United States Postal.....Service?

The mail here is kind of crazy...we have a small vestibule that contains the standard apartment mailboxes - about 6 x 18, and they lock with individual keys. The postal worker, of course, has a key that opens a row at a time so they flip open from the top.

OK - none of that is crazy. The crazy part, to me, is that we have no outgoing mail service. I placed an outgoing letter in our box - it was still there when I checked the next day. I left it again, and again, not picked up.

I went online and googled "outgoing mail nyc apartments". The common opinion was that you would be insane to expect the mail carrier to take the outgoing mail out of your box. Some apartments have an extra one of these boxes for outgoing mail, but we don't. In some buildings, they have a top-lid box where you can leave mail, but we don't, and many people don't like these because they're not locked.  I asked my dear friend, Nabin, my neighbor, about it. She told me to just drop my mail in a blue box down the block, and that they would never take my outgoing mail.

Arrrrgh! Why? With all of the problems facing the USPS (deficits, a plethora of little used locations, the 90's Tour de France team) would they reject business by bypassing the pick-up of my mail? We pay bills online, but I do like to send snail mail to friends and family, and I only send a few pieces a week. I know they have a tough walking delivery, but I would hope to be helping the USPS by sending mail - just a few letters a week.

Josh and I tried sending mail from our box one more time - this time I attached a kind post-it note telling them it was outgoing mail with a "Thanks! :)" salutation. He also placed the mail so that when the box was opened from the top, the mail was wedged horizontally into the box at the top so it couldn't be overlooked - it was the first thing the mail carrier would see when they flipped our row of boxes open.

And they took it! They took my outgoing mail! So excited!

But there are other problems - one tenant has a box that doesn't lock, and his mail is constantly spilling onto the floor. Is he out of town? Does he even live here any more? No one is looking into that...

Then - we came home on Monday night and the boxes looked like this:

Hell-O! Josh is unlocking our box at the top left, but the bottom row wasn't even locked - we could have grabbed all their mail - we tipped it shut and it stayed while we were in the vestibule, but who knows when it could flip open again that night?

I think I'll call the Postmaster! Delivering mail and packages here has to be a big pain, but surely their routes are shorter? Yikes!