Dom recently made several expensive purchases for his little hobby that were set to arrive a week back. He was eagerly looking forward to unboxing those items and taking pictures of them. He got an email while at school that his package was safely delivered to our residence. So imagine his shock when he didn't see a package when he got home. Of course he asked me if there were any deliveries and I said there weren't.
We have a problem where the street numbers for our blocks all match the same digits with a street name that starts with the same letter. We'll call that letter T. So we live at 555 Thomas Lane, the next street over there's a 555 Theodore Lane, the next street after that it's 555 Teddy Lane. You get the picture! Combine the closely named streets with an ever revolving cast of postal workers and you have a case of mistaken landings. There were times when we got mail and packages from 555 Teddy Lane and times when 555 Teddy Lane got our packages. I honestly feel there may have been times when the deliverer realizes the error but due to time constraints they're like fuck it, the recipients will sort it out.
So Dom made me go to 555 Theodore Lane and 555 Teddy Lane to see if his package landed there. It's harder for him to move around efficiently these days so it's easier to send me. I wasn't thrilled about doing it but you do things when you're in a relationship. So neither of our neighbors had the package. So having spent an obscene amount of money, Dom was upset wondering where it could be.
The next day he went to our local post office. The person working there told him there was nothing she could do and that he would have to go to a larger branch for assistance. He posted a rant message on our local Facebook page asking for help in whereabouts. I of course told him that I wished he didn't insult the postal workers in the process since the very people that read the message may very well be related to a postal worker or is an actual worker. But of course Dom didn't care. We had that discussion before on our differences to approaching situations and how we mirrored my parents so won't mention it again...LOL.
In the end after he went to the larger branch, they confirmed that the package had the wrong address and it actually went to someone at 505 Thomas Lane. Guess who had to go pick it up? Apparently the home isn't occupied but thankfully the package was still there, slightly weathered of course. I was glad things had a happy ending this time. He's in the process of resolving the issue with the sender having the wrong address.
But I couldn't help but wonder if we didn't have a revolving cast of postal workers and had a regular person working the route, like we used to have, the story would've taken a different turn. Someone who was familiar with the route may have looked at the name and say "Dom lives at 555 not 505. I believe the package should go there." Then that person would likely ring our doorbell and verify that the package belonged to our household. Also a regular person may think there's never any mail delivered at 505, what is going on?
Having different postal workers every other day, I wouldn't expect them to remember the nuances like people's name. They just read what's on the address and place it there. So they weren't totally distracted on their phones like Dom complained about in this case. Well they probably were but they only were delivering at the address that was printed on the label. And thank goodness the mislabel was an actual address. On our block there's a 505, 525, and 555 but nothing between. What if the label said 515 or worse 155. Where would the package have gone? Thankfully for me the place was only six houses away and thankfully no one stole the package.
Another thing about not having a regular postal worker is who would I give the holiday tip to. I remember I used to tip my postal worker at my old house around the holiday time and I may have done it once at our current home when we used to have a regular worker. But with the revolving line of credit, you wind up tipping whoever is lucky to show up that day and the others get stiffed. It is a shame how things change and not always for the better.
