I quickly took this photo this morning, not realizing until I took it that we’re coming up on the fourth anniversary of Scout’s passing. I know because it was less than four months after I lost my dad.
Can’t go there right now. I just read the post I wrote the day after Scout died and was in tears.
Let’s see. What’s new? Not a whole lot, though today and tomorrow, I have Skype coaching sessions with the cast of Jane Eyre. Fingers crossed that we have a good connection! Most of the afternoon today will be devoted to checking in with the actors. Next week, I drive back to Hartford for the day to watch a run-through. The following week, I go back for one night to watch a preview and give notes the next day. And then I’m done.
I’m reading The Night Circus, which I find utterly fascinating. It’s very different than my usual fare and I’m enjoying the change of pace.
I had to call our local post office and complain about one of the carriers yesterday and I never like doing that. Our main carrier is wonderful. The guy who substitutes for her is nice, as well. He always delivers the mail on Monday. I was expecting a priority mail package yesterday. I took note of the time he delivered mail across the street and quickly calculated that he’d be coming by our house in 2 or 2 1/2 hours. I told Don that I was going to be on stand-by around that time because I knew the box was too big for our mailbox and for some reason, I didn’t trust that this particular carrier would deliver it. Sure enough, when he approached our mailbox, he put envelopes in our mail box and started to drive on. I ran outside and sprinted toward his truck. He had just finished putting mail in our neighbor’s box and was starting to drive away. I was shouting loudly (all that voice training pays off) and he heard me and stopped, pulling up in our neighbor’s driveway. When I asked him if he had a package for me, he pulled it out of the truck, saying that he was wary of driving up our driveway. There’s no snow. No ice. The driveway was totally clear. It’s just a gentle slope. And he’s done it before. I assured him he could drive up there, turn around at the top and go back down quite easily. He thanked me for stopping him and I moved on. I would have let it go at that point, but when I went to the mailbox to get the rest of the mail, I discovered that he hadn’t even left a yellow slip saying that he had attempted delivery. That’s what did it for me. How would I have known what happened to the package? And it had a tracking number on it, so it was clearly supposed to be delivered that day.
I called the post office and explained the whole thing, making sure to say that he’s a nice guy and please don’t be too hard on him, but really…that was ridiculous. Our usual mail carrier will often pull up to the box, tap on the horn, and wait for me to emerge from the house. Or, if we’re not there, she’ll pull up in the driveway and leave the package on the porch. I told the supervisor that we’re semi-retired and there’s almost always someone here.
Anyway, the supervisor was kind and understanding and assured me he’d be gentle with the carrier. Gosh, I hate complaining about anyone.
Sigh.
It’s not like we live on top of a mountain, although it feels that way sometimes when we’re shoveling snow!
Okay. Hopefully, that won’t happen again.
Happy Tuesday.
oh, that sweet scout face.
and that bitter having-to-miss-someone-until-you’re-reunited feeling.
hope the sweet outweighs the bitter, today and every day. glad you’ve got an interesting book and “jane eyre” work and don.
………
good for you to make that call. i’ve done the same thing and i stressed the words “i’m not looking for anyone to lose their job, but …”. not very often and not with enjoyment, but some things just warrant making a call. i am far (very, v-e-r-y far) from perfect and i want someone to tell me if i am not doing something right, then give me a chance to make it better! hopefully that happens with your mail carrier.
happy tuesday!
kathy in iowa
Hopefully! Thanks, Kathy.
You should complain. He was obviously being lazy and leaving it for the carrier tomorrow.
If people never get criticism they never learn to do things correctly.
True! Thanks, Kay!
I hate complaining for things like that too, but sometimes you just have to. It isn’t responsible. And sometimes that delivery date is essential for any number of reasons. Sounds like you were a nice caller and I hope they are effective but not mean with him. You weren’t!
I love seeing peoples’ bookshelves. I always see familiar favorites and new things too.
I’m sorry this is a rough week for you with Scout. My rough week is in mid-May. I get it.
Thanks for understanding, Jeanie.
I remember that post on sweet Scout. So many of us have been through that process too many times. So hard.
We have been having mail issues, too! Our regular carrier has been off for 2.5 weeks. 2 of the days we received mail after 7 PM. The remainder of the days it has been between 4-5 PM. Yesterday my husband said on his way home from school he passed our temp and she was walking down the street with the mail puffing on one of those e-cigarette things. He said she looked like a steam train. I hope you did receive your package!
Have a nice remainder of the day. Enjoy your coaching, and hope your connections are good ones!!
I did receive the package but not until I sprinted from our kitchen door, across the lawn, and to our neighbor’s mailbox. I’m getting too old for this!
He tends to deliver the mail much later than our regular carrier, but I think carriers can make their own schedules – at least around here. Although I don’t like walking down to our mailbox in the dark – there are no streetlights around here! Thanks, Chris.
He “thanked you for stopping him” and I doubt he will make the same error with you again. Still, you had to complain to his superiors……
How can you know what damage has recently happened to a postal truck that may have created an uproar behind the scenes ? How can you know what is happening to him today with his superiors.
Do you actually believe they would tell you if they were going to demote him or fire him ?
I know a top level postal supervisor in one of the major control centers and it is not a sweet little shop environment. They have enormous pressure on every tier of that enterprise.
My husband saves lives for a living and his own life is on the line right now. One of the biggest
medical facilities in the world is awaiting the disc of his CAT Scan. Yet, if by chance, a human
being makes a mistake and does not produce the disc in the timeframe that “I” would prefer I still will not treat that person in such a manner that might cause them to lose their job especially if they’ve shown true character in their response. There is so much
more to life than that one precise moment we’re experiencing or feeling inconvenienced. At times we need to search our souls and ask if it’s truly right to add insult to injury. Forgiveness is such a beautiful gift we have within our grasp if we just reach.
We are in a very small town of 3000 people. We don’t have the pressures of an urban environment. They are kind people and no one is going to demote him. They like him and are happy with him. He will not be demoted or fired.
You, on the other hand, are overreacting. If you honestly think I would be cruel in my complaints or not express my concern that this be handled gently, you obviously don’t read this blog regularly, nor have you read this post accurately. I wasn’t complaining about not leaving the package, I was complaining about not leaving a notification, something I didn’t discover until after I had spoken to him.
I do have a right to complain. I rarely do.
I’m sorry to hear of your husband’s illness. I pray he is healed and is well. xo
We had a cat that we lost over 25 years ago. I can’t remember the exact year. I still miss him so much. It is like losing a member of the family. From the first day he loved our handicapped daughter, and protected me from big dogs, and came when I whistled.
I think we never stop missing our beloved pets, Jane. He sounds like an extraordinary being, Jane. xo
When our mail stopped being deliver by Aust. Post employees and contractors were engaged, it was the practice of many contractors to slip a card into the mail box rather than walk the few steps into the property to knock on the front door. The assumption that no one was home meant that many of us then had to make a trip to the mail centre the next day to collect small parcels that needed a signature for collection. It was because we complained that we had been at home waiting for the delivery that the practice changed. Complaints are a necessary part of any service. Only through this feedback will services change, otherwise it is assumed that the practice is acceptable.
I agree. He wasn’t doing his job and that is unacceptable.
Interestingly, both of our cars were parked at the top of the driveway, so it was obvious that we were home.
Thanks, Miche!
Yeah, when I lived at my other house, which was the little cottage…not upslope like yours but, rather, downslope from the street and mailbox…I was expecting a package (guaranteed) that day for delivery, I watched from the house for the mail truck, he hesitated and slipped something in the box and drove off. I exited the house and walked up to the street and he’d left the note saying he had a package he couldn’t deliver, which was just bullstuff. It wasn’t anything huge, just too big for the mailbox. He clearly/simply didn’t want to get out of his truck on a Saturday, trying to finish his route early no doubt; couldn’t be bothered to walk down a short flight of brick steps to my front door. Like your situation, wasn’t our ‘regular’ person who conversely would go out of his way to even ‘hide’ my packages if I wasn’t home. (I still see him occasionally and tell him he was the best USPS delivery person/letter carrier we ever had!) Anyway, I was steamed and, when I picked up the parcel on Monday at my local post office, I complained to the counter person (with whom I was fairly well acquainted) and she said, “A few of them have done that sometimes; I’m sorry.” ‘By & large’ my experiences with my local post office, however, are very good. I was just there today and one of the clerks I knew saw me passing thru to the exit door and said, “Vicki, hold up, I just got a package for you!” Totally stopped what she was doing to help. Small town, long-time clerks; great can-do service. I took ’em cookies at Christmas!
Condolences with Scout. I’ll always remember her as our Snow Princess, thinking of her as ‘ours’ here on the blog because you shared her with us and she was so beautiful and good and dear. My husband and I often think of our many dogs (and cats) over the past thirty years, wondering if there was anything else we could have done to make their endings different (second-guessing and ‘the past’ being something pointless to hash over [we had several special-needs pets and it could be challenging medically]) but, overall of course, recalling all the happy times, their sweet & quirky personalities and so much love they gave to us, our loyal canine/feline companions.
Preparing here for Santa Anas to come at daybreak Weds; they could be 60 mph ones this time. It feels unusual, although I can remember the hot/dry ‘East Wind’ on Valentine’s Day of another year. We were warm where I live in SoCalif today, nearly 80 degrees. Yet, we dipped to 39 degrees on Monday night. With such variations in temps, my mom would say, back in the day, it’s enough to give you ‘the bends’.
Congrats by the way of your recent coaching; always good when a freelance job happens which you also enjoy and are good at doing!
Yes, our regular carrier is a gem. She’s just lovely. We’ve had this issue with other subs in the past. They would drive up to the mailbox, decide not to deliver the package – but in those cases, they left a yellow slip. It was just plain lazy, though, and since the mail was delivered late in the day, it meant we had to make a trip to the post office the next day. In all cases, both of us were home.
Thanks for your kind words about my girl, Vicki. We miss her so much.
Good thing you were keeping an eye out for your package. We don’t get home delivery as my husband has kept a PO Box for years in the next town over–it was on his way to work in Hartford so easier for him to get mail there. Nowadays we sometimes find ourselves in a pickle when companies ship via FedEx or UPS without notifying us to our street address (which we try not to give out for the above reason) and packages get lost. It’s quite annoying. In the past few months, around Christmas, two packages went astray, one supposedly dropped off at Walgreens, supposedly a FedEx drop off point, never heard of that, but they didn’t notify us until the day the package was returned. We then got a notice it would be re-sent to us the next day. Yada yada yada–never showed up. I’ve contacted the company several times with no response. They’ve shipped to us before with no problem. Another order from a different company never arrived tho I keep getting emails from them asking me to rate my recent purchase. Sadly, there’s no option of What recent purchase??? I have contacted them as well with no results. This I’m afraid is a harbinger of things to come as our systems break down, but then I have a dystopian outlook from way back but I see it playing out in so many of the new changes in government oversight and relaxed accountability. So far mostly it’s an inconvenience, but I worry about where I’ll get water when the well runs dry or is full of chemicals, what we’ll do about power when the grids are down and we don’t have the solar panels I’ve been bugging my husband about for the last decade, and who will help us decrepit old farts grow beans and corn on our wooded, sloping lot. I know–a jump from undelivered packages and unreturned messages to no water and power so everyone tells me, but it’s the broken window urban breakdown syndrome to me. On that happy note, I hope your mail carrier was correctly chastised. May be a nice guy, but just plain lazy. I feel guilty about complaining but at least we still have our voices. Perhaps I should start reading romances? :-). Hope your day runs smoothly.
Good customer service is rare these days, though thankfully, it still exists. I worry about our well, especially as we are fighting a proposed glamping facility that will suck up more water from the water table. I pray that things change in November and that we can re-establish all those protections that have been lost. Thanks, Nora.