I live in a coop building. Basically like an apartment setup, but we own our residences.
Our building seems to be last in the line for mail delivery. Getting it before 5:00PM is early, 6:00 is average, and sometimes it’s as late as 7:00PM. Yesterday it did not come at all. We can tell, because with this many residents there’s always fliers that don’t fit into the boxes and are left in a rack below the boxes. The row of boxes shares a wall with my apartment, so when delivery arrives I can hear it. In fact, once the deliverer shut the boxes so hard it knocked a wall mounted clock off of my wall.
This morning the mail came before noon, and I think it was because things must have been late yesterday. I went to the lobby when the deliverer arrived and waited until he was finished, then asked why we had no delivery yesterday. He said he had been here, but so was I and I would have heard him if delivery had been made. Dude just looked at me and walked away.
I suppose there is no point in complaining to the post office as I had no proof, but I need to vent about this. I’m sick and tired of our building having such late delivery.
My normal mail time is late afternoon, too. Sometimes as late as 7 or 8. My problem is getting the mailman to pick things up. Last week I had a birthday card for my niece that I put on the box for pickup. It wasn’t picked up on Thursday. I brought it in that night (it had a gift card in it) and put it back out the next day. I saw the mailman walk through my yard that evening but when I looked out later, the card was still there. He either didn’t notice or didn’t bother. I put it back out Saturday and it still wasn’t picked up.
There was no mail Sunday and Monday was a holiday. I went to put it out Tuesday and there was mail in the box. For some reason the mail had come in the morning. Wednesday it was not picked up. Finally on Thursday, a week later, it was picked up. Which means it didn’t get to her for her birthday.
In the old days, there were stand-alone boxes in neighborhoods but those have been long gone. My only other option was to take the card to the post office. But the boxes that were once outside there have been taken away, too, because people kept breaking into them and stealing the mail. The only thing I could have done was take it inside and wait in line to mail a fucking card. All because I wanted her to have something physical and not an ecard with a link to the gift card. I’ve long since stopped mailing things except the occasional birthday card but I guess I’ll have to stop that, too.
Our current mail person is great, dependable rarely if ever misdelivers mail. He’s into mail jeeps with rh steering seems to collect them stops to chat sometimes, compliments my chaos garden too!
Also the local PO here was built in 1930’s with lots of polished wood brass and marble. Has a New Deal mural on the wall. Super cool building.
Ours is relatively fine, but I do wonder what time-sensitive stuff people are getting that a day late in the mail is problematic. We get complaints about that in my neighborhood, too. Is there regular mail that you consistently get on a certain date? I don’t expect anything from USPS to arrive on a certain date, maybe by a certain date. Usually, I give it a couple of days’ window in the rare case that I’m expecting a letter, bill, or check. I’d be fine with skip-day delivery (MWF or something like that). Honestly, sometimes three days will go by before I even check the mail.
It’s not really the mail person’s fault. It seems like a tough job these days. There’s been a lot of cutbacks. I’m sure he’d rather be home at 7 rather than still out delivering mail. It’s more due to the personnel cutbacks that reduced the number of mail carriers and expanded their delivery areas.
FYI, you may be able to see a pictures of the letters which are scheduled to arrive in your mailbox at https://informeddelivery.usps.com. It shows the past week’s worth of deliveries. It’s helpful to see what you should expect to receive. However, sometimes the letters show up the day after when they say they should because of whatever randomness goes on.
Another vote for USPS informed delivery. Great invention. I get an e-mail every morning showing what’s expected to be delivered today and whatever else is in their pipeline of packages and mail for me.
I now receive so little mail that I don’t routinely check my box; it’s in a part of my building I don’t have any other reason to routinely visit. So when the email says something is coming today, I’ll stop by my box after dinner to gather it. If not, not.
Very rarely will the email say to expect a piece of mail that then doesn’t appear. When that happens, the item has always shown up on the next mail day. Like the OP, my building is near or at the end of the carrier’s route for the day. I’m sure the poor carrier is about fried (and often into unpaid overtime) by the time they get to us/me.
Maybe he had some personal reason to get done early that day and not finish his route. Some pressing family matter or something like that and he doesn’t want to get in trouble for taking off early without approval. Or maybe his name is Cliff Claven.
Same here. Our mail delivery is terribly erratic. Can come at any time from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. - or not at all. Of course, the vast majority is junk. I’ve often wondered why we don’t go down to “every other day” delivery.
I’ve heard of folk who check this. I guess it might make sense if my mailbox weren’t right at my front door, but absent that, I wonder at why folk would voluntarily assume this additional on-line task.
I’d be willing to venture that supermarket flyers arrive on schedule every Tuesday.
I’m pretty sure we don’t do unpaid OT. You’re probably correct about letter carriers being overextended and “fried,” as you put it.
ETA: My latest comment is made out of some residual loyalty to my employer. If you’ve got some evidence that letter carriers aren’t getting OT pay, I’ll go to my (APWU) steward and urge him to take action on it (technically, it’s a different union, but they DO occasionally collaborate).
In my case, that’s pretty much why I do it. My mailbox is in a cabinet down the street. I’ll check to see if there’s anything worth walking to get.
It’s also useful if you are expecting some important mail. Rather than wondering each day if it’s going to show up in your mailbox, you can check online to see if it’s supposed to show up on that day. And if you see it online but not in your mailbox, then you can take action in case it got lost or mis-delivered.
I didn’t assume any task. I signed up once and USPS emails me daily with no further action on my part.
Yes, I have to glance at the email to see if I’m getting snail mail. But I’ve got my email app open most of every day anyhow. Checking the snail-mail for me involves an elevator ride down and back up plus a hike around the building and back. Call it a 10-minute job. Far easier to read the email daily and trek to my box ~weekly than to get no email and trek to my snail-box daily, but usually in vain.
Were my snail-box at my front door I’d not bother either.
I live on an auxiliary mail route. The means we don’t have an assigned delivery person like those on permanent routes. There is no set time that we get our mail, it can be as early as 10am or late as 8pm. We don’t get mail 3 or 4 times a month. The postmaster of the local post office says there is no guarantee the mail will be delivered every day.
I did some checking into the difference between permanent and auxiliary routes when I moved into my current house. The zip code at my house when it was built in 1993 was the same Auburn, 98002. This area was incorporated into that city in 1995, the zip code stayed the same. In 1998 a nearby area in the county incorporated into the city of Covington. This new city had a zip code from another nearby city, Kent. The post office refused to deliver mail using the new city name, they said resident would have to continue to use Kent. In 2001, with help from our senators in D.C., a new post office was built in Covington but they kept their original zip code but could use the name Covington. At the same time, a new zip code was created for parts of rural King County and the city of Auburn, 98092. The problem is this zip code does not have a post office, it is served by 4 different post offices from other zip codes. For that reason we are stuck on an auxiliary route till we get our own post office which likely will never happen with the USPS’s financial situation. This map of the zip code shows how spread out it is compared to other nearby zip codes.
I signed up for informed delivery a few months ago, mainly because the delivery time of my mail is very erratic. Sometimes I would go to the mailbox around two and it would be there, and sometimes it wouldn’t show up until I checked again at for. My old knees got tired of making multiple trip down the front steps and up my driveway to my street box, particularly when I ended up not getting any mail that day. With informed delivery I know not to bother going out to check if I don’t get the notice in the morning. Or sometimes when it’s obvious that it’s all junk mail I’ll let it sit there overnight until I go out to pick up my morning paper.