NEITHER RAIN, NOR SLEET...OH WAIT,

Another day, another trip to the local post office. No, not to mail a letter, but to find out why a letter addressed to a district court in Massachusetts keeps being delivered to us in New Jersey rather than to the addressee in New Hampshire.

The “important?” piece of mail was delivered to us the first go-round while we were away on vacation. After we returned on Labor Day weekend, as soon as the post office opened, I brought the misdelivered envelope there and tried to report it to the supervisor or postmaster, but no one answered the bell. I walked back to the counter and handed it to the window clerk.

The next time, I tried calling the local post office twice, but each time the answering system simply cut me off with no message or opportunity to leave a message. So much for letting my fingers do the walking.

Feeling totally frustrated after receiving the same letter on September 8, I walked back into the post office building and asked to speak with the supervisor. This time, the window clerk, with 49 years on the job, addressed the issue.

When I told him the story of receiving the same mail delivery twice and wanting to speak with the postmaster, he said she had been coming in later lately and would probably be in about 3:00. Then he asked if there was anything he could help with. Knowing his abilities at the counter, I said, “Yes.”

I told him I had returned the misdelivered mail piece to the window clerk the first time when no one in the offices answered the bell in the back. He said, “The clerk, who was here in my absence, probably didn’t know what they were doing. I’ll take care of it. You won’t get it back.”

The experienced clerk explained that the typed code on the bottom of the front of the envelope is for my address. The carriers no longer “finger the mail,” as my brother tells me he and the other former generations of carriers did.

These days, mail carriers walk their routes with headsets in their ears, listening on their cell phones, instead of paying any attention to what’s being delivered. They never “candled” that piece of mail before putting it in our mail slot, and foolishly failed to notice that it was addressed to someone in New Hampshire.

You would think that a letter from a court would be given extra attention and that a piece of tape, loosely fastened on the back of the envelope showing it had been opened along the way to my mail slot, would have been cause for question. The “inefficiency of the world” today is baffling. Thankfully, we have not received that envelope a third time.

Not everyone is like me and will return a misdelivered piece of mail, especially not twice. They may not know it’s a federal offense to destroy it. Neither rain, …………will stop this crazed woman from trying to get the mail to the source. What would you have done?

Letter postmarked August 27, 2025 - I returned it to the post office a few days after the first time we received it, since it was delivered when we were on vacation. I returned it a second time on the day after it was delivered to us on September 8, 2025 (again), but by the time I received it, the post office was closed for the day.