MailmanDave
17 Years Experience
Long Island, NY
Male, 43
I am a City Letter Carrier for the US Postal Service in NY. I've been a city letter carrier for over 17 years and it is the best job I've ever had. I mostly work 5 days per week (sometimes includes a Saturday) and often have the opportunity for overtime, which is usually voluntary. The route I deliver has about 350 homes and I walk to each of their doors to deliver the mail. Please keep in mind that I don't have authority to speak for the USPS, so all opinions are solely mine, not my employer.
I don't have any inside knowledge on how long it would take to make a FT regular carrier in the LA area. I agree though that 9 yrs is a long time to wait. Congratulations and good luck to you!
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I think it is wrong for a letter carrier to make any type of judgment whether or not a piece of mail is important or not. They shouldn't be involving a neighbor since the neighbor may or may not have any type of relationship with the customer and shouldn't be privy to any of the type or content of mail received by you. When a customer puts their mail on hold, I treat all mail the same way no matter if it looks like a check, biill, automobile advertisement, donation request, etc. It is definitely not our job to judge anything about the mail and I would suggest it is very much against the rules even though your carrier meant well. Thanks for writing.
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In most cases, if the error is that minor and the misspelled street doesnt match another street in the same ZIP , the delivery should still reach you. Misspellings occur all the time with mailed items and letters.
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I don't know anything about the rules/laws in Canada about redirecting mail to another address just with a note. Are you okay with this? If so, then if it happens, so be it. If you don't want this or the Canada Post doesn't operate that way, then I guess it's more of an issue. I know I wouldn't abide by a letter like this. In the United States for mail to be put in another addresses mailbox (legally), a forwarding order has to be submitted with the US postal service and then the mail will be properly redirected, even if it is just a next door neighbor. I have one customer on the route I deliver that owns 2 houses adjacent to each other. One of them is for sale. Once that house is sold, I will need to have a forwarding order submitted to have mail forwarded from the sold house to the unsold house (if that's what they want). Thanks for the question.
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Generally I don't think that mailmen should be photographing packages that are delivered. There are cases where I have done this, but not often. I photograph the USPS Tracking # if my handheld scanner can't read the barcode or I can't manually type in the numbers because they are smeared or otherwise unreadable. I will then bring back the image to my supervisor to see if they can figure it out or at least as a CYA to show them why I couldn't scan the item.
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BG, I'm not sure why you got that mail back when you wrote on it "return to sender". I have 2 suggestions for you: 1) maybe write "person doesn't live here, return to sender" instead of just "return to sender" on mail.
2) Discard/recycle any mail you get for them. You did your part by trying to return the letter to the sender (which is very nice and appropriate IMO), and you don't have to try again to return it. It wouldn't be a bad idea to try again, but I just don't want you to have to play the "revolving door" game with that letter when you shouldn't have to.
Thanks for the question.
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Randy, I dont know the answer to your question. I can see it turning out both ways. On one hand, the carrier may be familiar with you and/or the neighborhood and feel it is safe enough to leave the mail by your door without risk of it being stolen. On the other hand, they may have rules saying that this is forbidden and not be able to verify that you actually wrote the note. you could also call your local PO to find out if they can be of any help, but I'm guessing they will say that you have to get a replacement key and can't risk bringing the mail to your door. I'm being purposefully vague because I have a feeling that there would be different answers from different offices/personnel. I hope you can find your mailbox key.
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