend’s wedding. That was UPS also. I never bothered to file a complaint, since the dress itself was not damaged, but the box was destroyed and half torn open. If it had been raining on delivery day, the dress would have been completely ruined. It seriously looked like someone had ripped the box open to see what was inside, saw it was not worth stealing, and sent it on its way. WTF.
[quote]my local post office, where an employee diverted my EWs to his or her home address.[/quote]
WTF??? How can they do that??? Please tell me they got fired. PLEASE.
[quote]taking people’s Christmas cards and going through them for money.[/quote]
When I was in college I lived in “the largest non-military housing facility in the united states†– Warren Towers dorm, in Boston. We had huge mail rooms with teeny weeny boxes for each resident. My birthday, Halloween, Easter, etc. cards from mom and grandmas always had torn envelope corners – mail room staff (students) checking to see if there was money inside. Here’s a tip: package your greeting card inside a larger plain manila envelope so it’s not that obvious greeting card size, shape, and sometime color (sometimes with the hallmark logo even on the envelope back). And yeah, duh, don’t send cash.
Shady postal service and possible shady neighbors is what keeps me from joining netflix. I don’t need the headache of dvds disappearing and/or never showing up from my frigging mailbox constantly.
I can’t complain too much about the one here in the ground floor of my office building in San Francisco. And I heart the new automated machines (which seem to be there for me personally since everyone else still stands in line for a teller.) They have made me dread mailing packages so much less!
However, the post office at home in Berkeley? Where they don’t add extra staff even when the angry lesbian in front of me is arguing about wanting to buy stamps, but not wanting stamps with men or flags or anything patriotic on them?
That post office can bite me.
I once tried to get an account with UPS and I asked the rep why they have such an awful reputation for breaking things. Her answer? “Well, you know, if a little box goes down the conveyer and some big 80-lb box comes down after it and smashes into it, well, those things happen.”
And while I would never dream of setting the dog on a mail carrier, I did used to live in a house with a security screen, one of those solid-steel jobbies you see in bad neighborhoods. The screen could hold back an elephant, so I didn’t worry much if we forgot to put the dogs out back at mail time. One of those days, a combined total of 200+ lbs of dogs hears that mailman’s footfall on our path, rushes the door in unison, slides helplessly on the entry rug, and crashes full speed into the screen. I swear the screen bowed out in dog shapes, like a cartoon. We couldn’t get the guy to come up with door open for at least two weeks!
I also have the misfortune of being serviced by the Van Brunt Station Post Office and can vouch for the fact that it’s horrifyingly bad.
I used to live by Van Brunt and don’t remember it being that bad, but I did move eleven years ago, and I’m sure it went downhill. I do love my local post office now, though, in Weehawken. The windows are run by these two little old ladies, and the other week I was there with a package slip for the first time in maybe a year, one of them spotted me before I even got to the winow, went back, grabbed my package and had it ready for me without my even giving her my name. I love small town life!
@meltina: We had something similar happen when my roommate was getting married and wedding presents began arriving. Some relatives of hers sent a wooden bowl from Crate & Barrel or something, and it never showed up (her relatives told her it was on the way). My roommate called FedEx and they said it had been left on the front porch. We lived on a main street in Boston — constant traffic, both street and foot — on the second floor of a triple-decker, and we never asked that things be left on the porch because it was like, fairly likely that they’d be stolen. Which is what we figured had happened. My roommate hadn’t authorized them to leave it on the porch, and they were actually very nice about it and replaced it right away. So she got her bowl and it was fine.
Then a couple months later I happened to go out on *our* porch, the one on the second floor that we barely used (this was in the winter) — in fact, the door didn’t latch and so we had a shoelace tying the screen door hinge (no handle on the screen door — my landlord was a cheapskate) to the doorknob of the other door so it wouldn’t bang all day and night. And sure enough, there was the FedEx box. Which means that the guy had either (a) come up to the second floor through the hallway (not implausible since my idiot upstairs neighbors constantly propped the front door open because they thought they were still in a dorm, with no regard for either safety OR heating bills, theirs or mine), untied the elaborate shoelace system we’d MacGyvered up to keep the door shut, put the package out there, and RETIED it; or (b) tossed it up from the ground and hoped that it landed on our porch. No harm was done (except to whoever paid for the replacement bowl; I guess it was FedEx), and in retrospect it was nice of him to try to put it out of the way. But it was really weird, and we felt bad because it didn’t even OCCUR to us to look out there (the door was still tied!). And if he was that concerned about hiding it carefully, why not just…not deliver it until we had a signature, like it said to?
One more: My sister, at school in DC, ordered a new cell phone. She lived in a dorm called City Hall, at George Washington U. She was tracking it online, and it got as far as DC…then it went to BOSTON, where it ended up at BOSTON CITY HALL. I don’t know if it was coincidence — we’re from MA; maybe there was a MA billing address and they…somehow…got Boston City Hall out of that? — but I think she had to call them to get it turned back around.
I don’t want to sound smug, but… I’ve got no complaints. Canada Post is awesome and our local carrier is really nice. I’m always astonished at how quickly mail gets delivered, and this past Christmas was the only time I’ve actively been waiting for packages that took WEEKS to arrive – they were coming from the U.S..
@ Catherine: Similar occurrence. We usually have no trouble with our USPS, except when they decide to skip a day or deliver around 6pm…our UPS and FedEx guys cannot read the copious signs the landlord has sprinkled at all entrances, though. The ones saying, “UPS, FedEx, deliver to back porch”. We found wedding presents at the side door many times (thankfully the landlords use this door reguarly and found them), and once, my husband won a cell phone on Ebay…
After waiting an inordinate amount of time, and beginning to get frustrated, we happened to glance at the front door of our home. Mind you now, no one uses the front door. It is a massive gothic thing behind IRON GATES. We saw a small cardboard package sitting in front of the doors. Oh, and not just in front of the doors, but up on the stoop. This means he either climbed over the hedges, through a small window, and set it up on the step, or he threw it through said window and it luckily landed there. The house-keeper was kind enough to unlock the front door and get it for us. I wonder what would possess someone to go to extraordinary lengths to position a package in a place where it is obvious and evident that we do not frequent?
I know the city ones are bad (I’ve been there), but I am in small town USa now and there is nothing quite like the frustration of needing a damned stamp, having no cash for the machine, and having to endure the 2-person, 20-minute wait because the clerk needs to talk to Hazel about her sister’s hysterectomy, the grandkids, the neighbors, “dope”, the dog’s diabetes and the liberals. It’s like the excrutiating oral version of the world’s worst christmas letter.
I’ve never really had a problem with USPS service. My only real complaint is that their office hours seem to assume that A: you’re married, and B: your wife doesn’t work. That’s the only way I can explain offices being open 9 to 5 during the week and closed on weekends.
Oh, actually, another kvetch: Around here, they had a problem with bums sleeping in the lobby at night. So they decided to lock all the doors at closing time. So you might be able to LOOK AT the vending machines and APC, but you cannot actually USE these things unless you’re there during office hours.
I know I’m way late to this, but I had to chime in because I could have written Tim’s comment (#8) word for word. 11238 Fulton Station: Hell. On. Earth. I don’t even want to hear about anyone else’s post office being bad after living with that place.
I haven’t lived in Brooklyn for two years now, and I still shudder at the memory. Getting a post office slip in the mail box was like getting a draft notice. I, too, quickly learned to do all possible mailing to/from work.
“My only real complaint is that their office hours seem to assume that A: you’re married, and B: your wife doesn’t work. That’s the only way I can explain offices being open 9 to 5 during the week and closed on weekends.”
HEH. I don’t have to go to the post office often enough for this to bug me, but it drives me absolutely INSANE about my bank. My bank is open from 9am to 3pm. Two days a week they open at 6am, and one day a week they’re open until 6pm, but I don’t know which days because they KEEP. CHANGING. IT. ARRRRRGH!!! It drives me insane every time and I start ranting. “You know who gets out of work before 3pm?? KINDERGARTENERS, THAT’S WHO!!!” wtf, bank?
I guess I’ve just been lucky Post Office wise. When I lived in the SF Bay Area I just took a book and read while waiting in line. Now that I’m in a small town. the only time there are long lines are Christams and Mother’s day. Still take a book and just stand in line. In Oregon pretty much every grocery store and drug store sell stamps so if that’s all I need I just head there.
The one and only time I had a package go missing was my fault. I put the wrong Zip code on the delivery address and when it never arrived I filed a lost package form and a week later the local Post Office had tracked it down and my mail carrier paid for the postage and left me a little note in my mail box and I paid him back. Gotta love the small town thing!
“No other business could run with such inefficacy inherent in its culture.”
Verizoncoughwirelesscough
I love my mailman. He coaxes my timid little dogs forward for a petting, and when I walked them around a neighbor’s sprinkler and got my foot caught in a sinkhole of some kind and fell, he rushed to my rescue.
I was first in line at a larger post office one time and an elderly lady was at the counter ahead of me. She was admonishing the clerk not to sell her any of those “pre-licked” stamps.
I think she meant the self-adhesive kid.
My mom, dad, 2 “aunts” and 2 “uncles” all worked in the post office (in Northern Va.), and they brought home all sorts of horror stories. Not only does the mail get abused by non-caring workers, the WORKERS that actually CARE get abused by them, the supervisors and yes, the machines. All six of my family members were injured on the job through no fault of their own and then sent through hell to get satisfaction, which almost none of them got. THis is not unusual. Now you know why so many of them are always mad.
The moral of the story: be kind to the post workers. It can and will affect the service you get.
Usually.
Some of the people really are just placed in the post office by the devil solely to torment you.
Another vote for Chicago being Hell on Earth when it comes to the USPS.
Another poster (Cameron?) described my post office at Lawrence and Broadway perfectly. My husband was trying to get some forms once and couldn’t get anyone to give them to him. All the clerk could say was “They’re supposed to be on the table out there.” He kept trying to explain that they were out but she apparently wasn’t motivated enough to get the forms. He tried to speak to the manager but she got in his face and told him it was none of his business. (We’re both still extremely perplexed by that response.) He wound up going to the Southport office and got the form but had to stand in line of 3 people for 20 minutes.
There’s an office in the AON Center that’s not terrible. And they have an APS, which I love.
However, small towns are not immune to ineptitude. I grew up in a one stoplight town and the local mailperson drove her own car to deliver the mail. One day, we watched her hit our mailbox and watched her leave a nasty note that basically said the damage to our mailbox was in violation of some USPS code and no mail would be delivered until it was repaired.