Please, Mr. Postman

This is maybe a little petty, but I'm really pissed off at the post office. Our mail rarely seems to arrive before 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

The other day I was sitting on the porch at about 4:30 when the mail carrier arrived. When we're outside, they generally just hand it to us. I asked him how come our mail always comes so late (and we never seem to have the same carrier 2 days in a row). He said he didn't know, but that he was just doing our route because he was done with his regular one.

So, I called the post office to ask them. I was told that our route is "low priority," and since they had had cutbacks, other carriers do our route when they're done with their regular one. There is no current plan to assign this route permanently.

I wasn't feeling particularly confrontational that day, and I'm sure the guy I was talking to wouldn't have been able to do anything about it anyway. I want to know, though, how they decide which neighborhoods are "priority." It never really matters much to me, since my paycheck is direct deposited, but damn! We live in what is generally considered a low income neighborhood (read "inner city"), and I would certainly think that getting checks (or other mail) to people in time for them to be able to actually, you know, DO something with it the same day would certainly count as "high" priority. I'm pretty sure a lot of our neighbors are actually WAITING for their check to arrive.

Unfortunately, we can't really take our business elsewhere.