Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night...sorta.

The BBQ Pit
1

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these courageous couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"

That’s what it says on the buidling in New York, exalting the alleged virtues of the letter carrier. Although it’s not the “official slogan” of the USPS, it’s one we’ve come to believe means something. We expect, nay, NEED our mail on a daily basis y’know, cause the bills come, and the senders don’t care about your piddling excuses, they want their money. Unless of course, like Upstate NY, you’re under 12 FEET of snow, the mail MUST go through!

Not according to the Post office.

If access to a mailbox even “appears” unsafe to the carrier, my local carrier supervisor tells me, the carriers do not have to attempt to deliver the mail.

WHAT? If it APPEARS unsafe? SERIOUSLY? You’re leaving the execution of the work up to the worker? I can just imagine how that goes…

Hey, y’know, if you’re not feelin’ it, it’s ok, these folks won’t mind, just wander on to the next house, what’s that? Don’t feel like stopping there? Snow on the walk you say? Eh, that’s ok, it’s not “safe” for you to walk on snow, or ice, and hey, it’s cold out, you may get frostbitten, don’t want to risk that, do we? Of course not. In fact, let’s just move on to the next block, see what happens there. Wait now, you don’t have sunglasses on, it’s sunny out, back in the truck with you, we don’t want you going blind from the reflection on the snow.

What absolute shit! Imagine if I tried that shit at work…

“Why Chief, that building’s on FIRE! I can’t go in there! I might get burned! Oh, and that bad guy, he’s running away from me, jumping over fences, what if I tried to jump over a fence too! I could turn an ankle! It’s not safe!” Bah!

YOU WORK OUTSIDE! IT’S WHAT YOU DO! We got 10 inches of snow. Three days ago! Whatever’s shoveled is shoveled, whatever ain’t, ain’t. Bring the mail you quivering cowards! No one’s asking you to drop a letter in a live hornet’s nest, or a building on fire or in a war zone. It’s February in Chicago, it SNOWS here. GET OVER IT AND DO YOUR JOB, YOU SLACKER BASTARDS!

2

You are so clueless. Do you really think no one is checking up on letter carriers? They’re not just making “piddling excuses,” they have supervisors who check up on complaints of undelivered mail. Carriers who make unsubstantiated claims of unsafe conditions get dealt with–they aren’t out there on their own with full discretion about who does or does not get mail. There’s a whole hierarchy behind them making sure it gets through if it’s safe to do so. Go shovel your walkway and scrape the ice off so they CAN get through safely, you slacker.

3

Already done, Chico. Soon as the snow stopped. The driveway AND the walk are passable. I haven’t gotten the mail for three days. Then the excuse from the super? Adds up to crap.

4

At first blush it seems like a pretty sound policy. No one should be forced into unsafe circumstances.

But it sounds like you have a story to tell. So why not expand on it instead of making up hyperbolic hypotheticals? What’s going on?

ETA: How do you know you were supposed to get mail? I’ve sometimes gone for days or even a week without getting so much as a catalog.

5

Our mail carrier is, to put it in no uncertain terms, a bitch. Last year when we had a few inches of snow, the snowplows for some reason swerved out into the street about three feet from our mailbox. So we shoveled a path to the mailbox so she could get out of her vehicle and deliver our mail.

So what did we get? A nastygram from her that if she couldn’t DRIVE up to our mailbox, she wouldn’t deliver the mail again until we’d shoveled the whole goddamn street! When I went out and challenged her on it, she complained, “I don’t have TIME to get out at every mailbox!” At which point I pointed down the street, where you could see that for six blocks there wasn’t ONE OTHER single mailbox with that much snow in front of it. She just sneered at me. We had to shovel, in spite of the fact that by two days later all the snow had melted in any case.

Poor widdle letter carrier, doesn’t want to have to WALK three steps to a mailbox!

6

The mail has totally sucked in our neighborhood for the last two weeks. Nothing’s coming on time, including things that are mailed from within Chicago to me monthly on the same day (Early Intervention’s newsletter, or their bill for services, for example). It’s all at least four days late, and the total volume is about 1/5 what we usually get.

And yes, our landlord cleared our walks and salted right away. I wish I could say the same for all the other buildings on our street.

7

I guess we’re just lucky, then. We haven’t missed any mail in the time we’ve been here. The mailman did knock and ask us to take the snow off the lilac bushes a few years ago when they were hanging over the walk by the side of the house and hindering his passage. One year when we had feet of snow we shoveled out his usual passage through the front yard, to make it easier for him. But the mail is always there.

Mama Tiger, if the mailboxes are at the street it’s what’s called a mounted route, and it’s timed by the criterion that the carrier doesn’t leave the vehicle. She probably could, to accomodate you, but she’s not supposed to. And yes, it was just yours this time, but it might be more of a precedent than she’s allowed to set.

8

I’m think your complaint is unfounded based on these grounds, buttonjockey. In the world of employment safety, employees are not only encouraged to not do unsafe work, but here in Alberta, they are REQUIRED to not do work that they consider unsafe. That’s right, as an employee, you can get written up for doing work that you consider unsafe. Doing a quick search, OSHA in the U.S. doesn’t provide the same obligation to refuse unsafe work, but it seems pretty standard that all employees have the right to refuse work they consider unsafe.

It’s not a case of just saying, “I don’t want to do that” and that’s the end of the story - if an employee refuses unsafe work, there would be an investigation and methods of doing the job safely would be found or created. I think we all know why these laws had to be created - not to allow employees to not do their jobs on a whim, but to protect employees from getting hurt or killed by being required to do their job in spite of any unsafe conditions.

You gave an example of police and firefighters; yes, they do have dangerous jobs (so do construction workers - 5702 deaths in 2005 in the U.S.); that’s why every precaution that can be figured out is used in the performance of their duties. You seem to be making light of the hazards faced by postal workers, but they have real dangers, too. Slip and fall accidents can be fatal, never mind career ending. Being exposed to the elements while doing your job every day isn’t a cakewalk, either. This isn’t really a pissing contest of who has the most dangerous jobs; if you take chronic injuries into account, office professionals and cashiers shoot right to the top of that list.

I think their employers are doing the right thing, requiring their employees to not do unsafe work.

9

In the summer of 2005 we got a request from our post office to put up a street side mail box. I declined. In the summer of 2006, we got a letter telling us to put up a street side mail box if we wanted to continue receiving mail. I dragged my heels. One Saturday morning our postman called to say that he had five large boxes and wanted to know if we would be home so he could drop them off. He arrived a few minutes later. As I helped get the boxes into the garage, I started talking to him about the curb side mail boxes. He agreed that he hadn’t had problems with our steps or sidewalk. He also showed me some nasty scars on his wrist. They were from surgery for a severely broken wrist that he suffered from a fall on someone’s icy steps. I put up the mailbox that week.

10

Hey I’m with you, on this one.

I get that no postie should have to risk their livelihood to do the job.

Dog in yard, snow not cleared, obstacles etc. I’m with them on that, I understand really I do.

I also understand that it’s clearly the postie on the spot who has to make the call, obviously, not the supervisor in his distant office.

What I don’t understand is how they demand the snow is cleared, even as little as an inch or two (yeah, I know, who knows what could lie underneath :rolleyes: ) or refuse to deliver the mail.

Yet they routinely walk through deep snow banks to get from my front door to my neighbours via a straight line. Even though the slightly longer path has two neatly shoveled walkways and a cleared sidewalk.

Yeah, I know it’s about another 10 steps, but by ignoring it and tromping through a couple of feet of uncleared snow in the yard, while I see the appeal, sort of undermines your believability when you won’t come up my 10’ walkway because of 1" of snow I haven’t cleared one morning. :dubious:

11

I’ve always wondered about this. The whole “neither rain, nor snow…” bit may not be an official motto, but at some point it had to have been a credo that the USPS believed in if they had it inscribed on their building. Yet my entire life, there have been plenty of snowy days when the mail didn’t come.

In fact, doing a search for the phrase, they appear to still be making this claim.

I don’t care that the mail doesn’t come. I think they’d be foolish to risk their lives to bring me my credit card offers and LL Bean catalogs. But if snow is, in fact, going to keep them from their appointed rounds, why say otherwise?

12

Heh.

When I get a package, my mail carrier drives into my driveway and pounds on her horn until I get up, put on shoes and a jacket, and walk to the car to get the package. Her excuse? “I’m afraid of your dogs.”

I have pugs. 2 of them. Behind a closed, locked door. We never let them get out. She would never come in contact with them if she came to our door. Not that she’d know, she’s never tried.

I’m afraid to complain to the post office because I’m afraid I’d never get my mail. And those pugs… yeah, they’re viscous. Nothing like a toy breed to put the fear into someone!

13

As my parents’ old postman used to say, that poem doesn’t say anything about snow.

14

Why would you jump to that conclusion? It could have been inscribed by some taggers.

15

They can kill you with cute.

16

They have a relatively high resistance to flow? :smiley:

17

That could explain it. Athena did use the feminine pronoun in referencing her postal person who sits in the car and honks the horn. Maybe she’s named Flo? :smiley:

18

Yeah, like ice. I left my sidewalks a little too long this time, and they look like they just have an inch or so of snow on them. Uh-uh; the wind and freezing rain compacted a hell of a lot of snow into ice.

Snow drifts are pretty much guaranteed to be just snow, on the other hand.

Disclaimer: IANA meteorologist, what I’ve said (except for the anecdote) may not actually be the case.

19

We didn’t get mail here the first day it snowed a lot, but that was sort of expected. What troubles me, though, is that as the months go by we are getting our mail later and later in the day. Sometimes we don’t get our mail until eight p.m. No exaggeration. I kind of feel bad for the postal carriers who are out that late.

If I didn’t have a dog to walk, I’d probably do like my neighbors and just pretend the late mail is next day’s mail, so you always get it in the morning.

20

When I worked on summer break for the post office, I was glad that you didn’t have to deliver to unsafe addresses. In my case, since I was the rotating sub for guys taking days off, I could just put mail back into the rack and the regular guy would think about the long term consequences. Sometimes they taped a note to your gate: “Your dog has to be restrained or you can move your box up to the gate. Your choice. In the meantime your mail can be collected at the P.O. between these hours.”