The pen in your hand is a magic wand with which you can send joy, hope, love and courage across deserts and plains, over mountains and seas, around the world and around the corner. ~Wilferd A. Peterson, American author
We all grumble about the postal service and sometimes, with good cause: reduced window operations, increased regulations, jacked-up prices.
So let me add another complaint to the pile — S-L-O-W delivery.
Recently, I sent my childhood friend a birthday card and letter in a small manila envelope. I sealed it with clear tape and stopped by the P.O. counter to make sure I had sufficient postage on it.
I mailed it about two weeks before her November birthday, thinking that surely was enough time for its timely arrival.
It wasn’t.
In her Christmas letter to me, she pointed out (nicely, of course) that my letter finally arrived an entire week after her birthday, causing her to fear something was wrong in my world because my correspondence is never late.
So when I mailed my Christmas letter to her — again sealed the way I’d done the birthday letter — I asked the P.O. clerk what had gone wrong.
Turns out, the problem likely was caused by somebody else failing to completely seal an envelope they’d mailed.
How can that be? I asked.
The clerk said their mail sorting machines are so fast that sometimes, one piece of mail gets hung up on a partially-sealed flap of another piece. And that delays both of them.
She added, We don’t have time to go behind people and reseal their letters.
Huh.
That’s not exactly a comforting thought. Nor do I find it a very acceptable explanation.
Still, if that’s the way things are, I can certainly refuse to add to the problem. So from now on, I’m careful to completely seal everything I mail, whether it be cards or letters.
I don’t want to be the cause of delaying somebody’s mail!
Musings by an ND Domer's Mom 
I guess that explanation makes sense. Some strangely mangled envelopes have been delivered here once in a while, which makes me wonder if they got tangled up with other sticky pieces in the sorting machines. It’s amazing they work as well as they do, most of the time.
Barbara, I probably should’ve linked to this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB7QOK1bd3U&ab_channel=Insider). I can’t believe how FAST those machines are — no wonder we get any mail at all!!
Wow! That’s incredible! It’s a wonder more mail isn’t getting lost along the way. Now I have a visual.
The visual really helps, doesn’t it?!
“That’s not exactly a comforting thought. Nor do I find it a very acceptable explanation.”
Couldn’t agree more, Debbie! Glad you posted this today because I thought it was only Philadelphia that had major issues with our Postal Service. I actually dread going into our PO’s, even to purchase stamps. Because not only are the people behind the counter SLOW moving, but they are usually very grumpy as well.
One time I went into the PO by my apartment and mailed my utility bill. WEEKS went by without the check I wrote for the bill clearing. Normally it takes only a few days to clear. One day I went to my apartment mailbox and found the utility bill that had been RETURNED to me with a note saying that the mailing address couldn’t be identified, so it couldn’t be processed. I was totally confused because the check was mailed in an envelope that the utility bill provides, containing a little window in front with the address CLEARLY visible. Come to find out that someone at the PO rejected processing my envelope because when they first picked it up out of the mail bin, the address that is visible through the window was slightly ajar. But rather than simply tapping the envelope so that the address would fall into place, they REFUSED to process it. Did I mention that our postal workers are also LAZY? LOL!
Thank god I send my bills in very early, because I was able to resend it without it being late.
Anyway, sorry for such a long comment, but I just had to share this PO experience with you.
Have a faaaaaaaaaabulous Sunday, my friend! X
Oh, no. You too? I hate that, Ron. And utility bills, especially, need to arrive on time — you don’t want them cutting off your power!
And why so many working people are grumpy boggles my mind. I mean, they chose that line of work, didn’t they? And they’re getting paid, aren’t they? And they get benefits like vacations and breaks and insurance, right? So why are they so grouchy??
Hope your Sunday is going well, my friend. xx
Ouch. Several years ago when I heard the head of USPS say that it was going to be slower, I cringed. Gone are the days of their efficiency.
Yes, I imagine the Pony Express was fairly efficient, for its day, ha! And perhaps carrier pigeons.
I suppose that sorting machine explanation could account for some delay, but it certainly doesn’t explain why a Christmas package I sent via priority to Kansas City on December 2 didn’t arrive until a week after Christmas. It doesn’t explain, either, why a letter sent from Kemah, Texas to Kerrville, Texas, took three weeks to arrive. I could have walked to Kerrville in that amount of time.
And, of course, there was the time I was waiting for a package from Florida. It also was send via priority mail. After it reached the my home post office, someone sent it to a neighboring town, which marked it “address unknown” and sent it back to Florida.
Clearly, you punched one of my buttons this morning. Sending anything via USPS is iffy these days. On the other hand, they do manage to get my junk mail to me!
I’m sorry to hear of your bad experiences, Linda, but a teeny part of me is glad I’m not in this alone. I especially question why our mail, even if it’s going to the next town east or west, has to go clear up north before it’s delivered. We have plenty of postal workers here. Maybe they don’t have the proper sorting machines, who knows? Still, it’s a maddening business that touches all of us in some way, so you’d think they’d get it “sorted out”!
Interesting about sealed/not sealed letters… I will endeavor to seal mine better!
Yeah, I didn’t know that either. I usually slap some transparent tape on the envelopes I mail out (more for security than anything else), but I, too, am going to be more conscious about it from now on.
In my neck of the woods—literally as I live in central Maine—the mail is remarkably reliable. Maybe it all depends?
I’m glad you haven’t experienced these problems, Laurie. Maybe your postal workers need to do a training podcast for the rest of the country?!
Hmmm. I’m not sure what I think of that explanation. I’ve gotten where I often add tape (washi or cellophane) or stickers to my envelopes to help seal them. For all I know, those mess up their machines, too! This week I got my church’s monthly newsletter in a postal envelope. Evidently it had gotten mangled in their machinery so that’s how they managed to deliver it to me (in pieces!).
Despite the fact I often complain about the USPS, I still think it’s a good service that I’d be sorry to lose. Maybe they should actually implement some of those money-saving steps they’ve considered in the past, like limiting their days of delivery.
Right! I, too, have received completely mangled mail … with no explanation for why it’s in that condition. I suppose things are made especially challenging for them, with all the different-sized pieces of mail, the different colored envelopes, and the hard-to-read handwriting in the addresses. But I’d hate to give up any delivery days. Can you imagine how slow they’d be if, for example, they eliminated Saturday delivery and had to double-up on Monday??
It sounds like a quick on-the-feet explanation. If that is the problem then the machinery is too rickety to do the job.
It probably does need tweaking. Maybe it doesn’t need to be quite so fast, if it’s going to make such huge errors. But looking at some handwriting I’ve seen over the years, maybe it’s a wonder letters are delivered at all!
That is true about the handwriting.
I know — maybe we should all print?
I don’t know why the mail service is so bad these days, but it certainly is! We’re supposed to get mail six days a week, but we usually only get it five. And we often get the mail that is supposed to go to a house with our house number that is actually located several blocks away. Yes, it’s our house number, but the street name and the resident’s names are completely different!
We get that house number the same, but street name different quite often, too. It’s pretty annoying. I have been taking the wrong ones to the P.O. and explaining the problem so they can re-deliver them, but I doubt anybody else returns the favor, ha!
I agree! We drop the mail off at the house it’s supposed to go to, but I don’t think anyone does that for us.
We’ve had issues with our mail, too. Cards we mail to our grandkids either take weeks (sometimes months!) to arrive or they never get there at all. This has been a problem for over a decade and got worse during/after the pandemic.
I’m sorry to hear that. I guess it doesn’t much matter where we live, but at times, we’ve all faced this madness. I’d have thought, as long as they’ve been in business, they’d have had sufficient time to get it right!
We mailed a check to the Truck Safety Coalition, in DC. It arrived weeks late in an envelope with a hole in it that looked like it had been shot. Luckily the check was still whole inside the mangled envelope. If that piece of mail could talk we think there’s be a heck of a story!
I’ll bet there is!! The good news is, at least the check arrived (and bless you for donating!)
At one point in my life, I worked in an office that had a massive machine that folded bills, stuffed them in envelopes and sealed them. We used to send out about twenty thousand bills at a time. It was great when it worked, but if the slightest thing went wrong we ended up with about fifty or more mangled bills before we could stop the machine running, and it would take ages to redo those bills manually. Technology. Tchah!
Yikes!! I agree, there’s good and there’s bad about technology. When things work right, they can be so much faster; however, when things mess up, fixing the mess can take forever!