Postal Idiocy, Park Slope Style

Rose
Ninja

Joined: 10 Nov 2005
Posts: 894
Location: South Slope

Last week, I received a letter addressed to a woman who has not lived in my building for approximately eight years. I don’t have a forwarding address for her, so I wrote “WRONG ADDRESS — RETURN TO SENDER” in large capital letters on the front of the envelope, with an arrow pointing to the return address.

Knowing that this was not enough to prevent the post office from redelivering this letter to me, I took a Sharpie and crossed out the bar code on the envelope, and I inked over the plastic window on the envelope so my address was completely covered. Then I took it to the Van Brunt post office and dropped it in a mailbox there.

The letter was redelivered to me today. The post office had actually removed the inked-over plastic window to uncover the address. Then they put a new bar code sticker on the envelope. So here it is again.

What the hell? Why are they so stupid? Why were they so determined to redeliver this letter to a place where it is clearly unwanted?

And meanwhile, letters that are sent addressed to me, at my correct address, at a house that has been standing here for 100+ years, get returned to the sender marked “no such address”? Why why why?