Something Stinks To High Heaven At The Dead Mouse Smelling Post Office

Perhaps you recall the saga presented two weeks ago concerning the loss of the weekly letters I mail to the #1 son and The Pony. While #1 received his letter the following Monday, three business days later than normal, even accounting for the Columbus Day holiday...The Pony STILL has not gotten his letter. The letter containing a check for his monthly expenses.

I held off as long as I could. Both boys are used to getting their expense money on the 15th. I hold them to it, because in the real world, a boss is not going to pay you early if you blow through your paycheck too soon, or an emergency comes up. Learn to live with a cushion, so you can weather the rough economic seas.

The Pony said he was fine for money. That we could wait and see if the letter showed up. When it wasn't there by October 21st, I did a mobile deposit to The Pony's credit union account at college. I had to drive to town to get a good enough telephone signal, and make sure I had glasses to read my phone screen, and took two tries to get a good enough photo...but I got it done. Not as conveniently as dropping a check in the mail for The Pony to deal with, as has worked in the past. But there was no great hardship on The Pony's financial well-being.

As of this morning, The Pony STILL had not received that letter, even though he has gotten two others that are newer. When I looked up the policy on lost mail from the USPS online, it said you can file a lost mail form, even for regular mail that is not certified or insured. BUT you have to set up an account and give your email and jump through many hoops, and it wants to know the size and how the mail was addressed, etc. I figured they pay people a salary (and good benefits!) to do that job, so I went to the dead mouse smelling post office in person this morning.

As you might imagine, that was a wasted trip, fraught with tomfoolery.

The old lady in front of me had just finished complaining about lost mail, I think. She was a nice old lady, wondering where in the world it could be, and worried that her daughter might not get it, or that it would be damaged. To further exhibit the niceness of this old lady, the object lost in the mail that she had sent to her daughter was a prayer book. Uh huh. So it's not like this old lady was a-cussin' the postal clerk and a-rippin' her a new excrement exit. She was being quite polite, voicing her worries, not pointing blame, simply wanting her daughter to receive her prayer book.

Postal Clerk was not the middle-aged lady I regularly deal with, who had a couple of kids who attended Newmentia under my tutelage. The one I had seen picking up the mail from the box early one day last week. Nope. This clerk was early-middle-aged, with a fried perm that wasn't bleached blond, but was bleached lighter than brown. A brassy color. And a tan from a bed, or out of a bottle, with that orange tint to her skin. She rushed that old lady out of there before she was finished talking. Sometimes, you know, it's more about what people NEED to say than what they are actually saying. The old lady was obviously thinking about her daughter, and wanted everything to be okay.

Postal Clerk brushed old lady aside by turning to me (waiting patiently behind, because where do I have to be, anyway) and asking how she could help me.

"I'd like to buy two books of stamps, and then I have a missing mail issue."

Postal Clerk foisted some stamps on me, but that part of the tale will be told elsewhere. Then she asked what my problem was with the mail. I had an envelope addressed to The Pony, in my regular writing, which, those of you who have seen it know, is the antithesis of sloppy. It's block letters. All caps. Neat. Legible.

"It was a letter to my son that I mailed at the box out there on Monday, October 10. I know it was Columbus Day, and the mail didn't go out until Tuesday. But I put it in the mailbox. It has been 12 business days, and my son has not received his letter. It's important, because there was a check folded up in the letter for his college expenses."

"Oh, we don't have any way to check mail dropped in the box. Sorry."

"So...there's no way to see the last place it was scanned?"

"No. Probably somebody else in your son's dorm got it. A different room. Maybe they'll give it to him. Or it might arrive any day now. If it couldn't be delivered, you would have gotten it back, because the return address is clear."

How quick she was to deny responsibility and lay it at the feet of a lowly college student! That federal wench must take me for a complete idiot. A complete idiot who does not have access to the innernets. Seems one in her position could at least tell me about the process listed here and here, under What Options Exist for Late, Lost, or No Delivery of Mail? .

It's a good thing the dead mouse smelling post office didn't have a suggestion box on the counter.