Delivering mail through snow and sleet…and volunteer?

aka, The Saga Continues...

So Friday rolls around and, still, the spot at the end of the street where the giant metal mailbox for the entire neighborhood was rooted remains empty. As I am expecting some important documents from school and want to read my new New Yorker, I decide to give our local postal branch a call to find out what gives. I am informed that “someone ran over the old mailbox” and that the new one is scheduled to be installed that very day. I am then told that the corresponding keys for the new box will be delivered directly to our doors shortly thereafter.

Then Friday night, I receive an email from Sheri, a neighbor from a couple of doors down, informing me that she was told that the keys are locked inside of the newly planted mailbox and will be distributed on Saturday, since more people are likely to be at home then.

Well, Saturday comes and Saturday goes and nobody darkens our door with any keys. Sunday is, of course, the national day of rest for those who carry the mail, so I hang out at home on Monday, expecting my doorbell to chime at any moment. I make certain that music isn’t on too loud and try to summon the arrival of a key-bearing postal worker at my doorstep using my psychic powers.

My psychic powers seem to be taking a personal day off.

I wish to take a shower and am certain that, if I do, that will be when the doorbell will ring and I will miss my opportunity to have access to my mail until…tomorrow? The next day? Whenever they get around to it?

By 4:30pm on Monday I’m beginning to, again, wonder what gives. I decide to phone my local post office once again. As I begin to explain why I am calling, the woman who answered the phone says that she will transfer me to Larry, who is handling that situation. When I explain to Larry the discrepancies between what I was told would happen and what has actually occurred, Larry tells me that “they were having difficulty getting all of the keys out” and that if I go to blankety-blank address tomorrow, I’ll be able to pick my keys up from Arnie.

Arnie does not work for the postal service. Arnie is my neighbor and is one of those distrustful-of-the-government, uber right-wing republicans. He is the one with the bumper sticker on his car described in this post. I do not trust Arnie. He hates gay people and has not been very friendly to me. While my jaw is dropping to the ground, Larry hangs up.

After mulling over my thoughts for a moment and phoning J to see if she knows if this is even legal (as I’m thinking it’s not), I decide to phone the post office again and clear this up with a supervisor. The woman who answered the phone claimed to be a supervisor when I requested to speak with a manager and, when I began to explain the problem to her, she told me that she was going to transfer me to Larry.

“But wait,” I tell her, “I thought you said that you were the supervisor.” She tells me that Larry, too, is a supervisor. Too many chiefs…not a good sign. I tell Larry that I need to clarify what he told me only moments ago.

“So, let me make sure I understand this correctly. All of the keys to all of the mailboxes in the neighborhood are being left with Arnie –my neighbor, Arnie- tomorrow?”

“That’s right,” Larry assures me.

“Is that legal???” I am unable to contain my incredulousness. Larry stammers and tells me that he doesn’t know.

“I don’t think it is and it’s not okay with me.” Larry then informs me that Arnie “volunteered” to distribute the keys since “they were having trouble getting them out.” Interesting.. I never knew that one could "volunteer" with the U.S. Postal Service and gain access to the private mail of others. I'm certain that there are many aspiring criminals who would be quite interested in this civic opportunity.

I inform Larry that I am not comfortable with them giving access to my mail without my permission to someone who does not like me and who I do not trust. I pause briefly for a deep and cleansing yoga breath and then ask Larry if he realizes how rampant identity theft is and that I'm really quite surprised that they would just give all of those keys to a complete stranger. Clearly, this sort of thing hadn’t entered anyone’s mind and Larry tells me that he can leave a note for my postal carrier to leave my key under my doormat if I am uncomfortable with Arnie distributing them. Still, it hasn’t dawned on him that it might not be such a good idea to leave access to twenty homes’ worth of mail to a random stranger who “volunteered” to take care of it.

Content with the outcome that Larry will instruct our mail carrier to leave our mailbox key under our doormat (although not fully believing that Larry will actually do this) and envisioning the awkwardness that may occur as a result of the interchange between our mail carrier and Arnie: "Well, Arnie, here are all of the keys except for one. She didn't want you having access to her mail. Thanks for helping out, Arnie, and if we ever need any more help, we'll let you know!"

I then pose to Larry one final question:

"I'm just curious. If I hadn't called you today to find out what was going on with our keys to our mailboxes, how on earth would I have known that I was to pick them up from my neighbor? Was the postal service planning on sending out some sort of memo to everyone on the street?"

And do you know what Larry told me???

"Oh, Arnie was going to take care of that."

No sooner do I hang up the phone from Larry and it rings. It’s Arnie and he has our mailbox key and can we come and pick them up from him? So, Larry the “supervisor” not only has no clue that it’s quite likely illegal to give keys to locked mailboxes to a random stranger, but – despite being the one who is “handling this situation” – he has no idea that said keys had already been distributed to said random stranger.

J then walks in the door, home from work, just in time to see the steam emerging from both my ears. She offers to take over while I drink my coffee and attempt to locate calm. Like a crazy person wandering urban streets, I’m pacing and muttering to myself…the occasional I can’t believe audible and somewhat clear.

J retrieves our key from our bigoted and unfriendly neighbor and returns home with an armload of our mail. She then phones the main postal number and registers a formal complaint. The woman graciously receiving our complaint tells us this should never have happened.