I have concluded that the people who work at the Oakland Post Office are complete idiots. Today I got to work and found that our email wasn’t working properly, and sadly I cannot work without my email open. Perhaps it is because that is where I store all information and also that I usually spend a good portion of my morning replying to emails. In fact, I now have an aversion to using the telephone.
So I browsed around online for a while and got bored, so I decided to call the Oakland Post Office and ask them where my mail was. Please refer to last post regarding the fact that I no longer get mail. I’m quite professional and usually quite pleasant and understanding on the phone, but seriously … these people are morons and deserve to be treated like crap.
Me: Hi, I live at xxx Street and have not been receiving my mail for a few weeks. My landlord moved my mailbox and gave me a new key, and ever since then I have received no mail.
Stupid Man: Well if you get a different mailbox you have to complete a change of address form.
Me: But my address didn’t change. My mailbox just moved to the right approximately two inches. There are four connected mailboxes on the front porch of the house. My mailbox used to be the third one, now it is the fourth.
Stupid Man: Did you put your name on the mailbox?
Me: Yes
Stupid Man: Well the carrier probably killed your mail.
Me: Killed? What?
Stupid Man: Yeah, he would have held it for ten days and then killed it.
Me: Why would he do that? Can’t he read my name on the mailbox, it only moved a few inches … I don’t think he could have missed it!
Stupid Man: Well if you aren’t getting any mail, it’s gone.
Me: Well where did it go? Did it get sent back to the sender or is it at the Post Office?
Stupid Man: No, he killed it ma’am, it’s gone.
Me: He threw it away?
Stupid Man; Yes ma’am, if it was more than ten days old, he trashed it.
Me: Why??!!
Stupid Man: We don’t keep mail at our facility, unless you request for us to hold the mail, and you have to fill out a form for that.
Me: Umm ok, well I didn’t request anything, I just want my mail delivered to my mailbox like normal!
Stupid Man: Ok, I’ll tell him that you’re still around and to deliver your mail.
Me: I was never ‘not around’
Stupid Man: Well maybe nobody has been sending you anything.
Me: Ok, whatever … click
God, people are morons. I understand that there are a lot of people who move and don’t leave forwarding addresses, and the Post Office can’t store old mail forever, but come on … my name is on the mailbox and it is in plain sight! I am here, damn stupid people. And what does ‘killing the mail’ mean? That is not very professional and it sounds stupid. Ughh.
I agree, I have multiple very annoying run-ins with the Oakland post office employees. I understand that they probably deal with a lot of annoying students, but their customer service just stinks.
One day I was there trying to deliver a package, and a girl came in saying that she had put a hold on her mail while she had gone home for winter break but that she hadn’t received any mail for like a month since she got back. They asked her if she submitted a real hold or if she just “wrote it on a post-it and stuck it to the mailbox” or something like that. She was like, uh I filled out a form here and handed it to you. So they went “to the back” (where I am convinced is just an open bar and maybe some dirty magazines) and came out and told her they had no record of her ever submitting a hold and told her to try back tomorrow. WTF? I saw another similar situation with a guy who lost the key or combo or something to his PO Box and they refused to help him.
Whenever we first moved into this apartment, the mailman put some kind of form in our mailbox that asked for our names and address, so I filled it out and put it back in the mailbox. It stayed there for about 2 days, then on the 3rd day it was gone. Then another blank one came back. WTF? So I filled it out again, and about a week went by and we never got any mail. So one day I just wrote a note to the mailman saying that we hadn’t received any mail for awhile and that we lived there. That afternoon, he put a giant pile of mail in front of our apartment door with a note that said “Sorry, I didn’t know anyone lived here.” So who do you think all that new mail was for and who filled out that form?!
At least that resolved the situation – I had tried calling the post office too before that, and they just said they would submit a ticket or something and they were supposed to call me back and never did. So maybe you should just write a note to the mailman and stick it on the mailboxes.
I HATE THE USPS.
Last year, if you remember my rant, the USPS decided to deliver stuff on Sunday the week before Christmas, and of course assholes live in Oakland and USPS just randomly throws your packages on the ground somewhere near your apartment. Anyways, my Amazon package with USPS tracking was confirmed to be delivered and was nowhere to be found. WTF? If I would have known that USPS was going to have special Sunday delivery I might have looked for my stuff. Instead it sat outside all day until some asshole stole it. Luckily Amazon replaced my order for free and I got it before Christmas, but still … now I have everything worth more than two cents delivered to me at work. Maybe I’ll just change my mailing address to work. At least they bring the mail inside and someone puts it in my mailbox.
It isn’t just the Oakland PO. Our mail comes through East Liberty, or at least theoretically. Days and days go by and we get no mail. I could accept that maybe no one was sending us anything, except that when we do get mail after days of getting none, it is clearly like three days worth of mail. It barely fits in the box!
Contributing to my certainty that our mailperson is just deciding to not deliver is that when we do get mail, it doesn’t come until like 5:00pm. Here’s my imagined scenario:
Mailperson: “Hmm, my shift ends in five minutes. But I still have three streets left to deliver. Oh well.”
Me: “Gosh, I wonder where that bill I really really have to pay could be?”
I’ve been told we’re the last street in our zip code and that the next street up is another zip and hence another route. But I’m also aware that my street is an alley with like four houses on it and easily overlooked when, say, it’s quittin’ time and the choice is my mailbox or Happy Hour.