Wednesday, June 12, 2024- Motivational Motivator: Get Out of Bed
Authenticity is everything! You have to wake up every day and look in the mirror, and you want to be proud of the person who's looking back at you. And you can only do that if you're being honest with yourself and being a person of high character. You have an opportunity every single day to write that story of your life.
- Aaron Rodgers
Every day people want to get their mail reliably sent to them promptly whenever one is recieving mail.
However, what if I told you that the mail across Bloomington, Indiana has become nothing more than disorderly until recent changes have sparked discussions across the community?
This is thanks in part to this report being posted to Facebook, and although I got no response from the United States Postal Service for this report, it seems as if the report has made progress as many residents are not losing their mail at one apartment complex in town.
By the look of this picture, it appears to be a bottle of vitamins that my mother ordered. Unfortunately, after three weeks of waiting for this package back in April, the package looked like this.
In a video posted here to Substack back in May, she had called the Post Office multiple times with no one doing what she asked until the USPS employee who she called my mother, had her order finalized even though there was a problem before even getting her package that sat out in the mail for three straight weeks.
It came out runny and gooey sitting in the heat for hours.
This shocked both me and my mother. One thing she told me that became the motivation for me to write this story and investigate it even more. She said, “Show the world what getting your mail here is all about.”
This hasn’t been the only time the Bloomington Postal Service suffered these similar issues. I had to report on the issue because I thought to myself, this has to be a problem that stems more than my mother at her apartment complex. This has been happening throughout Bloomington longer than I thought.
I reached out to the City of Bloomington's Facebook page and received numerous responses regarding the mail issue. Some were optimistic about our mail, while others pointed out flaws in the Bloomington Postal Service.
Top contributor, Courtney Sears said, “Honestly they are [the post office] undermanned.” Sears said, “The [Indianapolis] office is who does the hiring. They only put postings up for a few days and then take them down. They can't get anyone to hire and turnover is pretty high.”
Another user, Angela Brown said, “It’s the worst. I’ve had a package of checks and a bank card say it was delivered but never showed up. When I called they were just like… sorry. Nothing we can do. I also keep getting mail from people who don’t live here and I’ve been here for over two years. I’ve tried NATA on the envelope and they just ignore it.”
Other comments included people who got their mail for over 15 years or so with no problems to people missing their mail altogether.
Google has received some of the worst reviews. You could spend all day going through the reviews and get lost in a sea of details about the two post offices in town—one on the south side and the other on the east side.
One Google reviewer posted a particularly exceptional review, calling for more transparency between the post office and the neighborhood surrounding the Post Office on East 10th Street. The reviewer, who will remain anonymous, stated, “The mail carrier is ineffective. They've been placing mail in my mailbox for a week that does not belong to me. I put the flag up, the mail carrier puts the flag down, takes the mail out, and then puts it back in my mailbox. I took it to the physical post office and today the same mail got put back into my mailbox. They even have a postal note on them stating that they do not belong here.”
The East 10th Street location has received a rating of 2.9 out of 5 on Google, while the South Walnut location also has a 2.9 out of 5-star rating.
For this extensive report, both USPS offices and the media representatives for the state of Indiana have refused to comment on the issue. However, I have observed changes being made both within and outside of the Post Office.
From my family’s viewpoint, our mail is arriving more quickly, and other neighbors have reported the same. Mail is getting to our neighborhood faster. However, people in the rest of the town have not reported the same. Nevertheless, it is evident that the Post Office has been dealing with issues since nearly filing for bankruptcy in 2021.
Mail services have been significantly impacted due to the pandemic, causing delays in both mail and package deliveries, not only for USPS, but also for UPS and FedEx.