When it comes to property defacement, the USPS sees no reason to apologize.
When we moved into our house four years ago, the previous owners left their rocking chair, barbecue, and patio furniture, but took the house numbers. As weird as that seemed at the time, it didn't bother us too much. We hired painters, unloaded our boxes, and settled in to home ownership. Days became weeks and then months and then years, and friends and relatives found us without a problem—and our mail appeared in the painted metal box by our porch steps every day without incident.
Last month, our lovely mail carrier of all of these years retired, and with her, my good will for the postal service. The next week, right before we were leaving for the weekend, the mail box beside the porch caught my eye. More specifically, the numbers written on it with a black Sharpee caught my eye—our house numbers. The new mail carrier was the obvious culprit, being the only person with a motive to commit such a crime.
Now, the mailbox had also been left by the previous owners, but it was cute and decorative, so we kept it. They had taken a metal box and painted a faux patina on it to match the faux patina on the brass panels on the front door. Obviously, removing the Sharpee marks was not going to be an option, because that would also remove the paint. The mailbox was ruined.
Incensed, I quit worrying about packing my toothbrush and camera and scoured the US Postal Service Web site for their customer service number. It took some digging, but I found it and was relieved to learn that it was a 24-hour service. After 45 minutes of waiting on hold and listening to the same two prerecorded USPS advertisements for the entire time, a woman came on the line. She took my name and address, but when I explained my complaint, she stopped me. "Because it's after 5 p.m., I can't help you with that," she said. "You'll have to call back tomorrow." "But you're a 24-hour service," I reminded her to no avail. She wouldn't even take a note. My husband patiently listened to me rant about the entire exchange all the way to the airport.
After a relaxing weekend away, I called the USPS first thing on Monday morning. This time, I waited less than 5 minutes, and the person on the other end of the line took my information right away and said I'd be receiving a call back from a representative from my local branch. Sure enough, within two hours, I got a call from our mail-carrier's boss. It was obvious from her tone that she'd never been wrong about anything in her life and that she rarely lets another person get a word in edgewise.
While she expressed some concern that her mail carrier was going around tagging people's private property with a Sharpee, she was more fixated on our lack of house numbers. When I said that this had never come up in all the years we've lived here as the numbers are painted on the curb, she sort of mentioned that normally we would have received a written notice first, but that everyone had to have house numbers on the house. (Never mind that a walk around our neighborhood revealed that a few dozen other houses are numberless and likely still receive mail.) She was intense, and I wanted off the phone. I was too flustered to remember to ask for compensation for the damaged property. I said we would obviously be getting house numbers, but that we would appreciate being alerted in future before the mail carrier writes on our stuff, and left it at that.
At 11:30 the next morning, the doorbell rang. Although the tall woman with the severely tied back hair and semi-professional attire didn't give me her name, I recognized her voice immediately as the house-number champion. I came out onto the porch and showed her the mailbox, and she proceeded to tell me that not only should we have house numbers but that the mailbox was also too low. I stared at her, not believing that this was the "apology" I was receiving. While I don't dispute the necessity of house numbers, our ignorance didn't seem to warrant property defacement. The mail carrier himself eventually joined us, and his boss pointed to the mailbox, saying, "See that, she didn't like that you did that." And he said, "But I had to see the numbers." And she said, "Well, you could have written them inside the lid of the box." Finally, I found my voice. "No, he shouldn't have. I was here the whole time. He should have let me know the problem so that I could fix it." It was like I hadn't spoken.
By the end of this 5-minute encounter, I had been scolded on two counts of mail-carrier thwarting and had not received one shadow of an apology. Before I had the chance to broach compensation for the defaced property, the woman's phone rang, and she answered it, backing down the driveway. I halfheartedly remembered my own manners and shook her hand as well as the mail carrier's. He assured me he would continue to try to do his best, and I nearly bit my lip trying not to say something about if graffiti was his best, how bad could his worst be?
I fumed and stormed and raged after they left—but I knew further action with this crew would result in dirty bureaucratic fighting and perhaps unexpected deliveries that weren't mail. On the bright side, my husband spent the rest of the week making a customized, attractive set of house numbers that are now proudly displayed above our door.
Of course, apparently, he didn't work quickly enough for the USPS, which sent us a form with the line item "No house numbers" checked. The handwritten comments section of the form looked dishearteningly like it had been composed and filled out by a first grader using unlined paper for the first time. It recapped the face-to-face encounter without any mention of the defaced property and reminded us to put up house numbers as agreed as soon as possible. So much for an apology! While this enraged me afresh, I felt slightly vindicated that the form existed—the very form we should have received before the mail carrier ever uncapped his Sharpee.
USPS customer service: *
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Tagged: Painting the Town Red
Hometown graffiti hotline comes to the rescue.
About nine o'clock on a cool, clear summer night—and a school night at that for all of us work-a-dayers—I walked my friend to her car, which was parked outside of our house. As I hugged her goodbye before she stepped into the driver's seat, the street lamp in front of our yard drew my eye with every suburbanite's horror: graffiti. The word Dhoofuses* dripped redly down the lamp post, each jagged letter standing out against the gray concrete.
After ascertaining that the ne'er do wells had left my friend's car in tact (which they had), I waved her off with repetitive statements about how we'd never seen anything like this—not in this neighborhood. She didn't look terribly freaked out by it, but I certainly was. As my friend drove off, the embarrassment ebbed, and the paranoia set in. Who were these hoodlums calling Dhoofuses? Did they have something against us nerds? Would we be murdered in our beds clinging to our pocket protectors?
My husband didn't buy into my grisly scenarios. He was mostly sorry that the graffiti was emblazoned onto a concrete surface, over which, he imagined, the city would slap an ever obvious, sloppily painted square as cover-up. On the bright side, he told me, the word was legible and not even obscene. Eventually, even I conceded that the "h" was more amusing than threatening, and we could call about it in the morning.
Anger and paranoia kept sleep at bay, however, and I leapt out of bed at an ungodly hour to search for solutions on the Web. Without too much trouble, I found the city's FAQ page and was surprised to see that graffiti had made the list of frequent topics. Like many other communities in the area, our city has a graffiti-removal hotline. You can call any time of day or night to leave a voice message detailing the location of the offending scrawls, your contact information, and any other necessary details. While on the one hand, I felt "handled" and unimportant, it was oddly satisfying to be able to take even this preliminary action in the dead of night. No need to wait until 9 a.m. to talk to a bored bureaucrat! After leaving my message, I had no trouble falling asleep.
In the light of day, my feelings of empowerment were gone, but so was most of my ire. Dhoofuses glared ugly and bright in front of the house, but it didn't seem as creepy in direct sunlight. Sure, I'd left a message on the hotline, but I didn't expect action from the city any time soon. It was likely they'd never even press play. We would just have to figure out something to do in the meantime—maybe wrap it in a sheet, I thought as I pulled out of the driveway to run shopping errands.
As I followed my normal route through the neighborhood, a pattern emerged. Red, scrawly Dhoofuses adorned lampposts and city signs about truck weight limits all the way to the main road. The ruffians had traced their path through the neighborhood—but not a piece of private property sported red letters. Suddenly, I felt better. The scamps weren't calling us Dhoofuses—that was their name for themselves. I also tried to quash the tiny spark of gratitude I felt for their conscientious defacing of only city property. Of course, the result was still ugly and annoying—but didn't it mean something that they weren't tagging houses and family pets? Didn't that make them more likely to be bored teens than psychokillers?
My mind eased, I concentrated on finding whatever goods and groceries were on the list that day and loading them into the car. On the way home, I reminded myself to take note of the various Dhoofuses locations so that I could record them on the answering machine of futility. I turned into the neighborhood and questioned my memory. Hadn't I seen evidence of the Dhoofuses on that truck weight limit sign on the corner? Maybe I hadn't. I slowed to turn into our driveway and stopped halfway. The lamppost was completely clear—no paint of any kind. I got out and rubbed the surface of it, looking for scratches or flecks of red paint. Nothing at all. If I hadn't had witnesses, I would have been hard pressed to prove Dhoofuses had ever been there.
With a rush of gratitude, I thrust my groceries into the kitchen and high-tailed it to the phone. I dialed that precious hotline number and gushed praises of the most sincerely inarticulate nature, describing the phenomenon as if no one on the other side of the phone had ever heard of such a miracle. "There was graffiti, and I called, and now it's gone," I stammered. "It happened while I was at the store. I didn't even see a truck." I couldn't shut up, and it wouldn't surprise me if they changed the hotline number immediately after hitting delete.
But the gratitude is real. When the graffiti appeared on our lamp post, I felt that my faith in the community would be forever shaken, that I would always be looking over my shoulder and wishing for the good old days before the hoodlums put their mark on every tree. But I was surprised to find that just the fast response from my city's graffiti-removal hotline made me feel such civic pride. Dhoofuses will come and go, but we don't need to cherish their memories. Removing graffiti as fast as it appears means my city isn't ready to let the vandals win, and that it's actually trying to keep this a good place to live. It's not often these days for me to feel a surge of pride for my government, but just this one little piece of tax-paid magic in my favor gave me a much needed dose of hope.
Graffiti-removal hotline: *****
*The word has been changed to bring less satisfaction to the guilty—although, presumably, the Dhoofuses know who they are.
About nine o'clock on a cool, clear summer night—and a school night at that for all of us work-a-dayers—I walked my friend to her car, which was parked outside of our house. As I hugged her goodbye before she stepped into the driver's seat, the street lamp in front of our yard drew my eye with every suburbanite's horror: graffiti. The word Dhoofuses* dripped redly down the lamp post, each jagged letter standing out against the gray concrete.
After ascertaining that the ne'er do wells had left my friend's car in tact (which they had), I waved her off with repetitive statements about how we'd never seen anything like this—not in this neighborhood. She didn't look terribly freaked out by it, but I certainly was. As my friend drove off, the embarrassment ebbed, and the paranoia set in. Who were these hoodlums calling Dhoofuses? Did they have something against us nerds? Would we be murdered in our beds clinging to our pocket protectors?
My husband didn't buy into my grisly scenarios. He was mostly sorry that the graffiti was emblazoned onto a concrete surface, over which, he imagined, the city would slap an ever obvious, sloppily painted square as cover-up. On the bright side, he told me, the word was legible and not even obscene. Eventually, even I conceded that the "h" was more amusing than threatening, and we could call about it in the morning.
Anger and paranoia kept sleep at bay, however, and I leapt out of bed at an ungodly hour to search for solutions on the Web. Without too much trouble, I found the city's FAQ page and was surprised to see that graffiti had made the list of frequent topics. Like many other communities in the area, our city has a graffiti-removal hotline. You can call any time of day or night to leave a voice message detailing the location of the offending scrawls, your contact information, and any other necessary details. While on the one hand, I felt "handled" and unimportant, it was oddly satisfying to be able to take even this preliminary action in the dead of night. No need to wait until 9 a.m. to talk to a bored bureaucrat! After leaving my message, I had no trouble falling asleep.
In the light of day, my feelings of empowerment were gone, but so was most of my ire. Dhoofuses glared ugly and bright in front of the house, but it didn't seem as creepy in direct sunlight. Sure, I'd left a message on the hotline, but I didn't expect action from the city any time soon. It was likely they'd never even press play. We would just have to figure out something to do in the meantime—maybe wrap it in a sheet, I thought as I pulled out of the driveway to run shopping errands.
As I followed my normal route through the neighborhood, a pattern emerged. Red, scrawly Dhoofuses adorned lampposts and city signs about truck weight limits all the way to the main road. The ruffians had traced their path through the neighborhood—but not a piece of private property sported red letters. Suddenly, I felt better. The scamps weren't calling us Dhoofuses—that was their name for themselves. I also tried to quash the tiny spark of gratitude I felt for their conscientious defacing of only city property. Of course, the result was still ugly and annoying—but didn't it mean something that they weren't tagging houses and family pets? Didn't that make them more likely to be bored teens than psychokillers?
My mind eased, I concentrated on finding whatever goods and groceries were on the list that day and loading them into the car. On the way home, I reminded myself to take note of the various Dhoofuses locations so that I could record them on the answering machine of futility. I turned into the neighborhood and questioned my memory. Hadn't I seen evidence of the Dhoofuses on that truck weight limit sign on the corner? Maybe I hadn't. I slowed to turn into our driveway and stopped halfway. The lamppost was completely clear—no paint of any kind. I got out and rubbed the surface of it, looking for scratches or flecks of red paint. Nothing at all. If I hadn't had witnesses, I would have been hard pressed to prove Dhoofuses had ever been there.
With a rush of gratitude, I thrust my groceries into the kitchen and high-tailed it to the phone. I dialed that precious hotline number and gushed praises of the most sincerely inarticulate nature, describing the phenomenon as if no one on the other side of the phone had ever heard of such a miracle. "There was graffiti, and I called, and now it's gone," I stammered. "It happened while I was at the store. I didn't even see a truck." I couldn't shut up, and it wouldn't surprise me if they changed the hotline number immediately after hitting delete.
But the gratitude is real. When the graffiti appeared on our lamp post, I felt that my faith in the community would be forever shaken, that I would always be looking over my shoulder and wishing for the good old days before the hoodlums put their mark on every tree. But I was surprised to find that just the fast response from my city's graffiti-removal hotline made me feel such civic pride. Dhoofuses will come and go, but we don't need to cherish their memories. Removing graffiti as fast as it appears means my city isn't ready to let the vandals win, and that it's actually trying to keep this a good place to live. It's not often these days for me to feel a surge of pride for my government, but just this one little piece of tax-paid magic in my favor gave me a much needed dose of hope.
Graffiti-removal hotline: *****
*The word has been changed to bring less satisfaction to the guilty—although, presumably, the Dhoofuses know who they are.
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