We live in an older community without mailboxes, which means the mail is delivered by a mail person who walks all the way up to our door, opens the mail slot and drops the mail in.
This time last year our faithful mailman retired. Before he left he told me that no one wanted his mail route. He said “no one wants to walk to deliver mail anymore, the routes where you drive your car right up to the mailbox are so much easier.” Plus our neighborhood has very large hills, which makes delivering heavy packages all the more strenuous.
I didn’t realize how important a good mailman was until ours quit. These days we receive mail at all sorts of random times, we previously received it around 11 o’clock. Where the old mailman would push a few letters through the slot and then push through a few more, the new delivery people shove a bunch of letters in all at once. This results in torn envelopes and sometimes, even on days when it does not rain, our mail is wet.
A few hours after we receive the mail I inevitably hear the mail slot open and watch another envelope drop through our door. It seems our mail ends up at the wrong house at least a few times a week. Luckily our neighbors are nice enough to bring it to the right place.
The other day I received notification that I needed to sign for a package that had been delivered. The notification was torn, but I could read enough of the postcard to see that I could go online to set up a date for redelivery. I logged onto the website only to realize the tracking numbers weren’t written down correctly and without the numbers I couldn’t reschedule.
So I drove down to the post office in an attempt to retrieve it in person. There was only one person working. She took the notification from me and spent twenty five minutes searching for it. In the mean time a long line began to grow, by my count there were now ten people waiting behind me. There was no notice on the register saying that she went to the back and there was no one else in the post office, so as the people began complaining I explained that she went to the back to look for a package.
Since I couldn’t read the tracking number on the notification I wasn’t sure who the package was from and as I stood in line I began to wonder how long I was willing to stand there and wait for it.
As I waited in line attempting to amuse my son and trying to keep my cool I wondered if I shouldn’t just move on. Eventually the item would return to the original shipper, but would they attempt to reship it? I really wanted to know what was in that envelope.
Just as I was about to give up the woman returned with the envelope. It was a $100 gift card I won in an online contest. I guess my wait was worth it, but it did make me wonder if I should stop entering contests that might require signatures. Had the gift card been for any less I’m not sure it would have been worth the wait.
I was doing something yesterday that involved a little bit of work to get something for free and I found myself getting frustrated because it was “taking too long”… then I stopped and realized that at the very least I can put in SOME effort for a free payoff.
I kind of agree, but that wait in the post office was awful. Maybe I could time it better. There must be some time of day where the process could work a little faster for me.