Does your mailman pick up your mail?

[sungold123.livejournal.com]

Okay I'm going to sound like a country bumpkin here... but before I lived in Somerville, I lived in the middle-of-nowhere New Hampshire, where if we had outgoing mail, we'd put it in our mailbox and put up the red flag. The mailman would then take said mail and put the flag down. So, I figured if I left my outgoing mail on the little hook below my now-attached-to-the-house mailbox in Ball Square, the mailman would take it. However, I've tried this a number of times now and the mailperson has just left the mail there.

According to the USPS FAQs:

Outgoing mail is picked up:
* For curbside delivery if the flag is up or if there is mail to deliver.
* For door delivery if there is mail to deliver.
* From the outgoing mail slot in a Cluster Box.

Since I receive mail literally every day, it seems like my mail should be picked up. I'm curious to find out what other people's experience with this is...?

Comments

[georgy.livejournal.com]

Growing up, my grandmother affixed outgoing mail to that hook with a clothespin, and it always got picked up. Of course, we lived in a non-pedestrian area without ready access to curbside mailboxes.

[teele-sq.livejournal.com]

Growing up my grandmother always gave the mail carrier an xmas card with cash in it around this time of year. After she and the rest of her beautiful generation died, the practice mostly died out. That marked the beginning of the end of mail carriers who give a shit. Now I don't even know my mailwoman's name, though I don't wish her any specific harm.

I always tuck my outgoing mail in the mail slot on my front door. She picks it up, god bless her.

[georgy.livejournal.com]

Not sure what my grandmother did, but I used to give presents for the mail carrier when I was a kid. I distinctly remember making Christmas tree ornaments :-)

Maybe it's an urban versus suburban/rural thing? We definitely had more of a personal relationship with our mail carriers, when I was growing up.

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

When we were growing up, mail included things we actually wanted, as opposed to paper spam. I remember "Mail's here!" being an exciting thing. Now it's just crap to recycle, which (unfairly, I realize) makes me less inclined to feel warm 'n fuzzy about mail carrier.

Maybe I'll put a card out this year, though. It's a nice idea.

[ron_newman]

Monthly bills aren't some thing I "want", but not getting them would be worse. Also, I enjoy getting the New Yorker and NY Review of Books in my mailbox.

[closetalker11.livejournal.com]

This is also what I did growing up.