Pop Quiz
You get a piece of mail, obviously a bill from a local utility company, addressed to someone else (with their address and everything, the mail was just misdelivered). You have a number of options when it comes to deciding what to do with that piece of mail.
1. Throw it away.
2. Drop the mail in the outgoing mail slot so that it will be redelivered to the right person.
3. Drop the mail on the ground outside the post office.
4. Go the post office counter, say “this ended up in my box by accident,” and give the mail to a postal employee.
5. Call the person the mail was supposed to go to and let them know you have something of theirs.
Which of the above reflects the best practice in the scenario described above?
Which of the above do you think someone did with my bill from the gas company?
Tags: fort bragg
I would either take it back to the post
office or put it in the outbound mail. I’m guessing someone discarded your bill!
I should add, by the way, that the above scenario takes place in the post office, where all the little post office boxes are. Just so we’re clear on the situation before I unveil the shocking truth.
I’d say either option 2 or 4 would be acceptable and guess that option 3 is what happened to your mail since if it were option 1 you probably wouldn’t know about it and option 5 is just too weird (not to mention optimistic).
I used to have a problem with my mail delivery at least once a year. At one point my mail stopped altogether. I left a post-it note on my mail box querying the carrier and received a verbal message from my landlord later in the day: “The postman said if you want to get your mail, stop writing ‘moved’ on it and leaving it in your mailbox”. I’m left to suppose that what was happening was that my mail was being mispitched to the wrong apartment unit (the same apartment complex had two apartments with addresses like 6780 #21 and 6782 #21). My neighbor who received my mail, without realizing the address difference (hopefully), would then write ‘Moved’ on my mispitched mail. Of course I’d have no idea this was happening until I questionned why I hadn’t received mail for the last few days. The carrier’s attitude, on the other hand, is inexplicable to me.
-Scott
i would (accidentally) open the bill (just to get a voyeuristic glimpse into other people’s energy consumption habits). pretending it was an accident (hah) i would use this opportunity to inject myself into the lives of random neighbors. i would sanctimoniously pass judgment on said people and write long hand-written lectures on the gluttonies of their energy consumptivenesses. i would direct them to solar power, hamster power, water power, girl power, and all those other power sources i myself never utilize but which i hear are the future of our shared planet.
then i would probably take all that paperwork and do what i am guessing someone did with your bill, and i would throw it all away.
The answer to question one is, of course, either four or two, depending on how convenient the post office is.
The answer to question two is a combination of three and five, in that someone who knows me found my gas bill on the ground and called me.