What I learned this morning when I called our local post office to complain about a missing package:
Thanks to staffing problems, the USPS no longer employs a regular delivery driver for our rural route. Instead, they rely on temporary drivers borrowed from other post offices.
Temporary drivers can't be expected to be familiar with our route, so when they see our mailbox sitting across the street right next to our neighbor's mailbox, they may not be certain which house the mailbox serves.
Our house isn't even visible from the mailbox, so if they deliver our mail to the house nearest our mailbox, they'll get it wrong every time.
Therefore, if the Amazon package-tracking software says our package was delivered "On or near the front porch," it doesn't necessarily mean our front porch.
The temporary delivery driver promises to retrieve the misplaced package and deliver it properly today.
What does our local post office do when they can't find anyone to serve our rural route? Well, the postmaster kindly informed me that often he has to deliver mail along our route after the post office has closed for the day--and if he has to serve other rural routes as well, he may be out past midnight getting the mail delivered. This explains why our mail, which used to arrive reliably by 1 p.m., now often gets delivered long after we've gone to bed.
After this short conversation, I have developed a new appreciation for our local postmaster...but I wish the USPS would find a way to compensate rural delivery people so we could go back to having a postal carrier we know and trust instead of some temp who can't find our house. Neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night can stop the mail, but staffing problems can certainly slow it down.
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