An unread-letter day for the USPS

By Ed Goldman

Using my local U.S. Post Office’s drive-through to drop in a letter or bill has turned ugly. 

The most I used to do was make sure I pulled close enough to the box or its protruding little chute to casually toss in my correspondence, then zip back into traffic, silently praying I’d put enough postage on the envelope containing my five-page letter to a friend in Akron, Ohio, and deposited enough money in my checking account to cover the payments I just made on my credit cards, which I refer to collectively as my American Excess accounts.

But now, because USPS mailboxes—mainly freestanding ones, not the ones inside buildings—have been getting robbed by thieves armed with nothing more than industrial-strength vacuum cleaners, the Post office has modified a number of its boxes. The result is that what was once a mail slot now resembles the mouth of a very terse dog or a stocky person who swallowed a harmonica.

My first thought was that this was to keep bored anarchists from throwing inappropriate items into the previously wide-mouthed containers. But no. It’s to prevent quite engaged miscreants from sucking the contents out of the box, taking them back to their lairs and—using some miracle product I’m doubting is FDA-approved—erasing the names of the check recipients and replacing them with their own.

This is why when you receive copies of checks you’ve written during the month with your statement, you may discover that the $723.47 you sent to Mastercard is instead made out to (and is flamboyantly endorsed by) someone named Kahuna Mahalo Schwartz, International Jewish Surfing Champion. 

(Btw, the fact that someone with that name was then able to cash that check probably tells you all you need to know about the cyber security in 2023.)

There is an underground market for stolen mail,” Matthew Norfleet, a U.S. Postal Inspector, told the Sacramento affiliate of CBS News. “Mail theft is a crime.” Then he rather needlessly added, “The people who do it are criminals.” That last part is useful intel, lest you thought the word “criminal” refers to a person who serves red wine with poached tilapia.

Some thieves have removed entire U.S. mailboxes from sidewalks, presumably deploying some sort of powerful glue remover (or whatever the postal agency had used to fasten the boxes to the asphalt). This is a dangerous trend, not just because mailboxes filled with cash and securities can be toted off like garden clippings but also for what it means in terms of future improbable thefts. I’m talking (a) lampposts; (b) those combo fine-jewelry/discount-tattoo kiosks in suburban shopping malls; (c) bloodmobiles; (d) book mobiles; and (e) unmoored Tuff Sheds.

I have two U.S. post offices equidistant from my home in the condominium community called Campus Commons, which I often refer to as Cramps ‘r’ Common, owing to the development’s refreshing concept of reverse gentrification (if you need to have the CC&Rs printed in 20-inch type, your residency is immediately approved).

One office is in the East Sacramento neighborhood where I lived from 1978-2017. It features an unmarked but nevertheless one-way alley that runs behind the building, where, if you happen to be going in the right direction, you used to be able to drop your mail in a box on the driver’s side. More often than not, you’d encounter someone new to the neighborhood who’d be driving in the opposite direction and have to make a very sharp U-turn to align his car with the slot.