The Monkey Exhibit

I found out something very disturbing last week. Normally, in the past, if I put outgoing mail in my mailbox and put the flag up then the mailperson comes along throughout the day and picks my mail up to be delivered. I found out that this is no longer necessarily the case.

One day last week I had something to mail out. I set it in the mailbox and put the flag up. Late that night the flag was still up. My wife said they hadn’t been by when she got home. I hadn’t checked the mail when I got home; she gets home before I do.

I checked the next morning and the flag was still up and the mail was still in the box. This did not sit well with me.

I called the post office that day to find out if my mail was going to be picked up that day. The response was very surprising. The man on the other end said that the urban carriers don’t stop at the mailbox just because the flag is up. They will only stop if the flag is up and they have something to drop off! This, too, did not sit well with me.

In my neighborhood, all the mailboxes are either attached to the side of the house or, like mine, set on a post in the middle of the yard. None of them are on the side of the road. In order for the mailperson to walk from the house before mine to the house past mine, they need to walk right directly past my mailbox! Why someone walking mere inches past my mailbox cannot stop and answer my flag baffles me to no end. It also annoys me greatly.

During the wintertime we shovel specifically for our letter carrier. After toiling hours in the driveway and on the roof I specifically shovel a path to the mailbox. It seems only the polite thing to do. I don’t think I have to do this. The post office is supposed to deliver in rain, snow, sleet, etc, etc. My next door neighbor even snow-blowed a path from my driveway to his door, where his mailbox is. He didn’t have to do that, but he saw the letter carriers footprints as they always chose to walk over the snowbank on the side of my driveway and then trudge through the snow on my neighbor’s yard to get to his door instead of going around. We did this out of kindness. Right now it doesn’t seem our kindness is appreciated.

I’m not sure whether to send a copy of this to the post office itself, or maybe to the editorial section of the newspaper…or even both. Sufficed to say, however, I am not very please with how my mail service has been this month.

Have any ideas for me?