So anyway, it’s now FIVE weeks of me unable to get mail forwarded to my new address. (Part One of this saga is here)

Mail keeps getting delivered to my old address. But for the most part just random stuff. Catalogs and junk mail.

Here’s a Top Ten Breakdown of what’s been going on:

1. When I showed up to talk to “Karen” she wasn’t working that day — so I demanded to talk to a supervisor. I was told that the supervisors were upstairs and they never come downstairs. I asked if I could go upstairs and was told nobody is allowed upstairs. I was told I could call upstairs and was given a number. I stood there in the Post Office calling “upstairs” on my cell. Nobody picked up. I was then told not to be surprised because the supervisors “don’t like picking up the phone”.

2. I headed home and called the USPS main 800 number and went through a whole system until I found a guy to complain to about my local post office. He told me he had a number that I could call to ‘definitely fix the situation’. He gave me the same number that I called earlier that never picked up. He said the next step was for me to write an actual physical letter to some USPS Consumer Advocate. I asked if there was an email address or phone number. He said, ‘They’re not set up for that.’

3. When Karen finally called back she asked me if everything has been resolved. I told her nothing has been resolved. She asked me if I was still living at my old address. I told her I was living at my new address. She asked me if I had full access to my new address. I told her I did because I live in it. She told me to hold on. She got back and asked if my old address was my new address. I told her my new address is my new address my old address is my old address. I don’t live at my old address anymore. I live at my new address. That’s why I go with the ‘new’ and ‘old’ labels.

4. I told Karen that I didn’t mind the idea that all my mail was gone forever. I just needed to make peace with it and start from scratch as if I was launched into Witness Protection or something. She told me not ALL my mail is gone forever. Only the mail prior to July 15 is definitely gone forever. I asked if gone forever meant it was returned to the sender or what. She said, ‘The mail before July 15th has “left the universe”. It was the clearest answer I got on anything thus far.

5. Karen told me she was going to mail out test letters to my old address to see where they end up and we’d go from there. She told me she’d mail them to my new address. I told her she should mail them to the old address as that makes more sense.

6. I decided to take matters in my own hands and ask my local mail carrier in person about my mail. I stopped a guy on the street who was half dressed in a postal outfit/half dressed normal about my mail situation. He told me he wasn’t my regular carrier but he’d check into it. He wrote my name down on the back of someone’s mail then put that letter back in with all the other mail.

7. I asked a guy around the corner who was sitting in a mail truck eating lunch if he could help me. He seemed annoyed that I disturbed his lunch. He told me he only delivers packages and I need to talk to “Karen”. He kept taking big bites of his sandwich and I’d have to wait for him to swallow and take a sip of soda before he’d respond. That was fun.

8. A friend of mine took my old apartment so I head back now and then to pick up old mail still getting through. The other day I found the test letters that Karen sent out. They were not forwarded. I called the post office again and I was told they would escalate this problem to the supervisors. I was like, Wait.. I haven’t gotten my mail in a month– this is still un-escalated?!

9. All in all, I’ve actually been very nice to everyone. And the people I talk to have been nice to me. They’re working in this terrible system. I’m just a tourist. If they have this (photo below) on the wall I’m sure there’s thousands of things all over the place that are equally screwed up because the post office has no money or proper organization.

10. Anyway, heading into week 6 of no forwarded mail. We’ll see. (BTW— The friend of mine who moved into my old place is starting to wonder about his mail too. He just went through week one with no mail forwarded.)

ok bye!

tOdd

PS. here are reviews for my local post office on yelp. (I really do feel for the people that work there. It has the feeling of an abandoned outpost)… Anyway, a bunch of yelp posts are more entertaining than what I wrote here. I’m not alone

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