CaffeineTripp

Much better than being a male escort.

Edit: Thank you for the gold!

Probably one of three things; it's either still in a sort facility with a wrong address on it, got put into the wrong pumpkin by mail handlers, or it accidentally got dropped at a wrong home. 99% of the time the person who received the package, or mail, will write on it that it's the wrong address.

All three happen, but the first two are more frequent. Rarely does a package get dropped at the wrong address, and if it does, it's only a house down or a street down (same address but 3rd street instead of 4th).

On the many routes I've had in different areas of my region I have two or three that were pretty noteworthy.

The first was in March or April, I had a Certified letter to drop off at a home. Knocked on the door and waited, no one appeared to be home. About to leave and the door opened up with a 20-something woman with only a towel around herself. Of course, this doesn't happen often, if ever. lol I couldn't say much as I was a bit stunned (I've delivered pizza for years prior and this has never happened then!) but finally collected myself and said I had a letter for her to sign, but I'll make my last delivery and come back. I am engaged, so I wouldn't have done anything, but that situation was pretty funny looking back on it.

The other I took a route was in a quiet part of the city; older homes, in good condition, kind of like a small suburb of downtown. I've never been on the route before and there were only a few Dog Cards that were available. It's been drilled into us during training that dogs, no matter if they look happy, are on leashes or chained up, even if they're inside, are always mean. Which is fair enough. I'd rather not get bit anytime soon, especially when I was still within my 3 month probationary period. I walked up to a home to deliver mail, there was still snow on the ground, and saw a dog off to my left growling then barking, and being very aggressive. Stopped, and took out the mace, just in case. Moved backward still facing it while it was barking, showing teeth, ears back. Pretty damn scary actually. Ran off though to behind the house. This home/block didn't haev any Dog Cards so I couldn't have known about this evil dog. I moved cautiously to the next home and heard a crunching on the snow behind me. The damn thing was running at me from behind without barking intentionally trying to attack me from the rear. Scary as hell when you've got a dog trying to eat you. Spun around just in time to put my bag between him and me. Yelled at it and it ran off. I was very nervous for the next couple of blocks.

This is why we should always have a bag and mace on hand and be very alert. This dog could be a very friendly family pet which many owners say "Oh he's harmless", to you maybe. I don't know your dog, but more important, your dog doesn't know me.

That's my evening job though.

Fair enough on the package part, but unfair on the letter part. With the amount of mail that comes through the sorting facility it happens frequently that there are a lot of missorts along the way. I get a good handful a day. The machine is working very rapidly to sort everything and we are only human. I've had checks comes through that were delivered to the wrong state, it happens, not often, but it happens. For how much mail comes through in volume to how often it gets missorted, there's more accuracy there than anywhere else I've noticed.

Think of a 1,200 piece mail day for one route, not too bad, now think of 4 pieces that aren't for this route. That's great accuracy for that DPS machine. A lot of it gets blown out of proportion because it happens to more important pieces of mail sometimes.