As of recent there has been a small battle going on between this post office and my place of…read moreresidence. We are actually nearing the two year mark from when this started. And it is at the breaking point.
Living on the outskirts of Johnstown you have your mail delivered, that includes packages. If packages cannot fit in your mailbox they are usually brought to your front door. Usually. Not quite sure what happened almost two years ago, but that abruptly stopped for us. Instead of receiving our packages we started to receive slips stating that the package could not be delivered. Most slips indicating that the package was too big for the receptacle or there was not a secure location for the package.
The first few times were forgiven and not considered to be an inconvenience to us. However, as the months drug on and the slips continued to arrive in the mailbox instead of the packages our patience began to run thin. We first filed a complaint and were told that it would be looked into. As it continued there were no answers. Not even a call to let us know what the problem was. More complaints followed from several different people of the inconvenience. We were basically told the same thing each time, that it will be looked into and we would be let known what the outcome would be.
With the past holiday season and online ordering in full effect, we started to notice something. That it had to be our particular mailman that had a problem doing his job and possibly bordered on discrimination. Let me delve further into this for you all. I am going to diverge a bit and then come back to this. Due to my work schedule I am home every single day when the mail is delivered to our place. I hear the mail truck make its way down our road and most times watch it as it does. Stopping at each mailbox on the way. I had thought maybe there was a change in how items were delivered, but it did not appear to the be case. One day I was outside as the mailman proceeded to make his deliveries and I watched as he delivered to a mailbox and then pulled into that driveway, went down and up the winding gravel path in the mail truck, deliver the package, turn around, and proceed back up the driveway. Knowing that this was something special I decided to take a video of this, showing that packages can indeed still be delivered directly to your door from the US Postal Service.
To add to that, with the holiday season, USPS sometimes steps in and delivers packages on Sunday. On a Sunday not too long ago, a mail truck larger than the usual made a delivery right to our door. I also want to point out that if a letter or any item is delivered to the door that has to be signed for the regular mailman is able to come to the door as well. You are probably wondering why I am telling you all this, well it is because of the reasoning we received as to why packages are not ever delivered to us. They told us that the mailman has labelled our property as unsafe and, I am quoting, "it's a junkyard."
On the multiple trips to the post office to pick up these packages that were "undeliverable," and after multiple complaints, we decided to lodge a complaint one more time.
We arrived at the counter of the post office and handed over yet another slip for a package, once we had the package in hand we asked to speak to a supervisor. We waited and when the "supervisor" appeared we began. Let me tell you that we were never given a name of the "supervisor," the "supervisor" looked as if he was being bothered, and you could see he was visible shaking during our interaction. We go through the very familiar steps of lodging our complaint, the "supervisor" then states, "I'm very familiar with this address, the driver says it's unsafe and that it's a junkyard up there."
Close to losing my patience I inform the man that it's a bit discriminatory for this mailman to pick and choose which houses he delivers to, it's also a bit lazy. If it is so unsafe in our "junkyard" how can three, sometimes four, vehicles park, turn around, and navigate our driveway that is similar to our neighbors? How can FedEx, UPS, the oil company with their tanker, among many others be able to do the same? Most importantly, how are the mailman's coworkers able to do the same thing, the one thing that he claims he cannot do? If our "junkyard" is unsafe for him there should probably be some type of memo or file on our "junkyard" letting all employees of the USPS Johnstown to not deliver to our property. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
Unfortunately there is really nothing we can do about this. We lodge our complaint, talk to a supervisor, we are given a name of someone up the chain email wise, and then nothing ever happens. The mail is the mail, right? 'Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,' unless it's an inconvenience for the mailman.
