My letter carrier leaves me a card. I happen to have this year’s card which is printed with the following message:
*Thank you for thinking of me during this joyful holday season. Your kind expression is very much appreciated. Warmest greetings of the season and every good wish for a happy and healthy new year.
Your letter carrier*
On the line is a printed sticker with his name.
Now I don’t know about anybody else but this does not inspire me to leave money. I feel like I am being threatened. However, I will probably leave $10 because I do like to receive my mail.
If I had any sort of face-to-face interaction with my carrier, I would probably leave a tip. Our boxes are those metal boxes that are in groups of 8 and it is a couple houses down. I sometimes see him putting mail in the boxes, but usually not. When we do get a package, more often than not it comes separately from another carrier, not along with the regular mail.
That is pretty nervy and I’m surprised he’s even allowed to do that (if he even is allowed).
Only slightly related to this topic but it just pissed me off so much that I’m going to complain about it anyway: I once had one who refused to pick up outgoing mail from my mailbox. Flag up and everything, obviously. Then I started sticking the envelope halfway out to be SURE he saw it. Then I emailed the post office and asked wtf. Never got a response. If I was going to give anyone a tip, it sure wouldn’t be that asshole! But I’ve never had one I felt the slightest urge to tip. I’m sure they wouldn’t tip me if they bought something from my store either.
I live in a 22 floor high rise building in Chicago. It’s rare that I see the postal worker delivering the mail, but if I do, I simply avoid the mail area until he’s done. I wouldn’t consider a tip, postal workers make a decent salary and they’re not what I would consider as tipped employees, like a bartender or a hair stylist.
I don’t, mainly because (a) I was under the impression that they were not allowed to keep it, and (b) I live in a townhouse where the mailbox is too small to fit anything (and I can’t really put it in an envelope and leave it in the box as it’s the kind of box where the letter carrier ignores anything inside of it - you have to clip outgoing mail to the edge of the box so it sticks outside of the box - and anything obviously not a letter is just asking to be stolen).
My father sold liquor to bars/restaurants, so he could always lay his hands on a bottle of wine to put into the mailbox on Christmas Eve.
Yeah, I’m not sure if that’s kosher. Dear husband is at work still and will be for at least a few hours, or I’d ask. Thank you cards are allowed and encouraged.
I’m wondering if he put a stamp on his ‘please tip me’ card? Because I’m pretty sure that not stamping that envelope is an Extremely Bad Thing, perhaps even more so than sort-of-soliciting tips that way.
Nope, don’t even think of such things. They get paid better than me anyhow. I don’t give to anyone but my children, because that’s pretty much all the holiday means to me. It’s more like Gift-mas.
That takes me back to the year I was delivering the LA Times. A month before Christmas, while we were folding our papers and loading them into our cars, the boss came around with a supply of cards for us to put in the papers one morning. Each card had spaces for us to fill in our names and mailing addresses.
I was absolutely SCANDALIZED when they told me that the purpose of the cards was to solicit Christmas gratuities, so I said I didn’t want any. That was when a couple of my fellow carriers (a cop doing this as a part-time job, and his son, IIRC) offered to fold and load my papers for me that morning.
Then the week before Christmas, one of the people on my route was up early; he stopped me as I drove past to deliver his paper, and gave me a card with ten dollars inside. I didn’t pass it along to the other carriers, but I was a little less scandalized, now that I realized that the people on the route were not scandalized themselves.
I wasn’t delivering the following Christmas*, so it never became an issue again.
*I was waiting tables at an all-night coffee shop.
No. Every evening when I come home from work I pull the mail from the box and walk straight to the recycle bin. 85% of the mail goes in the bin, 10% goes back in the mailbox because it’s not mine, and 5% makes it in the house.
Coincidentally I was considering tipping the recycling guy because tomorrow is our collection day and he’ll be here and I drive a truck and can relate to how important and thankless his job is. If I catch him he’ll get $20. If not I won’t lose any sleep.
When I lived where I had interaction and at times, knew my carrier personally, I would leave a tin of fudge or baked goods along with a $ 5 gift card to Mickey Dee’s or Starbucks.
Now, I live where the mailboxes are in a bank and the carriers rotate. I don’t leave anything.
I don’t do this, and the idea seems bizarre to me. Why would I tip the postal worker(s) who work the route my house happens to be on? To me, that’s like tipping a nurse at the hospital where you got stitches removed, or like tipping someone at the DMV for giving you a form to fill out to renew your license.
half-expects to be told that such things are now considered normal
I leave our carrier of 4 years a Trick or Treat bag at Halloween and at Christmas I make a gift set of a decorative tin of a German dessert I buy on base and a gift card to Red Robin or something along those lines. We moved across the neighborhood and never missed one piece of mail due to her diligence so I let her know we appreciate her.
When we lived in GA we got a not in the mailbox a few weeks before Christmas from the local postmaster saying while we were not obligated to do so, if we wanted to tip our carrier to do so in an envelope specifically marked ‘Carrier Tip’.
We left a small gift card for the local convenience store (to get coffee or lunch or something). Mostly because my wife and I get a lot of packages that seem, one way or the other, to be delivered by USPS and the carrier’s really nice about making sure they don’t get wet and/or putting the rest of our mail with it so we don’t have to go down the block to the big bank of mailboxes.
Our mail guys are Steve, and John when Steve’s on vacation. I have an online business and ship a lot of packages. They’re both wonderful, and got little gift boxes from Figi’s.
I just could not see a good way to do it. I’d have to sit out there waiting for him all day, since the time varies, especially around the holidays. And that’s only because I’d be home–most everyone else in the household wouldn’t. And there’s no way I’m leaving anything out there. We’ve had mail ripped open before. I’m actually wondering if we can get a lock.
I leave them $1 for every piece of mail I received that year that I actually wanted.
So, nothing.
But seriously, no. They are paid employees performing a service that I did not necessarily ask for. It’s been probably 10 years since I’ve actually even seen my mail-person, let alone speak to them.
My dad’s a retired mailman and he got lots of nice gifts at Christmas.
I used to give a tip to our mailperson. Her name was Frances and she was a sweetie pie. She was nice to my girls and just a really sweet person. I would see her on a hot day and always try to offer her a cold drink. But she had to retire because of diabetes. I don’t tip the new guy because frankly he sucks. At least twice a month I wind up with other people’s mail. The other day alone I had THREE pieces of mail that were meant for neighbors not me. Which really sucked as one of them was from an asshole neighbor I really hate. Said neighbor has an ungodly obsession with her damned lawn, a hatred of leaves and the belief that her leaf blower can be used whenever she thinks the neighborhood kids are being too noisy. So I had to get my eldest daughter to dump it in her mailbox.
