A reader we’re calling Cliff wrote that every time his regular U.S. mail carrier goes on vacation, he ends up getting mail meant for his neighbors that is misdelivered to his house.
“I can always tell when there’s a substitute on duty,” Cliff wrote, noting that often it’s only the mail from his next-door neighbor, but sometimes it’s mail meant for four or five different houses along his street.
If Cliff happens to be on his front porch when the substitute mail carrier arrives, he checks the mail and will hand back any misdelivered pieces. But most often, Cliff only discovers the errors long after the mail carrier is gone.
Cliff wants to know what the best thing to do is. Put the mail back in his own box with a note to the mail carrier? Drop the mail meant for others into a postal box up the street from his house? Call the local post office? Or simply put his neighbor’s mail in their mailboxes? Cliff also wants to know if it’s OK to simply toss anything that looks like it’s junk mail with a neighbor’s name on it.
I am not an expert in federal laws regarding U.S. mail, but Cliff should not destroy any mail addressed to someone else even if he deems it to be junk. That decision about junkiness should be left to the intended recipient.
Any of the options Cliff asked about seem reasonable, though it’s not likely that calling the local post office will help a great deal if the substitute mail carrier changes every time the regular carrier is on vacation.
If Cliff knows his regular mail carrier well enough, he might want to take the time to let her know about the recurring misdeliveries when she is on vacation. The regular mail carrier might have advice on how best to proceed.
She might advise Cliff that calling the local post office might actually have some positive affect. Or she might be willing to let others at the post office know about the recurring issues.
My experience with local postal carriers in the city where I live has been largely positive. I once wrote about my former mail carrier (now retired) who spent months tracking down three boxes of books meant to be delivered to me that somehow ended up on someone’s porch several blocks away.
While Cliff putting the misdelivered mail back in his box or dropping it in the mailbox up the street might get the mail to its intended recipient at some point, the most expedient thing might be for Cliff to walk next door or up two or three doors to give the intended recipient his mail.
Granted, Cliff has no obligation to do the mail carrier’s job for him. But the simplest and most direct solution seems to be to just give the right person their mail.
Again, I’m no expert in federal U.S. mail laws, but taking a few moments to get something that belongs to someone else strikes me as a neighborly and right thing to do.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin
(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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