When in doubt, shut them out

The same people who run the restroom facilities in parks and on beaches must be working a second shift with the U.S. Postal Service. Like everyone else whose house was built after 1978 when the Postal Service declared that every new development must have curbside delivery or mailboxes at a central location, we don't get door to door mail delivery. We have to walk half a block to where the postal service has erected a stand-alone cluster of mailboxes and package lockers. Up until very recently we could also deposit our outgoing mail at the same place, knowing that it would get picked up and go out as early as if we had taken it to the post office.

A few days ago, as I reached to deposit a couple of envelopes, this is what I saw. The postal worker had closed off the mail slot! There was no note in our boxes explaining the new arrangement, no sign on the mailbox cluster. We were left to speculate what caused the closure. Like I said, it is like the people who erect restrooms in public places for the convenience of the public then close them down because of some maintenance or abuse problems.

I'm speculating that a neighbor who several months ago lost some outgoing mail (some Netflix DVDs he was returning) complained again so they made sure his outgoing mail wouldn't be stolen from this location again. Problem solved.

Update: A neighbor who is much smarter than I, left a note on the back of the mailbox cluster (the side the postman sees) asking what was up. He received a personal visit from the postman explaining that there had been another alleged theft of outgoing mail so they had indeed blocked that slot. However, the postman suggested that if we had outgoing mail, we simply put it in our own mailboxes and push it as far to the back as possible with the uncanceled stamp closest to the back of the box. This way the postman can see it when he or she opened the back of the cluster and can collect it like he/she used to. Now, why didn't the postman leave a message to that effect for us all.

Update 2: Okay, someone must have nixed that solution so we are once again back to the original configuration with an open slot available for deposited mail. But do I dare use it? Whoever was tampering with the mail may tamper with mine. And the postman may be used to ignoring that slot so he may not pick up my mail. Interesting dilemma.