First off, I've been in this town my whole life and we've traditionally had the most wonderful, friendliest post masters at our small town post office that made going in there a pleasure. Still today, there are two gentleman that work at the post office front desk that are are friendly and kind as can be. But the postmaster is an ASS and he is not representative of our town and needs to go.
First off, at best, the guy has NO customer service skills. You know what helps? A smile! He is grumpy, short and just shy of rude in just a regular non-confrontational exchange.
Okay, fine....it can't be an easy job. I'll give him a pass. But then we've had an issue (ongoing one) with our new delivery driver. Our new driver apparently is scared of our dogs (this is a rural community, we're a farm, we have dogs a lot of places do around here) and so apparently she won't deliver packages to our houses (two on our property) because of that. Nevermind these are the same dogs we've had for years, our other driver never had an issue and we get often MULTIPLE UPS and FedEX deliveries every day no problem. But okay, fine, we are typically outside (again working farm) and if the driver comes up and honks most likely somebody will see her and even greet her on the way up. And the dogs often aren't around either. I'd be happy to introduce her to the dogs and have a friendly chat about our place, but she hasn't attempted to engage at all (unlike our previous drivers especially Mary, we had her for years. She was a delight.).
Well yesterday, I was standing in my yard outside my house walking to my vehicle. When the driver drove down the road toward our place she should have even been able to SEE me. Both dogs were locked up. There was ANOTHER farm employee driving down our lane up to the other house. Well I needed to run an errand, so I jumped into my truck and I saw the lady backing up into our driveway and turning around (we are the last stop on our route so she turns around in our driveway and goes back down the road the way she came). So she apparently delivered the mail to our box at end of driveway, per usual and left.
Well then, 15 minutes later, my employee gets an email from the company she ordered a package from (and had been waiting desperately) that it couldn't be delivered because "it would have to be left untended" and it was at the post office and re-delivery would be attempted tomorrow. It was too big for the mailbox and so the driver wouldn't come down our lane.
What??? I was like LITERALLY 100 YARDS down the lane. She should have been able to SEE ME when she drove up the road. There was another person driving around in our farmyard. The driver DIDN'T EVEN ATTEMPT to see if anybody was home. And she certainly didn't know if our dogs were out or not because she didn't drive up to find out.
Okay, so we're irritated. I go stand in a 20 minute Christmas line, and I pick up the package and I ask to talk the postmaster and make a complaint. He immediately becomes defensive and a jerk. He starts going off about the dogs again despite me repeatedly telling him SHE DIDN'T EVEN COME DOWN THE LANE to know whether the dogs were out or not! Then he says "well she would have to back out of your driveway?" WHAT? No! We have multiple turn arounds and even a "circle" you can turn around. We get large semi truck deliveries down our driveway, we can handle a little mail delivery truck!
I give up and leave, meanwhile my employee goes down then a bit later (she hadn't got the message I had her package lol). And she gets the same asshole stuff from the postmaster again. Only now he is going off about our dogs, "it only takes one" and "I don't want to have somebody's dog put down." Well, listen, if somebody's dog bites your delivery driver and has to be put down, that's on the owner NOT the post office. And hey, if the lady driver is scared, fair enough, she can just drive up and honk and if nobody around and the dogs are out, take the package back. It's not like the dogs are gonna like Kujo leap through her window to take her out. Oh, and btw, our dogs LOVE all the delivery drivers. Why? Because they think they all have TREATS! So if they are out, and a driver comes up, yep they run up and sit their looking hopefully for a treat.
But in all this, it is this jerk's dismissive, arrogant, aggressive attitude that really pisses me off. We're a small, rural, country town. Our post office has often been a place where "you meet your neighbors and have a chat." This guy ruins that. I can't imagine what it's like working for him. Although, in his defense, I would imagine that if he was ever a mail driver he did really have a problem with dogs on his route. The dogs know a jerk when they see them. read more