# My Mailperson is Mentally Retarded! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 15, 2009, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878 "2009-06-15T21:34:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/1 "2009-06-15T21:34:12Z")
The old mailman retired 4 months ago. Since that time, we are getting letters, packages, magazines, etc, with completely wrong addresses! We are at No. 19-and we are getting mail addressed to No.s 59, 79, 39, etc. I have repeatedly put the mail out with the numbers circled, and noted “wrong address”. This woman seems to have great difficulty reading standard address labels-should I report her? ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/2 "2009-06-15T21:46:52Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > should I report her? Yep. The great thing about postmasters if that they have the great old-timey sounding title of “postmaster.” So you can don your waistcoat, take a puff of your pipe, and exclaim, “I say, I shall be forced to have a word with the local postmaster forthwith should these grievous errors continue.” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/3 "2009-06-15T21:47:24Z")
I’d just drop the mail at neighbors’ myself (I do this occasionally for mail addressed to 3949 that arrives at my 3849 door) and call the local post office directly. It’s not necessarily all the carrier’s fault - the machines that sort the mail for the carrier may be out of whack and the carrier might just be careless and/or inexperienced. So, yeah, report her. ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/4 "2009-06-15T22:43:16Z")
I take it as an excuse for some exercise to deliver the occasional mis-delivered envelope at my place. But talking with some co-workers a while ago, I was stunned to discover that some other people just chuck it in the trash without a second thought. So for the sake of _your own_ credit card statements and birthday cards, let it be known that a knucklehead is in their employ. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2009, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/5 "2009-06-15T23:14:39Z")
Absolutely. Call the local office that your mail is delivered out of, ask to speak to the delivery supervisor, give your address and the date(s) you can think of when you definitely had misdelivered mail. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/6 "2009-06-16T00:44:33Z")
FWIW, we’re trying to switch folks over to the word [leotarded](http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=1487886). ---
**Author:** ![tumbleddown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tumbleddown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tumbleddown)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/7 "2009-06-16T01:59:07Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > FWIW, we’re trying to switch folks over to the word [leotarded](http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=1487886). That’s pathetic. Truly pathetic. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/8 "2009-06-16T04:57:14Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Absolutely. Call the local office that your mail is delivered out of, ask to speak to the delivery supervisor, give your address and the date(s) you can think of when you definitely had misdelivered mail. Agree with this. Do not fuck around. The mail is too important. If there is the _slightest_ whiff of shit with delivery, go to the top, **PRONTO!** ---
**Author:** ![panaccione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@panaccione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panaccione)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/9 "2009-06-16T05:17:14Z")
jeez give him or her a chance at least… next time he/she does it leave a note saying if they do it again you’ll report em. ---
**Author:** ![Electronic\_Chaos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Electronic\_Chaos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Electronic_Chaos)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/10 "2009-06-16T05:55:10Z")
We had been having problems with this for awhile. Turns out there’s a nifty little form you can fill out online to report it. They got back to us quickly, and we haven’t had a problem with getting our neighbor’s mail again. On the plus side, they even gave us a nifty bright pink sticker to put on our mailbox that says “Double check the address, numbskull” basically. ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/11 "2009-06-16T07:35:44Z")
During the last 2 weeks of May my regular postie was on holiday. I didn’t receive: 1. Two credit card statements 2. My bank statement. 3. My notification of interest earned on my ISA savings account 4. A cheque for £26.89 5. Some Tesco loyalty vouchers totalling £8. I went down to the delivery office and reported this in a letter, turns out that a temp employee had been on the nick, they found 25 undelivered sacks of mail in his house. I got my mail later ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/12 "2009-06-16T10:15:30Z")
> [@Scotty Mo](#): > > jeez give him or her a chance at least… next time he/she does it leave a note saying if they do it again you’ll report em. From the OP, it sounds like repeated attempts have done nothing. My husband is a letter carrier for the USPS so I’m not just being anti-mailman here; it’s what he recommends for customers whose carriers keep screwing up. My husband was dealing with a letter carrier the other week who was sorta new (and very dense) and handled delivering his route while he was on his day off. Upon his return, he got so many “I know you must not have been at work” comments from his customers. From what was determined - this ditzy carrier would grab these pre-bundled packets of letters (rubber-banded by address) and just go down the houses successively, starting at the first one for that “relay” of mail and dropping them in the letter slots - whether or not the house number matched what was on the letters. Houses flagged back at the office as on “vacation hold” would get mail in them. Worst yet, one vacant house - which you could see from standing on the front step and looking through the big picture window had the ceiling falling in from long neglect - had someone’s mail thrown through the mail slot! Misdeliveries happen; considering the sheer amount of mail delivered in a day, bad handwriting, failure in computer sorting for those specific pieces of mail that are handled that way, and so on, it’s inevitable. But repeated frequent errors have a serious potential for problems, and if there is no obvious improvement, then that really needs to be addressed. No one’s getting fired from a complaint to the supervisor. ---
**Author:** ![Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e68b1a/32.png) [@Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abby_Emma_Sasha)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/13 "2009-06-16T10:33:32Z")
I would defiitely complain to the superiors. I have this problem except my bills get to me on time but my magazines never do. I bitch and gripe to my husband but what else can I do? Yeah, Will Smith makes fun of me in that Men In Black shit but I want my TV Guide on time, gotdammmit. I’m paying for it. ---
**Author:** ![ENugent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@ENugent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ENugent)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/14 "2009-06-16T17:22:24Z")
Years ago when I lived in the Boston area, we had an issue with a mailman insisting that we had to have our names on the door. We had been getting a lot of misdelivered mail (often stuff that did not have the same street _or_ the same number), and we started writing “please redeliver to correct address” and putting it back in the mailbox. Then the mailman started writing notes on our mail demanding that we put our names on the door. We didn’t particularly want to - one resident was “hiding” from an ex-husband, and none of us felt that we should have to advertise our names in order to avoid getting mail addressed to entirely different houses. The last straw was when we got an envelope with “Last warning - no names, no mail” written on it - an envelope addressed to a different number on a different street. My roommate sent a nasty letter to the postmaster, with photocopies of the envelopes that had been written on. We never saw that mailman again, and accuracy did improve. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/15 "2009-06-16T18:11:26Z")
> [@Scotty Mo](#): > > jeez give him or her a chance at least… next time he/she does it leave a note saying if they do it again you’ll report em. Yeah, because no one ever tells postal workers in their training that this kind of thing matters at all. ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/16 "2009-06-16T18:27:30Z")
I’m going by regulations as I knew them 30 years ago but what the hey - I was a “casual carrier” as a college student . The title refers to the fact as a part time employee I wasn’t required to wear the full uniform but could dress “casually” in jeans, a blue shirt, and an official pithe helmet or carriers cap. I messed up mail on occasion . And it was always my fault. Very rarely did the route sorter mess up and give me mail that wasn’t on my route. In the morning it was my job to throw-up my stack of letters into cubbyholes that were numbered in the order of my route. That’s usually where I made the error by sending a letter for 423 east main to 423 east martin or something like that. Then, later in the day with 50 pounds of mail on my shoulders and 90 humid degrees wearing me down I would pull out the next section from my satchel, check the number (but not the street) as I came from one house to the next. The post master told me that should just bring back any misdirected mail and deliver it the next day. The best case scenario under that was a two day delay. One household wrote on on a misdirected letter - “Please do not send mail from main street - this is Martin street”. I showed this to the postmaster and he drove over to the house, apologized to the people and then told them that if it happened again just draw a diagonal line trough the address and place it back in their mailbox. He then told them that writing messages on somebody else’s mail violated postal regulations and that they could be fined or indicted if they continued to do that. He said that he would do his best to correct the problem but they had to realize that this mistake was probably going to happen again and that they were expected to respond appropriately. ---
**Author:** ![ENugent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@ENugent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ENugent)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/17 "2009-06-16T18:31:46Z")
> [@BubbaDog](#): > > He then told them that writing messages on somebody else’s mail violated postal regulations and that they could be fined or indicted if they continued to do that. I presume this rule also applied to the mailman writing threats to stop delivering our mail? ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/18 "2009-06-16T18:36:25Z")
> [@ENugent](#): > > I presume this rule also applied to the mailman writing threats to stop delivering our mail? I would think so. In fact, it sounds like that’s what made the one mailman disappear. ---
**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/19 "2009-06-16T20:55:56Z")
> [@BubbaDog](#): > > He then told them that writing messages on somebody else’s mail violated postal regulations and that they could be fined or indicted if they continued to do that. He said that he would do his best to correct the problem but they had to realize that this mistake was probably going to happen again and that they were expected to respond appropriately. So I’m not allowed to write “Return to sender, addressee no longer at this address” on mail delivered to my house for the previous owners? ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2009, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878/20 "2009-06-16T23:09:49Z")
> [@Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](#): > > I would defiitely complain to the superiors. > > I have this problem except my bills get to me on time but my magazines never do. I bitch and gripe to my husband but what else can I do? > > Yeah, Will Smith makes fun of me in that Men In Black shit but I want my TV Guide on time, gotdammmit. I’m paying for it. I wasn’t getting _The New Yorker_ on Monday/Tuesday like before, but Friday/Saturday and I complained. Not only to the post office but to _The New Yorker_ subscription department, who told me that they _pay_ to have the magazine delivered locally in batches and sent out, all timed for on-time delivery. The last month and a half it’s been on Tuesday every time. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-mailperson-is-mentally-retarded/499878.md?page=2)