Seconded.
Yep, report him. I work for the Gov, and on my worst day I would never consider being so rude.
Especially since you where pointing out a mistake that they made. Not seeing the number on your house does not mean that you should get someone else’s mail. That’s BS. He messed up and was trying to cover for it.
Also, you may want to check with the post office that your posted address is in compliance. A substitute may have difficulty if it’s hard to see (is it behind a screen door?).
I wouldn’t report someone for onesingle instance like this. Some days you just have a really bad day.
Next time, drop the dime.
I’m shocked by the thoughtlessness and hostility expressed by the mail carrier. Giving him a pass on it just the once is certainly fine, but reporting him would have been very appropriate also.
He sounds like a total arsehole report him AND tell them about the misdirected mail.
I wouldn’t trust anyone like that with my letters, who knows how much mail you and other people have “lost” or worse.
I think a lot of us are coming from a place where we have had customer service type jobs in the past, and we were certainly never allowed to tell a customer to fuck off, bad day or not, without being frog-marched out the door.
I’m a secretary. If I told one of my co-workers or someone doing business with one of my bosses to fuck off, I’d expect to get fired. It shows hostility. It shows lack of professionalism. It shows an inability to control my behavior under stress. I am the face of the COO and the President’s office. I represent them. I AM them in more than one instance. I would expect my bosses to seriously fear that I could not be trusted to be their emmissary. They know that there can be serious stressors in my job. One of the reasons why I have it is because I can handle things with poise and grace under pressure. (Well, at least “publicly”.)
Now, this is not to say that I can’t go in to my bosses and say, “Good God, what a fucker!” or “I want to kill somebody today!” afterwards. But telling someone to fuck off can and likely would have a ripple effect that could very likely come back on my boss, not on me. They’d be right to fire me. I doubt they would, but they’d be right to.
And if someone was merely pointing out a mistake I’d made that was MY job to do correctly in the first place? That had caused hardship? Hell, yeah, there’s no justification for telling someone to fuck off. In fact, that has happened to me. I made a mistake with a project that was riddled with them (all mine) because I was overwhelmed, under pressure AND given responsibility for something an accountant or controller does, not a secretary. I DID want to go off when a complaint was made to me and aim all my frustration at an undeserving co-worker. But I didn’t. In fact, I was snarkier than I would normally be, felt horrible about it, and wrote her an apology afterwards.
Really, to me what crosses the line is the choice of phrase that in this context is shockingly hostile. It’s just too out there, too harsh of a choice. In a situation that very much doesn’t call for going nuclear.
Yes, you should report him. But you should have reported him immediately after it happened instead of waiting.
He may have had a bad day. That’s irrelevant. He still needs to learn to hold his tongue. On his own time, he can be an asshole without repercussions. Once he puts on that uniform, he is expected to uphold the image of the USPS. That, most assuredly, means to refrain from being abusive to perfectly nice customers.
Sorting always gets mixed up. When I delivered it was hand sorted, now, with machines, I bet it really gets screwed. You look at every piece of mail when delivering to a house, if just to avoid delivering the neighbor’s mail. Sometimes things stick together. If the route was really screwed, the guy could have said that and apologized for his employer.
The OP wasn’t firing the guy, just letting his boss know. How often do you see your carrier anyhow? What if he does this to everyone on the route once at different times, and no one reports it? How is he going to improve if there is no feedback?
My postie likes to walk through my flower beds - I haven’t reported it (although I’m fairly sure they are supposed to use the sidewalks), but I do put things in his way so maybe he can get the idea that I don’t like my beds getting walked on. Frankly, no one who has flower beds likes them getting walked on. Maybe I should report it - he’s probably pissing off a lot of people.
Have you considered just asking him not to do it?
I’m a bit late to the party, but I wanted to be another voice to say: No way. I’m 24. I (and no one I know close to my age) would ever use language like that at work! I’d be shocked and angry if I’d been in that situation, and I’d probably want to report him, too. Admittedly, I’m kind of boring, but I’m sure I could easily ask 6 other people in their early 20s, and they’d all say the same thing.
(Full disclosure: I mean, well, I jokingly told a couple friends to fuck off last night when we were playing a board game. But I was kidding. And they laughed. And it was in my dining room over pizza. And they did something devious. We young’ns might be a little more loose with the f-bombs when among friends…or I might just have a mouth like a trucker.)
As soon as I saw Digglebop’s post I thought “Now someone will comment on how people that think the postman should be reported are acting like crybabies”. Man, I sure didn’t have to wait long.
and yes, I saw the post down thread where you say you don’t think its worth getting bent out of shape about. Well, it is, and the only whiny brat would be the mail carrier who can’t control his big fat mouth enough to say “Oh, Sorry sir, I’ll be more careful next time. Thanks for letting me know of my mistake.”, not “Fuck off” like some 15 year old delinquent. I’m betting he wouldn’t have been so rude if the OP wasn’t 60. He probably thought he could just intimidate him. I’d report the prick so fast the sound barrier would have been broken. and yeah, I’m vindictive…if in a bad enough mood I’d make sure he got fired, fined or demoted…whatever punishment they could do other than a warning. Of course only a whiny brat would be upset about reaping the consequences of his actions so I’m sure the tough guy mailman could take it.
He’s not “a guy on the street”, he’s a Federal Employee and he was in the wrong to boot! Theres no excuse for his behaviour.
I never see him. I could leave him a note, I suppose.
Retired ex postie checking in.
I never swore at any customer no matter how much I wanted to, I have had customers tell me to fuck off though.
I reported them, they got a letter from the delivery office manager, I got a written apology.
So it works both ways, report the little twat and insist on a written apology from him
I think it is rude to even walk one someone’s lawn. If you take the same shortcut everyday over the lawn, you will wear a path. I let our current mailman get away with it (mostly because I am never home when he delivers), but I would say something if I saw him do it. Sidewalks are for walking, and they get paid enough to walk on them. I used to deliver community flyers at 1/2 cent each, and I walked on the sidewalks.
How do you know it’s him if you’ve never seen him to do it?
I would not report him before asking him nicely to stop, assuming he’s guilty in the first place. People don’t like it when you go to their boss about something they could easily change without involving supervisors. It also seems like an overreaction.
Better, put up a little sign asking politely for people not to walk through the flower bed. Short cuts between mailboxes were greatly appreciated (a lot of the houses I delivered to had cement walkways) but I’m sure he or she would stop when politely asked to.
There’s mail in the mailbox and one set of tracks in the snow through my flowerbed to the neighbour’s yard. I’m pretty sure he did it (I should say “does it” - it’s not like it was a one time occurrence). I was going to put up a rope to prevent walking through that area, but my husband talked me out of it. I don’t think he loves the shrubs like I do.
I’d tell your regular guy. He’s more likely to know if this is part of a pattern with the temp or just a really bad day, and if it’s part of a pattern, he can pass the word along.