Alas, it was not to be. At 4:00 p.m. tracking information read, "Not deliverable at this address. To be returned to sender." Had I made a mistake detailing the address?
I went to the local Post Office to see if I could intercept it. "You have to go to the bigger Post Office, 3 miles east of here," I was told. Off I went. After waiting in a long line for half an hour I was told, "You have to go to our customer service counter, next door down. And it closed at 4:00 pm."
At 8:00 am next day I was back at the customer service door with my remaining scraps of optimism. "Oh, that mail has been returned. The only thing you can do is see if you can intercept it online." I was given a card with a Web address on it.
Sitting before my laptop I brought up the Web site of the United States Postal Service. It directed me to enter much information and, with patience and hopeful sense of purpose, I complied. I clicked "submit" and received the response, "Your address does not qualify for redirection of mail."
The site provided a general customer service telephone number and, on my ever hopeful quest, I dialed. An interchange with a computer-generated voice ensued. In the end it said, "This mail was not deliverable and is being returned to the sender." I said, "The point of this conversation is to fix that." The computer responded, "I'm sorry. I didn't get that. To hear the instructions again please press 3." I respectfully declined.
I spotted another telephone number. It was for the local Post Office. I dialed. No answer.
Finally acquiescing to The Great Communications Wall of The United States Postal Service, I emailed the supplier to let him know his mail was returning to him and there was absolutely nothing in the world I could do to prevent it.
This morning we heard a knock on our door. Guess who was there. Guess what he had for me.
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