I would further point out that some carriers who have mounted routes (i.e., driving routes) have physical conditions that prevent them from doing a walking route and so no, they really can’t park the truck and walk 10 feet (especially not multiple times over the course of an entire route) when your mailbox is blocked.
In addition to the other excellent reasons listed earlier by Ferret Herder and others, that is.
Yes, I see how lucky we are in this neighborhood. I suspect part of the reason are our narrow two-lane streets with one lane of parked cars. Half of us would have to have our mailboxes across the street in someone else’s yard*.
[sub]* I know it’s actually city property to about 10’ out from the street but that’s not the way people think of “their property” around here.[/sub]
What do they do about packages?
In most cases isn’t it an easement in case the city needs some extra room when doing street repairs? If that’s the case, you don’t have an easement to put your mailbox on their property.
There are normally some trucks with just packages. This prevents regular routes to be too messed up in their timing by dealing with packages. If it is one or two, then fine, if there are too many or if the carrier is uncapable of delivering them (because they are light duty only) then the package truck delivers them.
The mial boxes around here were all on one side of the street for decades. They delivered in one direction and did a loop. They switched the businesses to a different carrier now, so thy have the boxes on the other side of the road now, and some residents still have to cross the street.
Well, looking at a surveyor’s map of my neighborhood, the properly lines are clearly 10’ from the curb. This was an issue here for some folks doing remodeling. The building code set backs are measured from the property line, not the curb.
Not to mention that every time he has to do that, my mail further down the line gets more and more delayed. I don’t think that’s fair at all and I prefer the rules that says everyone has to have their mailbox cleared.
Mailmen have their routes planned out just right so they can get to everyone in the same day. If they have it planned so it’s “drive-stop-put mail in/repeat” and then suddenly they have to get out for even 10 houses, it’s going to put the whole route behind. And I don’t think the rest of the route should have to put up with that so 10 people can park where they wish!
I have never understood why postal work is considered so stressful. To be honest it seems like a pretty easy job to me, can anyone explain?
This raises a question I’ve had.
I’ve started selling used books online.
I know that my carrier is glad to pick up a box or two with pre-printed media mail labels on it from my residential mailbox.
How many individually boxed books would I have to leave out before my carrier got annoyed with me?
Is that just something they cope with as part of their business operations plan?
Thanks. 
If my neighbor refused to negotiate with the post office, as well, would they be able to suspend his delivery as a means of encouraging compliance? Have you or your husband ever heard of a situation like this actually happening?
It’s not the job, it’s the management structure.
Apparently the bosses push their carriers and other staff very hard for performance.
Any other UK dopers reading this with amazement?!
We might be living in the past, what with our postmen carrying sacks of mail on bikes but you know what, they actually come up to the front door, put the mail in the letterbox and go off on the rest of their route…almost always without complaint.
I always thought it was a bit of a myth that people in the US all had those funny mailboxes on sticks (which means you have to go out to collect the mail) just so the postmen didn’t have to get out of their vans!
You live and learn!
So what does performance mean? It seems, at least with some stories in this thread, they go out of their way to not perform. I just keep hearing Newmans rant in Seinfeld about how the mail never stops. I suppose I should be careful though, don’t want to start a GD or Pit thread here.
Normally, they don’t mind. More boxes, better job security.
If he has an attitude problem, then well…
[Barbosa]
Well, it’s more of a guideline than an actual rule.
[/Barbosa]
It’s stressful because any job in which you have to deal with people is stressful. If you have to do it outside in every kind of extreme of weather it’s extra stressful. If you have to go up to peoples’ doors it’s extremely stressful. If you have to deal with dogs, well…
I delivered mail every summer in college. Subs have all these problems and more. You need to sort through a entire route’s worth of mail before nine o’clock. That means standing in front of a box with hundreds of dividers and matching each envelope to the right address. Heaven help you if you get an old name mixed in. Then you head for a part of the city you’ve never seen before. You go up to each house and have three seconds to figure out the puzzle of where they are hiding their mail delivery. A mailbox that can be of any style up to fifty years old so it may be unrecognizable? A letter slot in the door? The milk box on the side of the house? Behind the screen door? That box lying on the porch? Again, you have to get it right or there’s trouble.
Since it was summer the day is over 90 and you’re dying. The kids harass you. The dogs… Well, I had a German shepherd try to jump through a screen door to attack me. The lady whose house it was yelled at me because her screen was damaged.
Numbers? Houses are required to have them, but don’t. Some house numbers are on the side of a house. Or in back. Or on a separate house on the property. Or apparently nowhere at all. Then you go into an apartment house. A multi-box opens with a key and you’re supposed to stuff mail into these tiny holes but again half don’t have names or apartment numbers attached and everyone yells at you for leaving things too big for the boxes outside the box because they get stolen.
Oh yeah, officially you can’t cut across lawns. Of course, every single person in the USPS does. Unless there’s a supervisor around to see you.
So-called rural routes are easier, admittedly. Our friend from the UK can’t imagine how far apart the houses are in a normal suburban subdivision let alone those in farm country. I worked so long ago that all cars had bench seats in front. So when I went out to a rural route I drove my own car. That’s correct. I sat on the right side of the car, used my left hand to steer and my left foot to push the accelerator, and stuck my right hand out the window to put the mail in the boxes. This was official policy! This was such insanity that even the P.O. got rid of it and went to the right-hand drive vans and trucks.
You had to take a separate driving test to get certification for right-hand drive. They of course used the old broken-down vehicles for the test. Mine had a seat stuck as far back as it would go so that my feet didn’t come within a foot of pedals. I sat on the edge and passed. The first time I was assigned one I was based downtown and had to drive it out to the suburbs through the heaviest part of rush-hour work traffic. That was stressful, yes, indeeedy.
So you’re driving a right-hand drive vehicle in a sea of left-hand drive cars trying to pull up to curbside mailboxes which are supposed to be at a required height but are drooping or skewed or have been apparently welded shut, while trying to scoop up the occupant’s mail with your left hand and keeping one eye out for the packages that are in the back of the truck and the other eye out for kids and cars and delivery trucks and people backing blindly out of driveways. And that’s the easy route. One day I came back to the post office and found they were so shorthanded that I had to do a second route that day. Ever try delivering a bank’s mail at five pm? And then doing the route in the dark?
Of course it gets easier with time, but I’ve left out hundreds of the little aggravations. And today the USPS does not get government subsidies so they push people harder all the time. I feel for the carriers every day. Like any job, you have to have been there to really understand. Carriers really do go out of their way - often literally - to get the mail to you but they have rules they have to follow and they don’t have to put themselves or others in danger just to satisfy your whims. Think of the nuttiest, craziest, most antisocial people that have ever despoiled the Dope and remember that each and every one of them gets mail every day.
As for the OP: you can cut off your nose to spite your face and stand your ground or you can get your mail. Your choice.
If the job is truly so micro-managed, then I doubt my comments will prevent delivery. Or if anything unethical will occur.
Further, I would like to restate, that I was not blocking the box. I was on the curb of the cul-de-sac, inbetween houses (and their boxes).
Further, beyond that, I move the car before he was out of the cul-de-sac.
Ignorance is no excuse. Fine, I would have liked, and appreciated a reason, over a blatant demand. I have left my car there before, many times.
I think there is enough support here, that a ““traditional”” belief in the USPS is no longer the case. Given what I knew THEN, and how the situation was presented, I might have been slightly angry. Enough to appologize? No.
Allow me to step to the side of those that say you should apologize. It is also customary to tip your mail carrier so you may want to add a gift card or some socks with the card explaining how you didn’t mean to make his job more difficult.
In my humble opinion, it seems to me you were being pissy because you thought your convenience was more important than his. He is doing a job, an important job and doesn’t need it to be made more difficult because you have a good parking spot.
In many places, like my neighborhood, the postal workers do come up to every door since we don’t have mailboxes.
But, out in the burbs where I used to live it would add over a minute at each house to go from the street to the front door, and sometimes that long to drive from house to house. It would require 10x as many postal workers to do a route like that if you were on foot or bike. The regs are different in different locations.