231
TIL that in Victorian London mail delivery routes would go by every house 12 times a day.
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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
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In Germany mail was delivered two times a day, in the city district even more often, up until the 1960s.
Nowadays the mailpeople show up two times a week.
It blows my mind that they don’t pick mail up from peoples houses. I live in a city, so it could be different in more rural areas, but I my closest mailbox is almost a half kilometer away.
Yeah, I was a little shocked too.
Especially in apartment complexes. There's usually a communal outbox for anyone to send out mail. But no, you'll have to go all the way to a post office to drop off mail. The nearest one is a 20 minute walk for me.
That is crazy. In the USA they pick mail up at everyone's house, and there are big mailboxes every couple of blocks.
looks hard at Louis Dejoy
Yeah, it's kind of weird that this is one of the things the US got right compared to most other countries. If you're already sending a guy to every house in town, why not pick up their mail while you're at it.
But you need to wrap the letter or parcel and pay for postage anyway, so unless you're regularly sending things it's still easier just to go to a post office.
And that means the postie has to check every single house even if they don't have any mail which slows things down a lot.
In the US we have flags. You don't have to check the box. Just look for a flag when passing
Your carrier can sell you stamps or other services. For security reasons they had to stop carrying cash (because nobody wants to be a mobile robbery target for what the Post Office pays), so transactions will have to take a couple days between the request and the delivery if you initiate the transaction in person. But you can also purchase postage online for delivery. Boxes for flat-rate Priority Mail are free and can also be ordered for delivery.
I delivered mail for a while. It's a surprisingly complicated and difficult job, especially if you deliver on foot. One of the reasons for it being complicated is how much flexibility USPS offers people, meaning there is a lot to know and remember for everyone.
It's a brute force search on an ordered list!
Mailboxes are locked over here, that's pretty much it. Nobody but you can take anything out of your mailbox:
there's locked mail boxes here. like at apartments with a shared lobby. the owner just gets a key.
This, and the outgoing box is locked too. Anyone can put mail in, only the postie can take it out