If so, how much? I think my dad left eight dollars or so in an evelope, judging by the thickness of it.
hell no. those people probably make more than me anyway.
but i was a paperboy for a large chunk of my childhood (and teen years, regrettably) and i enjoyed tips. but then again, i made nothing, didn’t get to ride around in a cool little jeep thing, and crazy customers treated you like shit all year. and as a paperboy you have to collect, and my neighborhood was filthy with deadbeats. so tips usually went towards paying the paper anyway.
Three times in the past week I’ve had to run over to my neighbors’ house with mail that was delivered to our box.
In other words, no.
We give our carrier a card with $10 in it every year.
We try to catch him while he delivers and hand it to him so we can say “Merry Christmas” at the same time.
In “the old days” when, (believe it or not) there were TWO daily deliveries of mail, and you knew your postman’s name, and they would trudge up your icy sidewalk and put your mail in your box, and even ring the doorbell if there was a package…yeah, my dad always gave the postman a tip.
Today, on my street there is a kind of “community mailbox” thingie, some unknown face drives his little truck there - sometimes at 11:00 AM and sometimes not until after 5:00 PM, but you never know so you haven’t a clue if you get today’s mail, or yesterday’s…the postman opens all the boxes, tosses the mail in, although quite often I get the wrong mail…and then he drives off.
So - uh, no. No tip.
We have all that, barring the two deliveries. My husband is a postal worker out of the same office, so he tips our letter carrier directly.
Except for the “trudge up your icy sidewalk” bit, I should note - the Postal Service grew displeased with the number of workman’s comp claims due to falling on icy walks/steps, so the mailman doesn’t have to deliver your mail if the area appears hazardous. Even so, my husband gets bruised every year due to people not salting/sanding/shoveling their steps or porch.
I would. If we had a regular mail carrier.
When we were moving into the house, a mailman delivering on our block stopped to help us unload our U-Haul. He was so sweet and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was delighted and very effusive with my thanks. I was thrilled, thinking I’d moved to the best neighborhood ever! But no. Unfortunately, he told me he wasn’t our regular mail carrier. In fact, our neighborhood is apparently an afterthought. We don’t have a carrier assigned to us. We’re on some sort of rotating schedule, so not only does the mail show up at a different time each day (and sometimes not at all), but I get mail for people on the next block, mail for the people who used to live in our house, (even though I know for a fact that they put in a forward), mail for the people next door on either side and on occasion, the neighbors across the street, not to mention mail for my husband’s ex-wife who has never and will never live in our house. I’ve seriously been considering having a stamp made that says “NOT AT THIS ADDRESS” so I don’t have to write it every day.
So no. I do not tip whatever random mail carrier is unlucky enough to mis-deliver our mail on Christmas Eve.
Whew. Sorry, that came out kinda like a rant. 
My parents rarely give money they give gifts. Since my dad owns his own business he and mom make Christmas gifts for his “big” clients and then they also make the same sort of thing for the mail man, as well as our garbage men and newspaper delivery guy.
My mom loves Christmas time so she is the main instigator of all the giving.
My mailman drives his cushy truck to the mailroom of my apartment complex, sticks mail into my box (90% of which is junk) and probably gets paid $25 an hour plus benefits to do it.
So me? Give him money? Hah.
If I had one of those Norman Rockwell mail carriers that brought the mail to my door all cheerful and stuff, then sure I would, if I could afford it. In that situation I’d give between $25-50.
I definitely need to leave something for my garbage guy. On the few occasions we’ve neglected to put our can by the road, he’s taken it upon himself to back into our driveway, walk up to our house, and retrieve the can himself rather than just saying, “Well, fuck them!” and driving off. I feel like an ass when we do forget (it’s not too often, though), but it’s very nice that he does that for us. So yeah, he’ll get something this year.
Nothing for my mailman though.
My dad’s a retired mailman so I tip our mailperson. Benefits, schmenfits. It’s still not a particularly easy job having to schlep out in all weather each day. My dad has a bad back, a small pension and several dog bite scars in unpleasant places as reminders of his years in the field.
Then again, despite the occasional mail we get from other people, our current carrier’s a real sweetie pie. I did not tip the last mail carrier we had because he was an incompetent creep.
Just wanted to mention that when I open this forum, the thread right below this one is Worst Christmas gift of all time
Carry on
One Pound See’s gift Cert. But I get super service from that carrier.
$20 to the mail carrier & $25 each ($100 total) to the garbage man. Anyone need a body moved? I can get it done for you - they’ll haul anything for me after 9 years of that. 
VCNJ~
Is it legal to do so? Federal employees and all that?
Technically, they’re not supposed to receive tips. In reality, that’s only pulled out when there’s a problem - letter carrier being obnoxious to customers who don’t tip, dispute between carriers who share a route over who gets tips, that kind of thing. The post office supervisors don’t care unless problems arise.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the mailperson where I’m living now.
The only one I would have considered tipping was the guy that delivered to my last apartment when I was in college. He knew who I was somehow even though my building alone had 17 apartments. Of course I was also living there when my now husband was in boot camp. I looked forward to the mail everyday.
I’m in an area where I get rural mail delivery. Which means the mail carrier has no uniform or jeep, and typically drives around in a pickup truck (most of the ones around here have special made ones with steering wheels on the right-side so they can easily deliver mail to boxes out of the truck) and plops mail into my box (which is a good 300 yards from my home, around a turn in my driveway and obscured by a stand of trees.)
So there isn’t much camraderie between us.
I had a great-grandfather who was a rural mail carrier and he talked about how he was practically family with the people he delivered to. In those days the mail man was more than likely the only person with an automobile who came around these people very often, so he would very frequently do general services for his customers like drop off bank deposits, deliver eggs et cetera.
We are on a first name basis with our mail carrier, and he always makes sure to come to the front door with packages and stuff for us. Plus, he’s a really nice guy. I don’t know how much he gets for Christmas from us (my dad handles it), but I think it’s fairly generous. My dad also tries to catch him when he drops off the mail so that he can give him the gift in person.