The Wily Filipino

Your Mail Has Been Killed.

Here's the situation: I live in a basement apartment (1354A) right under 1354, where my landlady lives. For the last two years, my mail would always arrive according to schedule, though there were times (more often than I thought) when my mail would arrive at 1354 instead, and the landlady (or, earlier last year, the renters) would bring them down to my apartment.

Sometime in December, my mail started slowing down to a trickle. Some packages went missing. A couple of checks never arrived. I had thought at first that my mail was somehow sitting upstairs at 1354, and that they had gone off on vacation (which they did). One eBay seller wrote back and said that the package had been returned; she resent it to me and it actually arrived.

The thing is, I would have caught it earlier if the mail had stopped completely; the problem was that it was intermittent, and there were times during the week when the mail carrier himself would stick the mail into the slot. I had also lodged a couple of complaints earlier, and then mail would arrive immediately after (leading me to suspect that it had to do with the particular carrier on a particular day). I'd gone to the local post office and asked to see if they had any of my packages; they had none. But all my credit card bills still arrived. My vehicle registration stickers arrived. And I couldn't figure out what was going on. Was my mail sitting in a similarly-numbered apartment a block over? Was someone stealing the packages?

And so it continued -- this constant ebb and flow of appearing and disappearing mail, of issues of The New Yorker or The Wire gone missing and reappearing a couple weeks later, of writing Amazon and asking to have items redelivered.

Last week, the mail finally stopped dead. I went to my local post office demanding an answer, and the woman behind the counter gave me a local number, different from the 1-800 customer service number where I had previously lodged my complaints. So I call the number and get Ronnie, a supervisor, and after I tell him my address, he goes:

Ronnie: Oh. According to our records, that address doesn't exist.

Me: What do you mean?

Ronnie: It's not registered at City Hall as an official address. It's an illegal address.

[Short history here: according to the previous landlord, Jim, the unit was in fact legal and built according to code with all the accompanying permits. It was indeed legal, according to my new landlady, Janice, but the only problem (she had told me this when we were out to dinner earlier last week) was that Jim had failed to file the proper paperwork after the unit was constructed.]

Me: I didn't know that.

Ronnie: Well, it's been three months, and we can't hold your mail any longer.

Me But if I had known you wanted me to do this, I would have done it! I didn't know you were holding my mail for me!

Ronnie: We wouldn't have been able to give you your mail in any case. We don't give mail out to customers.

Me: This is insane! So how was I supposed to get my mail?

Ronnie: Your landlord should have gone to City Hall and registered your address as a legal address.

Me: Well, I wasn't informed about any of this! And besides, you folks have been delivering mail to me for two years!

Ronnie: That's right. But we did some investigations and discovered the truth.

Me: [getting really upset now] But it's not as if I'm hiding the truth from you; I mean, this isn't my fault! This is insane!

Ronnie: It isn't the Postal Service's fault either. We don't deliver to illegal addresses.

Me: [sigh] Can't you just put the mail in there anyway? I mean, it's right underneath the house.

Ronnie: We don't deliver to illegal addresses.

Me: [trying a different tack] Well -- can I go down there and pick up my mail anyway?

Ronnie: [pause] I'm afraid we sent them all back yesterday. It's been three months.

Me: [panicking] What do you mean?

Ronnie: We can't hold them here any longer.

Me: You mean you just returned three months' worth of my mail that was just sitting there in the first place???

Ronnie: That's right. And from now on, any mail sent to that address will have to be stamped "return to sender."

Me: [incredulous] So how am I going to get my mail?!?

Ronnie: You can get your landlord to file the registration at City Hall, or you can give them a different address. Hopefully those people who sent you mail will contact you and ask for a different address.

At this point -- unwilling to say, "How are these people supposed to contact me? Through the mail??" -- I hang up and leave a message for my landlady. Then I call again.

Ronnie: Didn't I just talk to you earlier?

Me: [trying to be placating] Yes, I wanted to know if you could help me in figuring this out.

Ronnie: [sighs] You should get your landlord to file the registration.

Me: But that might take a couple of months! Can't I just file a change of address form?

Ronnie: You can't do that. What's the original address?

Me: [dumbfounded] It's 1354A ...

Ronnie: That's right. That address doesn't exist.

Me: [unable to think straight now] But it's right here! [I run outside the house, pointing to the door, but Ronnie obviously can't see any of this.]

Ronnie: You can't file a change of address form to change from a non-existent address to a different one. You can't change an address that doesn't exist.

Me [feeling like I'm trapped in Terry Gilliam's Brazil]: I can't change an address that doesn't exist. So what am I supposed to do?

Ronnie: Again, talk to your landlord. Or you can contact all the people that send you mail and give them a different address.

Me: [stupefied at the work that would entail] So you can't just put a sticker with a new address on my mail?

Ronnie: No, because all mail to that address has been killed. [pause] Oh. I just checked on the computer and it looks like your first-class mail is still here.

Me: Oh -- I thought you had already sent them back?

Ronnie: No, you were lucky. They're still here. You can come down here and pick them up. But remember -- we do not give out mail to customers. This is a favor -- remember this -- this is a favor, and I am only doing this once, you hear?

Me: Oh, that's wonderful, thank you very much! [Though my jaw is clenched hard at this point.]

Ronnie: And remember -- as of tomorrow, all mail delivery to that address will be suspended and returned. That address doesn't exist. Your mail has been killed.

So I drive off to the sorting center and pick up my mail -- overdue bills, checks, magazines, CDs, rejection letters, a couple of books (and yes, I gave the poor bookseller a bad rating on Amazon.com, so sorry), Christmas cards, newspapers -- 3 months of my life in a box, minus all the catalogs. I'm thinking grimly about all the mail that's already on their way. And you can probably imagine what I did the rest of the afternoon.

(P.S. to Ruthie, who I'm hoping to finally meet in June: unfortunately our vinyl wasn't in the box. But I'm confident it's on its way back to Jeremy deVine, owner of the coolest record label in the world right now, and who will hopefully send them back to me...)

Posted by the wily filipino at February 25, 2007 12:01 AM