Mail discussion (split from "Get off my lawn")

[Valka D'Ur]

A side note regarding the mailmen etc. The positioning of mailboxes makes it pointless to walk over anyones's lawn to cut the delivery time. Apart from flats the mailboxes should be reachable by a car so there's no need for the delivery (wo)man to get off from a road and/or parking lot.

This was true when we lived on an acreage and were on a rural route. The mailman had a motor route and our mailbox was by the main road. But your method doesn't work in the city, where the mailbox is attached either to the house beside the front door, or to the front porch. You can't drive across the lawn or sidewalk to get to those mailboxes.

Mind you, unless we get rid of the current federal government and the current CEO of Canada Post, door-to-door mail delivery in Canada will be eliminated.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Skipping the door attached mailboxes happened here ~20 years ago. Some mildly heated conversations back then but it died out very soon though we're not famous for getting very emotional in our protests. People in townhouses etc having to walk few meters to the parking lot where all the mailboxes now are isn't after all that big of a deal for the majority.
The reasons for the change were obviously the general costs and probably like in Canada it was sort of ok in the summer but on winter time unplowed pathways were more than a slight inconvenience.

This is more than walking a few meters. It's coming down to making senior citizens and disabled people travel several blocks to a community mailbox that may or may not be accessible in winter, depending on whether that side of the street gets the windrows that year (and thus any path to the mailbox would be buried under at least a metre of ice and snow that the city doesn't think it has to clear away).

There was a huge argumentdiscussion about this a few weeks ago on the CBC comment pages, and there are a lot of disgustingly heartless people in Canada who think it's just dandy to make an 80-year-old or someone in a wheelchair go several blocks to a community mailbox when they might have to cross busy streets and risk being run over or have an accident due to unsafe roads and sidewalks, make that trip in the hottest part of summer or the coldest part of winter, make the trip only to find that all they have is junk mail, or their mailbox may have been broken into, they could find a card for a parcel that didn't fit in the box - resulting in yet another long trip to the nearest postal outlet that could be miles away... and the list goes on. But they might be willing to deliver to the house IF the resident provides a doctor's note that says he/she cannot physically make it to the community mailbox.

Canada Post is doing this to cut down on paying mail carriers. Period. It's got nothing to do with anything else but gutting an essential service even more than it already has been.

My city has nearly 100,000 people, yet we don't have a main post office. That was taken away back in the '90s, when Lyin' Brian Mulroney was the Prime Minister.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I've thought of a way round this. The Postal Company could send you a letter the moment there's a letter for you to collect from the central collection point.

(Hell, no! That won't work!)

Sounds like Stephen Harper's Conservatives have something in common with the Vogons.

ITbh I just don't understand people who throw junk anywhere other than dumpsters. I've never done it once in my life; I'm on the fence about spitting my gum in the gutter. I sometimes do it but feel a guilty twinge afterwards.

There are some parts of the world where you'd get fined for spitting out your gum in public.

You could put a postbox at the end of the sidewalk, could you not?

And risk having the mail stolen by just anybody wandering by? No, thank you. Plus, it's hard enough getting the mail in from the porch when it's -30C or colder; I wouldn't care to have to do that by having to go farther outside.

Yes. And I would be more than extremely surprised if yours doesn't also. In fact, I'm assuming that there isn't a great deal of difference between your postal service and ours.


That doesn't mean that it isn't policy to cross the lawns. All that means is that your lawn got an exception because of your complaints.

A postal carrier on a residential walking route is probably servicing several 100 homes a day. Crossing the lawns over the course of a day will probably save half an hour. Half an hour a day by 6 days a week by 52 weeks a year is not a trivial savings. And that's on every route. Millions of Canadian households. 10s of millions of American households. And postal carriers are paid fairly well. This adds up to a lot of money.

So yes, they are trained to cross your lawn. Unless it's unsafe. Or unless specific people make a major fuss about it.

I have to disagree with you that they're trained to walk across lawns. In all the 34 years I lived at that address, this one mailman was the only one who did that. All the others used the sidewalk like they're supposed to.

One of the things homeowners are supposed to do in winter is make sure their sidewalks are clear of ice and snow because of the Canada Post mail carriers who are supposed to be using said sidewalks. No homeowner is told to make sure to keep a path shoveled across their lawn for the postal employees. That would be ridiculous.

 

[AdamCrock]

Hey Valka how about building an vacuum-cleaner-like tube from the sidewalk straight to Your house mail table Mailman could just roll the letter and "tube it" to You

 

[bhsup]

Valka, the thing that I am still gobsmacked about regarding your mail delivery is that your city doesn't have a post office. We have cities with 1,000 people here that have fully functioning post offices.

 

[kochman]

Hey Valka how about building an vacuum-cleaner-like tube from the sidewalk straight to Your house mail table Mailman could just roll the letter and "tube it" to You

But then just anyone could tube themselves into his house (see his other, weird fear... it's a major crime to steal mail so people tend not to do it).

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Hey Valka how about building an vacuum-cleaner-like tube from the sidewalk straight to Your house mail table Mailman could just roll the letter and "tube it" to You

I don't live in a house anymore, so thankfully that's not any solution I'd have to consider.

Valka, the thing that I am still gobsmacked about regarding your mail delivery is that your city doesn't have a post office. We have cities with 1,000 people here that have fully functioning post offices.

We have one sorting plant that handles only a fraction of what it used to before everything got "centralized" by sending it to Edmonton for sorting. There are mini postal outlets scattered around town, mostly in pharmacies and small grocery stores, with employees who may or may not know what they're doing (since some of them used to be regular clerks at the checkout). If there's any kind of problem, they bend over backwards to be as unhelpful as possible, and my more recent conversations go something like: "I know you can't help me. I would like the phone number of the supervisor at the sorting plant so he/she can help me." Whereupon they hem and haw and eventually produce the number that isn't in the phone book or online. I avoid going to these postal outlets as much as possible.

But then just anyone could tube themselves into his house (see his other, weird fear... it's a major crime to steal mail so people tend not to do it).

I certainly hope that your use of the word "his" isn't in reference to me.

 

[Farm Boy]

Valka, the thing that I am still gobsmacked about regarding your mail delivery is that your city doesn't have a post office. We have cities with 1,000 people here that have fully functioning post offices.

Those are technically villages. I think. The post office is usually even more critical in those places. They wind up providing a relative slew of services and travel to get to a separate hub is typically fairly burdensome in distance, time, and cost.

 

[Bootstoots]

Moderator Action: I split this mail discussion off from the "Get off my lawn" thread. Feel free to discuss anything and everything mail-related!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Thanks - things got derailed there, but to be fair, my original comment did have to do with lawns!

 

[Borachio]

Mail!

Recently the Royal Mail got privatized. You know, those folks who invented the postage stamp?

It used to be the first thing a revolutionary would seize: the Post Office.

It seems to have lost importance somehow, along the way. And the Royal Mail is fast turning into not much more than an ordinary parcel delivery company.

Going Postal! Ooh look a TV programme. I didn't know that. I've read the book, though. Moist von Lipwig. Yeah.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Mail!

Recently the Royal Mail got privatized. You know, those folks who invented the postage stamp?

It used to be the first thing a revolutionary would seize: the Post Office.

It seems to have lost importance somehow, along the way. And the Royal Mail is fast turning into not much more than an ordinary parcel delivery company.

Canada Post is a Crown Corporation that may soon be privatized as well, if Stephen Harper wins the next election. It's infuriating to see all the people on the CBC comment boards who think it wouldn't matter, since they think that just because they do everything online or via courier, everyone else does, too.

 

[warpus]

The main issue I have with my mail is that 80% of it is spammy garbage. This of course means that most of the stuff the mailman has in his bag and in his truck is probably garbage too.

If mailmen were delivering valid mail only, I'm sure we could afford to have door to door delivery still. So.. why are we spending tax dollars to get spam delivered to people's homes? They should be throwing all that junk in the recycling bin, so that we don't have to. If someone wants to mail me spam, let them use fedex.

I won't be affected by the switchover, since I already have to walk to a central mailbox, but I can see how it would affect others rather negatively. Hopefully when it happens, my mailman spends his newly found free time actually making sure that the right letters end up in the right mailslot.. They mess that up more often than they should.

 

[Borachio]

Spam mail is a problem for me, too. Even though I sign up to every conceivable scheme supposed to restrict it.

The truth is, I learned, that the mail companies simply make most of their money that way. It's just a cheap form of advertizing for the company being... er...advertized.

Spam mail, along with Christmas and birthday cards (after I've looked at them, of course), just goes straight in my recycling bin. It's a pain, though. As I have to sort through it fairly carefully in order to retrieve the important bits. Like bills.

 

[kochman]

Junk mail is a problem. It's utterly wasteful. I don't even look at it!

 

[Cutlass]

The main issue I have with my mail is that 80% of it is spammy garbage. This of course means that most of the stuff the mailman has in his bag and in his truck is probably garbage too.

If mailmen were delivering valid mail only, I'm sure we could afford to have door to door delivery still. So.. why are we spending tax dollars to get spam delivered to people's homes? They should be throwing all that junk in the recycling bin, so that we don't have to. If someone wants to mail me spam, let them use fedex.

I won't be affected by the switchover, since I already have to walk to a central mailbox, but I can see how it would affect others rather negatively. Hopefully when it happens, my mailman spends his newly found free time actually making sure that the right letters end up in the right mailslot.. They mess that up more often than they should.

I don't know about Canada, but in the US, the Postal Service doesn't get any taxpayer funding. It's all paid for by the postage. The reason you get so much advertising is because those advertisers have paid for it to be delivered. If not for the commercial mail and advertising, the postal service would have to massively downsize.

 

[kochman]

A good point.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Junk mail is a problem. It's utterly wasteful. I don't even look at it!

Ineffective. Open the junk mail, find the postage paid return envelope, stuff as much of the junk in it as will fit, and send it back.

 

[Borachio]

I tried that. Got bored. Can't be bothered any more.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I tried that. Got bored. Can't be bothered any more.

It takes time and a commitment to spreading participation, but if we can publicize it well and get a significant part of the population to do it for just one day the shock value alone might be enough to make a difference.