MAIL: Delivering wrong message

I work as a landscaper-groundskeeper in a 55-plus retirement community in Coeur d’Alene. I was pruning some bushes behind a postal collection box and had put a plastic garbage can full of limbs on the street within 5 feet of the collection box. A postal delivery truck approached and I moved toward the garbage can to move it so it would not impede the delivery of mail. The female carrier in the truck appeared perturbed, slowed the truck, then accelerated and pulled away with no mail delivery. Ten homes did not get their mail on Thursday, Sept. 26.

A short while later, I went to another part of the community to run an errand. Another collection box in that part of the neighborhood was blocked by a delivery truck, and the picture became clearer. The postal worker got miffed at her first stop, having the first collection box blocked and was going to take it out on the rest of the complex if there was even a hint of anything impeding her. Six more homes did not get their mail on Thursday, Sept. 26.

This is a senior community whose residents get their medications and other important items daily. Is this the kind of behavior we should expect from the postal service? Is grace and a modest amount of accommodation an unreasonable expectation in a senior community whose homes are very close together and parking scarce? Here comes the Affordable Care Act and more feds!

RICK BUCHHEIT

Coeur d’Alene