Postal Worker Fails Test of Mental Competence

The test of mental competence given to a geriatric patient with whom I stayed included an item: "What would you do if you found a sealed envelope with a new, uncancelled first-class postage stamp on it, lying on the ground?"

The answer was, of course: "Put it in a mailbox. The mail must go through."

If the stamp had been cancelled and the letter dropped or misdelivered, the correct answer would have been "If unable to take it to the person to whom it was addressed, send it back through the mail."

It seems my town now has a mail carrier who would not have passed the test of competence. Maybe this mail carrier has early Alzheimer's Disease.

My neighborhood does not have mail delivery direct to our doors. We still have the old Rural Route boxes, out on a rail beside the highway, and those of us who ever receive anything but bills and junkmail have post office boxes in town.

As mentioned in a previous post, I've been involved with the Encourage a Legislator campaign where we pray for a legislator outside our own districts during the General Assembly Session, along with our own, and send bland, encouraging, church-lady-style postcards to the one outside our districts. Political messages go to our people in Richmond. Encouraging words go to someone else's.

It's not gone well for me in other years. The post office is all the way on the other end of town; I don't usually walk out there. There aren't any big public mailboxes along my route. Some years I've not even had the money to buy six or eight postage stamps. Last fall I e-mailed the program coordinator that, if the Concerned Women could find enough other people to send out these postcards, that would be the best thing, as my income was still preposterously low and I didn't want to promise to buy postage. She e-mailed back that the organization would send postage.

So I received a packet of postcards with stamps and resolved to pray for the Delegate assigned to me--that was another post. And, of course, dropped the postcards into a Rural Route box I passed and raised the little flag on the side.

The first time, the card was apparently mailed.

The second time, it lay in the box all week, until I opened the box to drop the third card in and found the second one still lying there, with a note stuck to it, saying "This mailbox is not serviced."

I thought about putting it in a different Rural Route box; looked in a few and saw letters inside. Then I thought that the recipients of those letters might think the card had been misdelivered to them.

I don't think the U.S. Postal Service should continue to employ people who don't know that, when you find a bit of mail with an uncancelled postage stamp on it, wherever you find it, the correct thing to do is mail it.