One of the problems with the cutbacks in postal services is that it just makes an insufficient service even more inadequate.
Case in point: mail delivery to my house.
We can almost always tell when our regular postal carrier has the day off; the service is inadequate. For instance, we have a locked mailbox, but several times, we have found the mail placed in the box but sticking out so that anyone could just pull it out. And I’m talking four to six pieces that could easily fit down the slot. More than once, we’ve found the mail in the milk box. And once, we even found the mail just sitting on the welcome mat.
Worse, I was home one Thursday with a sick child. I went to the mailbox and every single piece of mail was for the house to our right. I found the (substitute) carrier and told him this. He looked in his mailbag and said that we just didn’t get any mail that day; from experience, I knew that to be that was nearly impossible.
Later that day, I asked the neighbor to the left, who had just moved in, whether he might have received our mail. He had not, but it is a multiunit dwelling, and he discovered our four letters, including a couple of bills, plus a magazine, in another mailbox in his building.
From what I’ve been told, the delivery folks are given their routes, plus parts of other routes when the regulars are off. Of course, they never get a chance to understand the added addresses.
I understand that the Postal Service is in major financial difficulty, but when lousy service is provided, this only makes a bad situation worse.