Someone Else Has Mail

You may not be able to buy anything much in Point Roberts, but you certainly can buy it somewhere else and have it sent to you. You can have it sent to the post office or you can have it sent to one of two private mail services that are here. Today, I journeyed over to the regular post office to mail a package and then made an additional stop at one of the private mail services where I used to have a mail box because a friend sent a package there, not realizing our address had changed several years ago. Sure enough, when they looked at their shelves, there was a package for me. Unfortunately, it was not the package from my friend. Instead, it was a package my sister sent me three months ago. The mail service gets packages, but its job is not to see that you get packages. That package would be there three years from now, even three decades from now, I guess, if I had not inquired about a different package. (I don’t know where the friend’s package is: not here yet, I guess.)

It seems to me that, in the city, if a package came and a private mail service was unacquainted with the person to whom it was addressed, the mail service would return it to the sender. But it doesn’t work that way here. Part of the reason is that, because of the weak U.S. dollar, Canadians buy lots of good from the U.S., have them shipped to the private mail services on the Point as if it were General Delivery, and then drive down to pick the packages up when they arrive, which they know from the UPS tracking numbers. The private mail service charges $2.25/package for this convenience, and they charge it whether or not you have a mail box there. It is not unusual to see people opening their packages and then putting on their new clothes for the drive back across the border in order to avoid paying the Canadian tax that would be charged if the border people knew they were bringing back new goods from the U.S.

The private mail service people have become pretty crowded in the past year what with all the Canadians coming down to obtain their goods. The public post office doesn’t have quite the same clientele, although plenty of Canadians have postal boxes there for the same purpose. What the post office has that distinguishes it from the private mail places is Canadian bulk mailers. Since it costs much more to mail a package from Canada to the U.S., pretty much any mail order business in the lower half of Greater Vancouver can save money by driving their packages down to Point Roberts to mail.

I enter the local post office, a small place with only two clerks on the busiest days, with trepidation if I have to mail anything more than a regular letter or postcard. This is because if I go to the clerks, the line almost inevitably includes one or more bulk mailers with anywhere from 15 to 50 packages to be individually weighed and stamped. They never say, ‘Oh, you go ahead of me since you just have one package.” It’s a long wait with very little reading material handy.

All of us residents think the bulk mailers should have their own line or be limited to specific times (during which the rest of us will all stay away), but the USPO thinks differently. My heart sank today at the sight of only one clerk and (only) one bulk mailer plus 3 regular users in line ahead of me. Happily, Lisa came back from lunch and rescued the regulars in line.

Nevertheless, it puzzles me that a public agency, the USPO in this case, makes so little effort to deal with such an obvious problem that is a constant irritation to its local patrons, especially in such a very small community. A community where you’d think that community would mean that it would be different.