BEMIDJI, Minn. — When Delbert Mikelson’s mail started showing up late — and
sometimes not showing up at all — he blamed it on the opening of deer
season.“I thought my carrier was out hunting,” Mikelson said over a breakfast of eggs and pancakes at Raphael’s Bakery Cafe in downtown Bemidji. But
it wasn’t the buck hunt delaying the mail in Bemidji, a tiny town 100
miles south of the Canadian border where welcome signs are written in
both English and Ojibwe and statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox
tower in downtown. Since early November, Bemidji has been bombarded by a
sudden onslaught of Amazon packages — and local postal workers say they
have been ordered to deliver those packages first.The
result has been chaos at the Bemidji post office. Mail is getting
backed up, sometimes for days, leaving local residents waiting for
checks, credit card statements, health insurance documents and tax
rebates. Routes meant to take eight or nine hours are stretching to 10
or 12. At least five carriers have quit, and the post office has banned
scheduled sick days for the rest of the year, carriers say.
1 comment:
These kinds of problems are reported widely and one wonders what the Postmaster General plans. Bills arrive late causing payments to be delinquent, carriers are overworked, office closings cause postal patron inconvenience. First class postage has routinely been increased, as have box rent. And the reported $ 6 billion loss under the current postmaster all raise questions which deserve answers!
Semper Paratus
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