My husband has just started a business of his own. Right now it’s a ‘spare time’ thing, but he hopes to grow it into a dynasty to rival McD’s some day. 
Right now the entire ‘company’ fits into a two room suite in an office building. Two weeks ago was his ‘opening day’: he hung a sign on his door and invested a shocking (well, to people in our financial situation) amount of money in an ad in the local newspaper. Said ad ran every day for a week, and included a coupon for free introductory offer: just fill in the coupon, mail it in, and collect a freebie. Sounds good, right? I mean, who doesn’t want something for nothing?
So the ad started running. Every day after his regular job he went to the new office, prepared for the flood of mail with coupons, ready to start the new business.
Nothing the day the ad first ran. Well, naturally. Mainly he was there doing more ‘preopening’ stuff.
First day after the ad ran: no mail. Okay. Even ‘one day’ delivery really takes two.
Second day: nothing. Uh. Well, it takes people time to find an envelope and stamp, right?
Third day: nothing.
I’ll spare you the day to day count, but the ad ran for the first time on August 30. As of today at 5 pm, ten full days later, he had still not gotten a single piece of mail.
Can you imagine how crushing this is? You get an idea, do your homework as all the ‘start you own’ books tell you to, lay out money on printing stationery and what all, rent an office, get phone service, pay for an ad to run for six days…and not only don’t you have any paying customers, you don’t even get people who want it for free!
Hubby was feeling very low, I’ll tell you. Like a kicked dog. He’d started apologizing to me, over and over, for ‘wasting’ our money like that, even though I kept telling him I was behind him the whole way, and took equal responsibility for the decision.
So, guess what I found on our answering machine this evening? A message from the building manager. I probably should have explained, this is a small building with only two floors, with four offices per floor. On ‘our’ floor one company has taken both the offices on the west side of the corridor and combined them into one. On the east side there are still two offices. Both of the offices on the east were vacant, and we had chosen the one further from the stairs because it was a little larger.
Anyway, this afternoon the landlord had opened up the ‘front’ office to show it to a prospective renter…and inside had found a good sized mound of envelopes, all addressed to my husband’s business. Yes, the mailman had been shoving all OUR mail through the mail slot of an unrented office. 
Yes, okay, there is only one office on the west side, so MAYBE someone could think that there is only one office on the right side. BUT THERE WAS NO SIGN OF ANY KIND on the door of the ‘first’ office on the east! Who ever heard of business that doesn’t have a sign on their door, hmmm? When he suddenly started getting mail to deliver to a company he’d never heard of, couldn’t he have taken a little care in finding out where it was and where its mail should go??? Would it have killed the mailman to walk the addition EIGHT FEET down the corridor, just to CHECK what it said on that door? HMMM?
Okay, so we eventually got all the mail. (Presumably – I wouldn’t bet that this lazy dimwit didn’t deliver some of it halfway across town.) So no harm done, right? Except… for hubby’s pain and anxiety all these days. And the time he wasted when he could have been taking care of potential customers as their coupons came in. Not to mention potential customers who might have eventually signed up, but are turned off by how slowly they got their freebie.
We could complain to the local Postmaster, of course, but fat lot of good that’ll do. What, the carrier will get a demerit on his record? Sheesh. It’ll probably mean that we NEVER get all of our mail…somehow.
But damn.
At the very least, I hope every dog on every route he ever delivers tries to bite him.