I thought I heard the mailbox snap shut. I peeked out the door a minute later, and saw the mailman walking down the block. So I trundled downstairs to collect my mail–and there’s a registered mail slip. “Sorry we missed you.”
I had a good idea what it was–there was a guy in Europe who bought some LPs from me on eBay recently and wanted to pay cash, so this was his payment. It being Saturday today, I wouldn’t have an opportunity to go to the central post office to collect the letter for another week, which would mean delaying my customer’s shipment that long, in addition to wasting an hour on the bus making the trip. So I dashed down the street and caught up with the mailman–who had my damn letter right in his hand.
For Christ’s sake, can’t you even TRY knocking on my fucking door before telling me you “missed me” and couldn’t deliver my mail? Lazy asshole.
They do that so often, I was starting to think it must be procedure. I have never not had to go to the depot to pick up registered mail, even when I was home for it to be delivered.
Unfortunately, this matches my experience with USPS. They don’t want to spend a minute attending to a special case - THEY get no benefit from it, so why should they bother?
Biffy, if you’re in the U.S., I asked the Better Half, a veteran 22-year letter carrier, about this, and his response was, “Bad mailman.” Yes, it is indeed S.O.P. to knock on the door when they have a registered letter, so unfortunately you got one of the ones who was too damn lazy to walk over, knock on the door, and spend the couple minutes it would take to give you your letter.
He also points out that you have grounds for an official complaint; see your local postmaster. They’ll have records of exactly who was delivering your mail that day, and they can bust his ass proper.
I’ve seen this attitude a lot, lately, and it’s really pissing me off.* People complain that they don’t want to perform their job duties because they get no immediate tangible personal benefit. Bullshit. Incentives are a great motivator, but a lot of people seem to believe that they deserve their paycheck for just punching the clock, and that they deserve bonuses for actually fulfilling their job description.
If you don’t want to have to occasionally knock on someone’s door, don’t become a mailman.
(Not saying that you condone this, Xema, but it’s not clear from your post whether you do or not.)
I was waiting for a UPS delivery one day, I checked the UPS site and I knew it was to be delivered that day, I waited and waited and waited, finally I saw the UPS truck pull up in front of the door, but he left and I never heard a knock. Strange, I went and checked and there was no calltag on my door. After a few minutes I decided to check again, maybe it fell or wound up on someone elses door. Hold on let me explain the setup here. This was an apartment. You walked in the door and you either went down a few steps to find my door and the one next to it, go up a few steps to find two other doors, or up all the way to find the two on the third floor. Well, I eventually found the call tag on the window next to the main door. The guy didn’t even check to see if I was home, just stuck the call tag on the window and moved on. Luckily I caught up with him somewhere else on the complex and got my package.
At my work we have a daily UPS pickup, but when dumbass walks in and sees that there’s acually a package to pickup (well, he’s told there’s one to pickup, half the time he ‘doesn’t see it’ and walks back out) he get’s all huffy and puffy. I just think to myself, boy did you pick the wrong line of work.
Maybe it’s a UPS thing? A couple months ago I moved into a new apartment building (quite large - 18 floors). I’ve had three packages and a registered letter delivered, all by Fedex. Each time they tried buzzing my apartment, and when I wasn’t there they must have a way of getting it to our mailroom, because I found the “we missed you, pick it up at the post office” notice in my mail slot.
However, I’ve noticed quite a few times when I come in the main entrance that UPS has left “we missed you” notices stuck to the glass beside the main entrance door in the lobby. I’m assuming they tried buzzing, and then just left it stuck to the lobby door, and hope that the resident sees the notice when they come into. However, although that door is the only outside entrance, there is a secure entry door through the parkade. If a resident always parks in the parkade and comes in the building that way, they might never happen to see their UPS notice.
As the Son, Brother and BIL of letter carriers (both rural and city), I agree with DDG that you encountered a “Bad mailman.” If you heard the mail delivered close to the normal time, I’d guess it was your regular’s Sub. If your mail was late, it was probably delivered by someone running “pig-tail.” It’s not an excuse, but it may be the reason.
Has happened to me in Ireland (where a wedding present went all the way back to Hong Kong because the mailman didn’t even leave a “sorry we missed you” card, the sonofabitch), and in the UK. And the other day a UPS delivery of some computer equipment was left with a neighbor without even getting a signature. Luckily for me, my neighbor’s honest. Luckily for UPS, so am I.
I work a night job and normally sleep during the day, so when I sit up for six hours I’d normally be sleeping to make sure I’m awake to catch the person delivering a package to sign for and they never knock, I get mighty tweaked.
Dude, it’s an international thing. I’ll be home all day, then get a call from the apartment security guard telling me that someone left a package with him because no one was at home to receive it. Apparently watching CSI all day does not qualify as being “at home.”
Yup, my letter carrier husband says “bad mailman.” He’s bitched to me, conversely, about knocking or ringing the doorbell over (he’s even timed it) 2-3 minutes while he saw people moving around inside - and gotten calls at work later about how “he didn’t wait for us to answer” - or having someone show up at the door on the phone but shush him when he tried to explain about signing, etc., and continue to yap away. He’s also had people living at an address refuse to sign for something when someone else there wanted it delivered, and had to explain that their teenager/housekeeper/spouse refused. Call the post office and ask for the delivery supervisor, and explain what happened.
I’m not sure, but something like this has been happening with my packages, I think. I’m starting to believe my letter carrier has issues with us (I came home one day to find him yelling at my roommate because our landlord(!) had not fixed the mailboxes, and gave him a piece of my mind), and now my packages have mysteriously started to be returned to sender.
Two packages from my grandma have suffered this fate as have an artwork someone was sending to me - twice! In both cases I’ve seen the address people mailed it to, and it’s correct. I’ve been asking that people mail packages to my mother’s address now, and that solves the problem.
Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, but I can’t think of any other reason why my mail should suffer this problem when being sent by different people in different countries.
Y’all that caught the mailman/UPS person-- what did you say? What did he say?
I once caught a UPS dude at my parents’ house who came up to the door with no package in his hand, stuck on a “Sorry we missed you tag,” and walked back to his truck (so quickly he had to have filled it out ahead of time). What was hilarious was, my parents’ livingroom window is this huge bay that provides a full view of the front door, so I watched him do this. I opened the window and stuck my head out as he was leaving to ask him what in hell he was doing.
At first he insisted that he had rung the bell, and no one answered. I mentioned that I had seen him walk up, and had been literally 4 feet from the front door. No bell, no knock, and he barely even stopped. Again he insisted no one answered the door. I asked him why he hadn’t brought my package up. He finally said, “There are no cars in the driveway.”
Yeah, dumbass. It’s called a garage. I got him to go get out package, and my mom jotted down his information to complain to UPS. . . nothing came of it, though.
We have the kind of mailbox that is accessible from the “passenger side” of a mail truck. He has never hand-delivered a certified or registered letter to us, even when my husband was out of work for two months and his car sat in the driveway all day. One time, we got a package that juuuuuuuust barely fit into the mailbox that he crammed in there, as opposed to walking the 30 feet to our front door. I had to hold on to the mailbox while my husband pulled it out.
At least the UPS guy rings the doorbell before he walks away.