# Post office idiocy **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 22, 2004, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-office-idiocy/281177 "2004-12-22T17:01:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![infamousmom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d6d6ee/32.png) [@infamousmom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/infamousmom)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2004, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-office-idiocy/281177/21 "2004-12-24T07:24:12Z")
Before I begin, I do want to say that the people who work at the Downtown Burbank Post Office (I will not now, nor will I ever, refer to that place as the Bob Hope Post Office no matter how many plaques they put on the wall) are kind, competent and often go well beyond the call of duty to help their customers. The carriers out in the field, however, are another kettle of fish altogether. Not bad enough that we regularly get mail for the people who live two blocks over and have the same house number but a different street name that in no way resembles ours. Not bad enough that the carrier delivered our mail to the house next door repeatedly when that house was \*\*empty \*\*between owners. Not bad enough that the carrier regularly dumps our mail on the doormat instead of putting it in the mail slot, or the basket I have out on the porch specifically for the putting-in of magazines and other large items that won’t fit in the mail slot (I guess they didn’t teach that guy about mail theft when he went to postal-carrier whiz school). No, yesterday the PO took the booby prize with bird-poop clusters, for delivering to our house an envelope mailed in San Jose, to another address… **in San Jose**. Burbank… San Jose… hey, all in the same state, right? Close enough for government work. :wally ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2004, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-office-idiocy/281177/22 "2004-12-24T16:34:12Z")
> [@TeaElle](#): > > Because they wanted a specific type of stamp that wasn’t available in the machine, perhaps? I know that at our post office, you had to get in line if you wanted holiday stamps or Dr. Seuss stamps or Breast Cancer stamps or anything other than the regular, everyday flag stamps. I’m stunned to hear people actually still go to the post office to buy stamps. If you get them through the mail they send you a big glossy catalog and you can pick out as many kinds as you want and can take all damn day deciding without holding up the line! That combined with internet postage (you can do all the special services & tracking, etc even) has kept me comfortably out of the post office for a couple years now, but when I did go, my problems were 90% of the time with the other people in line rather than the post office employees themselves. I would see people walk up to the window with just a huge shopping bag of stuff and various scraps of paper and say “I want this to go here…this here…” Nothing wrapped or in a box or addressed or anything. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! Come ON! ---
**Author:** ![GaWd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f08c70/32.png) [@GaWd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaWd)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2004, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-office-idiocy/281177/23 "2004-12-24T18:13:34Z")
> [@infamousmom](#): > > No, yesterday the PO took the booby prize with bird-poop clusters, for delivering to our house an envelope mailed in San Jose, to another address… **in San Jose**. > > Burbank… San Jose… hey, all in the same state, right? Close enough for government work. :wally I have an answer for this, amazingly. When the sorters sort out the letters, they throw them into bins. THese bins are probably segregated by zipcode and by metro name. There just happens to be a metro area of San Jose called **Burbank** , and if that bin got misplaced, the most logical place for it to end up is in Burbank, California instead of Burbank, **San Jose**. Of course, you’d think the lizardbrains at the USPS would have caught it before it ever made it to someone’s door 400 miles away, but it _is_ the USPS. Sam [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-office-idiocy/281177.md?page=1)