People talk shit about everything. Go on yelp and there is usually no shortage of bad reviews about every business under the sun. Well for most of my life the USPS has actually done a pretty decent job. I’ve very rarely ever had problems with sending or receiving mail.

However in the past three weeks I’ve experienced quite a few problems with the USPS. I don’t know if this is a temporary set back because of internal changes, or if it’s always been shitty and I somehow managed to skate by without any problems all this time.

Returned Mail

In the past week alone, I have had five separate people tell me that mail they sent to me was returned back to them. In each case the the sender emailed me a photo of the returned mail and I was able to verify that they had my name/business name correct, and my mailing address correct, along with proper postage.  FIVE times.

Black Hole Mail

About two weeks ago I placed two orders from the same online vendor within 3 days of each other. The vendor confirmed both orders had been shipped out.

I got one delivered on Monday, September 19.

It has now been a week, and the second package is not yet here. It is entered the USPS black hole of mail.

Torn Open Mail

In the past month, I have had three separate pieces of mail that were torn open. Not open, like as if my the hands of another person rifling through my mail. I mean TORN open as if by a machine, maybe one of their processing machines.

One of them looks like the envelop was run through a paper shredder and then saved at the last minute. The envelop and the contents of the envelop were torn in half. The USPS had to repackage the envelop and contents within a plastic pouch. One of the ‘packages’ had shreds of the document mailed to me, as well as pieces of a personal check that was not intended for me – meaning someone else’ mail also got torn in half, and not knowing which documents/pieces of documents went to who, the USPS gave me someone  else’ check.

The check was unreadable so I cannot ascertain who was supposed to have received it, but someone else out there got half a check they won’t be able to deposit.

Employees that barely speak English

The icing on the cake today was that I came to the office and had three voicemails/emails from over the weekend from various people concerned about the undelivered mail they got bounced back to them.

1 times a fluke, and maybe even 2, but 5 times in about a week is a fucking epidemic. So I called the USPS to bring the issue up. I requested the call back service as opposed to waiting on hold for 45 minutes like the queue said it would be.

To their credit I did get a call back within about an hour, but the laughable aspect of it was that the employee clearly didn’t speak English very well. We are a country of immigrants and English is understandably not everyone’s first language. But it does seem prudent to me that the USPS and other government agencies would hire people who speak the de facto official language of the country.

Go home USPS, you’re drunk.