The Pharisee postmistress

posted Tue, 10 May 2005

My grandmother (I have one who is still alive) lives in Dorchester, Wisconsin, a town of 800 people and zero stoplights. She has been in the same house since 1974. Before that, she and my grandfather lived on their farm.

Until a year ago, her weekday routine was to go to 8:00 a.m. mass, then to the post office for her mail. In the summer, she walked. In the winter, she drove. Her house is a block and a half south of the church. The church is two blocks west of the post office.

About a year ago, she started having her mail delivered to her house rather than to a post office box. She is 92 years old. I think she’s allowed to cross something off her list.

It used to be that I could send her a letter addressed simply

Helen J
Dorchester, WI 54425

I didn’t even have to put the box number on the envelope. The postmistress knew everyone in town. She knew what my grandmother’s box number was. When I would get the mail for my grandparents, the postmistress would hand it to me. “Oh, you’re Helen and Ernie’s granddaughter! I heard you were in town!”

OK. Now I have set the stage. Small town. Everyone knows everyone else. My grandmother had the same PO box number for over 30 years.

Last week, I mailed a letter to my grandmother. By mistake, I wrote her box number on the envelope instead of her street address.

The new postmistress – who has been there ten years now, plenty of time to learn everyone’s name – sent it back to me with the stamp “Forwarding order expired.”

Excuse me!!!! If you knew there was a forwarding order and that it had expired, you bitch, (sorry, mom, but that is the appropriate word), then would it have been too much trouble to hand the envelope to the one postman in town to carry it the three blocks to my grandmother’s house along with the rest of her mail? You know who she is – you know her address – and all you have done is waste taxpayer money by sending the letter back to me rather than getting it to its intended destination.

I am livid about this. My postman, Lawrence, is wonderful. I bought my house four years ago. It is on the same block as the apartment I used to rent, but on a different street. When Lawrence sees mail addressed to me at my old apartment, he just delivers it to me at my house. Not a hard concept – he knows who I am and where I live. Isn’t the point of the Post Office to deliver the mail to the person to whom the letter is addressed? This Dorchester postmistress (my mom tells me that she does this sort of thing all the time) seems to think that her mission is to teach everyone a lesson. The postmaster general will hear about this. (I am not joking, either.)