Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
-- U.S. Postal Service creed
You got email/fax/UPS/FedEx/Amazon/Paypal/CashApp/online accounts? Hey, we'll show you how much you still need us, [insert plural version of rude name here]!
-- That "other" postal service creed
I've concluded that the U.S. Postal Service is in possession of its own planet Mercury, and that its Mercury is in perpetual retrograde.
As those into astrology know, Mercury goes into retrograde (or rather appears, to us Earthlings, to go backward in its orbit) several times a year, several weeks at a time. This phenomenon supposedly causes a bunch of first-world Earthling problems ... bad communications and purchases, technical mishaps, travel and transportation mishaps. One of the perceived results listed in a farmersalmanac.com article about Mercury being in retrograde: lost mail.
Hubby and I aren't so old that we want to show up to pay our bills in person using money orders ... but, we're old enough for the postal service to remain important to us. Dre, a full-time freelance writer, is definitely an old guy when it comes to getting mail. If it doesn't arrive when it's supposed to, there's no end to his fretting. If the missing mail contains a check from a client or a copy of a book on which he's writing a review, multiply that distress times 10.
We've always had occasional problems with mail. Since we've moved, however, we've had Twilight-Zone-worthy mail issues that might make Ben Franklin, the country's first postmaster general, make a rotation or two in his crypt. Yep, there was a book or two that failed to arrive. Yep, there was a missing package that, after I sounded the alarm, turned out to have gone in the box of a neighbor who was apparently out of town when it arrived.
But then came the "forward-not forward" incidents. Just a couple:
• Mail forwarding apparently ends after, like, two weeks nowadays. We moved in mid-September. In January, a freelance paycheck mailed to Dre failed to arrive. It turned out that the client's accounting department sent the check to our former address. The check was never forwarded so a new one had to be drawn up. And we have the uncomfortable feeling that we're missing an income tax-related document or two.
• We did recently get a couple pieces of forwarded mail -- one, a notice from our bank; the other, a notice from our insurance company. Both correspondences bore 2018 dates. We figure that Dre's missing freelance check will show up circa June 2021.
• Then there was the Case of the Wayward Tickets. These were tickets I was supposed to get for a Feb. 2 fundraiser I had to cover for the newspaper, wearing my High Profile hat. My contact person said she'd sent the tickets, but they did not materialize. We finally agreed that I would just show up ticketless and give my name to the event gatekeepers. I forgot all about the missing paper tickets. Until Valentine's Day that is. That's when what I thought was a thank-you note from the event organizers turned out to be the tickets. "Good grief! I mailed those a month ago!" the sender wrote when I emailed her about the very late arrival. (The envelope had been postmarked Jan. 21.) "Sheesh! They've done some wonky stuff with several things we've mailed lately."
I can't help but compare the tickets' journey to that of the ancient Israelites in the Old Testament, wandering 40 years in the wilderness in a trip that should have taken only a few days. Also can't help but think about that old TV commercial the Post Office ran during my youth. The one with the group of people portraying letters that had ended up in the "no ZIP sorting bin" because their sendee addresses lacked ZIP codes. Down the chute into the bin came this new, young letter-dude who wanted to know where he'd landed. "Kid, you're where all letters without ZIP codes end up ... the bin," the spokesman for the group informed him. "Oh, there's gotta be some mistake. I was just going across town," Young Letter-Dude protested. "He was just going across town. Can you imagine that?" the spokesman taunted, with all the other letters joining in. Time for an update: a commercial featuring a meticulously addressed Letter-Dude who ends up in a forsaken receptacle anyway and says: "Oh, there's gotta be some mistake. My destination is clearly and completely indicated." The mocking response from the fellow bin occupants: "Ha, clearly and completely indicated. And he thought he'd get to his destination!"
From what I've seen online, it's all a sign of the times: From the point of view of grumbling consumers: mail service faltering all over the place. From postal workers' point of view: More to do, fewer folk to do it, technological changes adding gas to the fire. And, according to a December story at Fortune.com, privatization (yikes!) of the postal service is being discussed.
Mercury may not really be going backward, but some of us codgers can't help but wish, at least briefly, to go backward ... to the days when getting mail didn't involve a trip to the fifth dimension.
Email:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 02/23/2020