my bout with usps

USPS has no official motto, but you'll find the following sentence engraved on the facade of many of our older, more established post office buildings on the east coast:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.


I also seem to remember it being part of an advertising campaign back in the early '90s.

Well, it's just untrue.

During one of our recent CO state-emergency-worthy-storms we got something like 30 inches of snow fall. Beautiful though it was, it brought with it many--shall we say--interesting developments? Or should we just call them what they are? Problems.

The rant:

• It took me five and a half hours to get home from work the first day it snowed. Usually it's about an hour.
• Shoveling my driveway was like lifting a soaking wet fat kid off of the ground with a stick and hurling him over the fence, repeated eight zillion times. With every shovel-full of snow I heaved from the driveway over the white wall now standing in place of my yard I felt my spine tighten and my life shorten.
• My Civic was buried in the snow on the side of the road so long that the check engine light has come on. The car got a tune up one month prior to the storm. $178 well spent.
  
• I wasn't able to go to work for days--yeah! I had to work longer hours from home instead--boo!
• The mail carrier threatened to stop delivering mail if I did't create a path from the middle of the road to my mailbox.

What's that about!?! I remember the '90s ads. I'm not ignorant of the unofficial mailman's motto. As a young boy I grew to trust the noble men and women who deliver the mail, and now the Castle Rock postmaster is marring that image and destroying my confidence in all that is right and holy. Further, does she have any idea how long it will take to shovel the ice and snow from the middle of the street, 10 feet in to my mailbox? Three feet of snow, plus plowing it to the side of the road makes for one stinking huge pile of snow. Why can't the carrier use the sidewalk anyway? It's not like I'm asking her to walk barefoot over hot coals. Just get out of your car for two seconds.

So I called the postmaster.

PM: Hello, United States Postal Service of Castle Rock, how may I help you?
me: You can get your shovel and come over.
PM: Excuse me?
me: The mail carrier left a note in my box saying that if I did not clear a path from the street to the mailbox she'd stop delivery in three days.
PM: Yes, that's right. According to section IV of article B-8 the post office is not required to deliver mail to obstructed boxes.
me: It's not my fault it snowed and our lousy city doesn't plow the streets better.
PM: It's just the code, sir.
me: I don't own the street. For that matter, I don't even own the strip of grass between my yard and the street. How is it my responsibility to ensure you can do your job?
PM: Is there anything else I can do for you today?
me: I pay my taxes and I want my mail!
PM: ...
me: Hello?

I shoveled the stupid path.