Postal oops

If you've been reading this blog for long, you know that I've had several kind words for the U.S. Postal Service. At least in our area, they seem to be a government agency that really tries to serve the people. I know I was very please recently as I was able to place a hold on my mail through the Internet and the release slip that I printed from their web site allowed me to pick up the mail without a hassle.

So I found this most recent incident rather puzzling. I picked up the mail a couple of days ago and found this slip in our mailbox (you can click on it to get a larger view). At that time it didn't have the quarter taped to it nor the writing on the right side in red. It simply indicated there was a piece of mail for me with 24 cents postage due and I could pick it up or they could redeliver. Picking it up at the post office for 24 cents made sense but I didn't know when it would be convenient to stop by for that purpose. On the other hand, I couldn't imagine how "redelivery" was going to work unless they were going to knock on our door. Wanting to save the carrier that trouble, I taped a quarter to the slip and dropped it in the outgoing mail slot of our mailbox cluster.

I thought I'd either get the delinquent postage mail or another note saying they don't take quarters taped to messages. Instead I get the slip back, quarter still in place, with the message in red saying: "We couldn't find this piece of mail. I'll keep an eye out for it. Hopefully it will show up soon. Mail Carrier"

I guess that'll be a lesson for me!