Whatever happened to "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night"

I have a wonderful postman. Unfailingly pleasant and upbeat, he delivers the mail every day - no matter how rotten the weather, no matter how late it takes him. He's terrific about sorting whatever mail doesn't fit in the mailboxes. He even automatically dumps the flyers into the basket I keep in the foyer for recyclable catalogues and junk mail, since he knows that they just sit on the table until I grab them for recycle anyway. And he never fails when it comes to holding the mail and bringing the withheld mail back the day I want it back.

I've been living here for 30+ years, and we've always been fortunate when it comes to our letter carriers. Before W, there was B. Before B, there was E. All of them were great. And I'm sure there are plenty of other folks who also have a positive experience with their letter carriers. 

Not all, of course. There are rogue postal workers who toss out mail they just don't feel like delivering. Who swipe envelopes that they think contains a giftcard or cash. Who are careless, or lazy, or who otherwise f things up.

I've been fortunate that none of them have happened to me.

I usually run into W once or twice a week, and we chat for a few minutes. But in early August, I hadn't seen him for a couple of weeks, so may have missed a convo about his going on vacation. 

But then came a Monday, when I didn't get any mail.

On Tuesday, I noticed that there was no mail on the table in the foyer where W puts the mags, catalogs, and envies that don't fit in the boxes. And I couldn't see anything in anyone's box. (There are 6 units in my building.)

I knew I was supposed to be getting mail because - although I have no recall of having signed up for the service - each morning I do get an email alerting me to what I can expect from USPS that day. Some days, the email includes a scan of the envelopes and packages that are expected. And those daily emails were telling me that I had mail coming.

Wednesday. No mail. 

Thursday. No mail. (Hey, that's my New Yorker day!)

Thursday, I sent out a group text to the other residents. I didn't hear from everyone, but the ones I heard from weren't getting any mail, either.

Each day, our building's mail generally arrives at some point in the afternoon. By 3 p.m. at the latest.

On Friday, it was 3:30 p.m. and still no mail.

It almost goes without saying that there was no answer at the local post office. And the general PO customer service number didn't seem to have any humans associated with it, either.

So, despite the fierce heat and humidity that day, I decided to make a house call, and trekked up the hill to the post office that's responsible for my mail, the PO that W works out of.

After waiting about 10 minutes in line, I told the clerk that my building hadn't had any mail since the prior Saturday, and wanted to know if she could tell me what was up.

Her answer was that, if we weren't getting any mail, there may not have been a letter carrier available to deliver it.

Huh?

I know from my conversations with W that the post office is under a lot of stress. They are desperate to hire. They've had a lot of retirements and not enough new recruits to replace the retirees. There's a lot of OT being worked, and the letter carriers are under a ton of pressure. 

This is, of course, the inevitable outcome of how the postal service has been treated over the years, ever since the powers that be but shouldn't be decided to put the screws to the service, pushing to privatize and profitize it and make it a lousy place to work and - the long game - eliminate it.  

Anyway, I asked the clerk whether the lack of mail was because W was on vacation. She told me she couldn't tell me.

I asked whether these mail outages were common, how long they could possibly last, how we were going to get our mail.

No answer.

She went briefly into a back room to "check" for my mail, but came back almost immediately and told me there was no way she could go through any accumulated mail and find mine. Let alone the mail for anyone else in my building. 

She told me that I would need to talk to a supervisor, but that there was no supervisor there are the moment - and she didn't know when there would be. Go out for coffee and come back, she told me, and maybe the supervisor with the answers would be around. Or come back Saturday morning, when the PO was mostly closed, but the rental box area would be open and where there'd be a supervisor on duty from 3 a.m. on. So the supervisor would possibly be there if I came in.

I was sorely tempted to burst into the old Marvelette's song. 

Please, Mr. Postman, look and see.Is there a letter in your bag for me? 

It was late Friday afternoon, so I'm sure the clerk was tired and ready to go home. But still, I was expecting more help than I got. I would have settled for fake help, or a bit of sympathy. (By the way, I may have sounded increasingly incredulous as I asked her unanswerable question after unanswerable question, but I guarantee you that I was not being an unreasonable bitch.)

When I walked out, the woman who'd been working with the clerk next to me told me that she couldn't help but overhear my exchange. And, like me, she was pretty astounded by the runaround and lack of info I was given. Surely, we told each other, the clerk should have been able to tell me a tiny bit about what was going on. As in "we've been experiencing a shortage of postal carriers...our policy is that no route goes more than x days without mail delivery...I'll take down your information and report it to the supervisor, who will be in contact with you." Something. Eventually, she did say that she'd take down my name and address and give it to the supervisor, but I had little confidence that she actually did so. And also told me she had no interest in the names of the others in my building. They were going to be on their own.

Amazingly, when I got home, the mail had arrived.

Later than the norm, but it was there. Unheralded but seemingly intact. 

Saturday, we got mail, too.

Remember the part of the Marvelette's song when they sang deliver the letter, the sooner the better. (Or as my cousin Ellen and I cleverly wrote on the envelopes of our penpal letters to each other: D-liver D-letter D-sooner D-better.)

I guess the updated lyric would be deliver the letter, better late than never.

Not that I got anything that actually qualified as a letter. A couple of bills for the condo association. The usual requests for donations. And, yes!, my New Yorker. 

Still, as I gritted my teeth on my march up to the PO, and my even more annoyed march back - among other things the humidity and heat were tropical - I kept harrumphing to myself. Whatever happened to "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."