On the Inadequacies of Sending and Receiving Mail in NYC (aka Please Mister Postman, seriously, PLEASE)

One of the burdens of living in New York City is the responsibility one feels to comfort non NYC dwellers who insist that I live in a very very scary place. On a recent trip to the heartland it occurred to me that even worse then living in New York City (where at least they have all of those fabulous musicals) is living in Brooklyn. Inside the city limits of the Big Apple, Brooklyn means baby carriages, composting and jamming with your band but everywhere else it means the mob, knife fights and really annoying accents. And as I discovered in May while visiting an old folks home in Wisconsin, no one's grandma wants them living in a dump like that. My own Grandma and Grandpa along with all of their senior friends feared the crime, the grime, the subway, etc -- but strangely no one ever seems to bring up the truly horrifying things like the supermarkets and the mail. If only they knew.

When I moved to New York almost five years ago the first challenge was figuring out my address. It seemed that somehow I was living in as many as 4 different cities at one time. I thought I had moved to Astoria, but my mail came to Long Island City. And somehow I also lived in Queens. And also in New York City. This confusion stems primarily from the borough system which totally makes sense *in theory* but in actuality still confuses me even after almost 5 years in the city. Basically, it seems that in order to make all of the boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island) part of one big megacity this weird borough thing had to be invented. It turns out that my mail would be delivered to me if addressed to any the 4 places listed above. I assume that the postal system hates New York City for this selfish deviation from the "works for everyone else" system and that the pains I detail in the coming paragraphs are the direct result of retaliation from postal employees. Honestly, I can hardly blame them.

Once I got settled in I had a few letters to send a few bills to pay. I stuck these in the mail box outside of my house on my way to work -- there was no flag to put up but I figured the mail carrier probably knew the deal, "oh, new envelopes with uncanceled stamps, this is outgoing!" Yet every night I would come home to a mail box stuffed with delivery menus, new bills, 5 copies of the Victoria's Secret catalog (Obama should look into putting those mofos on the finding Bin Laudin task force they can track down anyone) and all of the outgoing mail that I'd left in the box that morning. Curious. I quickly concluded that I had a lazy bastard for a mailman and resolved to schlep all of my outgoing mail to the office until some Saturday when I could confront the man in blue at my door. Luckily my chance never came because I soon found out that in New York City mail carriers do not pick up outgoing mail. So actually ALL mail carriers in New York City are lazy bastards. At least I wasn't being singled out. Much Googling has been spent trying to get to the bottom of how it came to be that NYC mailmen won't pick up the netflix return envelope and my rent check all to no avail. I did discover that mailmen also don't pick up in Canada so I have to assume that this is just one more way that the liberals in NYC are trying to turn us all commie. Normally I drink the blue koolaid and support all efforts to bring the socialism but here I must protest, Canada obviously knows nothing about how badly I need to avoid walking 3 blocks to the mailbox (you'd think a country that is normally covered in snow could relate).

I really adore getting packages (queue, "I've got a package you might like little lady..."), so much so that I might occasionally order something online just to have the thrill of looking forward to receiving a package in the mail. This small joy has almost been beaten out of me by the mail system in NYC. I've determined that if you ask for something to be delivered to your house there is really only a 1 in 3 chance that you'll ever receive it. This statistic varies little from mail system to mail system. USPS, UPS, FEDEx, they're all equally f-ed up.

Typically, this is how things go down. I place an order for say a really cute dress by Penguin that I've somehow managed to score for $40 and then I begin obsessively reloading the order info page until I crash online store. Eventually the web services team is called in, stability is restored and my order goes from "processing" to "shipped." And then I start praying that the package will actually show up at my house -- oddly, god rarely intervenes on my behalf.

Things that might happen in place of coming home to the joy of ripping open cardboard:

• Your mailman may decide that he doesn't feel like carrying a package all the way to your door so instead he'll just leave a "we were here but you weren't home" note the gist of which is "haul your ass down to the central processing center if you ever want to see that beautiful necklace you ordered off of Etsy." Note that actually being home when the mailman stops by to drop off this note will in no way ensure that you avoid this outcome.


• Your mailman may decide for no apparent reason that the same stoop that he happily left packages on just last week is suddenly VERY UNSAFE (perhaps my grandma called him) and that he could not possibly leave packages here where the gangsters might pounce on them (gangsters love nothing more than an Amazon box full of trashy vampire liturature! Except heroin.). No amount of pleading notes left for the mailman saying "seriously, it's COOL! Leave the package right here!" will be at all effective and again your presence will be requested in central processing land (Do you think the subway goes there? No, it does not.)


• Your mailman may decide to not even attempt delivery but to instead just claim he tried to deliver the package but that you said "please, no, do not bring it to my house, I would love to travel down to central processing and pick it up myself, i love a good walk through the projects."
  

The irony that I can get someone to bring a Vietnamese sandwich or an order of ceviche to my house at 1am but Amazon.com is beyond my reach is not lost on me.

The US Postal service recently raised the price of a first class stamp for about the 13th time this week and I can only assume that all of these extra funds will be directed to the vast pool of resources that they dedicate to coming up with new ways to screw NYC and as I said before -- I get it. But Please Mister Postman, Mister Fedex, Mrs. UPS -- do not continue to punish the good citizens of NYC for the selfish decisions of our forfathers, they had no idea that they were thwarting an organization that would go on to pretty much patent the act of going crazy and shooting all of your coworkers.

My Allies Have Turned On Me

I love Netflix. I love my ridiculously long queue of movies and tv shows. I love prioritizing this list so that all of the homework movies that I feel like I should watch but that I secretly think sound kind of boring are at the bottom (The Fog of War – I’m talking to you.) and things like the documentary on Tammy Faye Baker and the third season of Smallville and are located in positions 1 and 2. I especially love not having to enter the evil den of disappointment that is Blockbuster (the parallel universe where “new release” means “not more than 5 years old” and “cashier” means “just doing our part to provide jobs for the mentally challenged”). So you can imagine my sadness when NetFlix stopped working.

Despite my obvious love for the internet I’m a huge fan of snail mail and the US Postal Service in general – I even like the postal service in NY despite the fact that they refuse to pick up mail for delivery at my house like every other postal service in the country. I assume that the mail carriers in New York were granted some sort of exception as a trade off for having to walk everywhere while other mailmen leisurely cruise the street in their right side driving mail trucks (driving on the right side is such a boon when it comes to leaning out the window to pick up babes) and I’m ok with that (sort of). Sadly, this love has now soured and shriveled up and is all but dead.

My last interaction with the Netflix was an evening curled up on my couch post Costa Rican vacation with a copy of “Fred Rogers: America's Favorite Neighbor.” I happily regressed to age five to sniffle over the death of his pet goldfish and got choked up like only an adult on the cusp of middle age can when the movie reminded me that the gold fish death was 20 odd years ago and perhaps a 29 year old women should have better things to do on a Wednesday night than lovingly devour a Jello pudding cup while replying to work emails. Luckily, I had the Netflix movie to help me remain in denial about such things.

Well no more, in the last three Netflix-less weeks I’ve been left with ample time to get in touch with reality. I can no longer pretend that the US Postal service is my BFF nor that Netflix is going to be my rock in crises to come. Ever since I returned Mr. Rogers Netflix movies no longer make it to my mailbox. I’ve called to confirm that yes, they are sending to my correct address. They’re also getting my movie returned to them which rules out a DVD thief and triggers one of those cheerful little email announcements that, -- oh yes -- “The Outsiders” and “Friday Night Lights Disc 2” have been dropped in the mail just for me, but what was once a foreshadowing of delight to come has morphed into a cruel taunting of what could have been. “Hey Brianna, you could be looking forward to greasers and some hot teenage butts in football pants but instead you’ll just be staring at an empty mailbox for the next 4 days!”

This no Netflix state of affairs continued in my mailbox for a month but came to an abrupt end today! When I suddenly received a Netflix movie the elation I felt at the possibility that maybe the problem done fixed itself lasted until later in the day when I received a phone message from Verizon letting me know that the last bill they sent me was returned to sender. Oh US Postal Service how you taunt me.

The most troubling aspect of this problem is exactly how helpless I am, and really how helpless we all are, to do anything should sleet or snow or the hand of god deter the mail in its journey from point A to my house. I’ve left a note for my mailman (which I found tossed aside on my porch…) and filed a complaint with the Post Office but neither of these efforts has resulted in movies or bill or letters (I just KNOW that Ben and Jerry took this month to ask me to be an official spokesperson) reliably showing up at my house. I have no idea what my next steps should be. This experience has brought into focus just how blindly I rely on the mail. It is likely a testament to how well the postal system works that we as a nation haven’t seen fit to implement a snail mail back up plan but that ain’t helping me implement my Friday night backup plan of thai food and a movie.