On July 26, 1775, members of the Second Continental Congress created the Post Office Department, which was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service and appointed Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General. It is the second oldest federal department or agency of the United States.

For the last 230 years, the Postal Service has been delivering billions of pieces of mail to every household in America. From bills, to packages to cards and letters – the over 800,000 employees of the U.S. Postal Service handle correspondence from all fifty states and from countries all over the world…

…so how come I never get any mail?

For as long as I can remember at almost every address I have lived at – I have had a serious problem with my letter carrier. It seems that each and every day, the other tenant’s mailboxes are full – while mine remains empty. I am not complaining that no one is sending me mail – I am legitimately stating that pieces of mail that I am supposed to receive do not get delivered to me as they should.

When I lived at my last apartment on East 19th Street in Sheepshead Bay, there was a period of a few weeks when I did not receive any mail at all – including my utility bills. Day after day I would go down to my mailbox and open it, only to find it empty. Then one day, I got a call from my former Human Resources Director at the TLC who told me that they sent me a letter in the mail – only to have it sent back to them with the words, “Recipient Moved: No Forwarding Address” stamped on the envelope. Furious, I went to the Post Office to learn that my letter carrier saw that my mailbox was full for a few days and assumed that I had moved – so she, completely on her own – put a change of address card into the Post Office with no forwarding address. The only reason my mailbox was full was because I was away on vacation – and God only knows how much mail I lost during that time.

Since I moved out of that apartment and into my new home in Marine Park last August – it appears that my problems with the Post Office have once again come with me. Since I have moved here, I am lucky if I receive mail once a week. Yet, Woody and Michelle’s mailbox is packed with mail every day. Ironically, even their dog Max – and even Doug get mail delivered in their name. Again, I am not crying “boo-hoo” because no one sends me mail – I just want the mail that is sent to me to get to me as it does to everyone else.

As technology grows and people turn to e-mail more and more – I long for the day when this arcane method of communication is finally obsolete. I hate dealing with the Post Office and their rude and incompetent workers. I can’t stand never getting any mail and having people responsible for my mail make decisions on where it should go on their own. I do not see the point in sending letters, cards and bills through the mail at a cost that could take days when they can be sent electronically in seconds for free. And as for packages, we have UPS, FedEx, DHL and other overnight companies for that. So in all reality – what do we need the United States Postal Service for anyway?

I could mail a copy of this column to my letter carrier to read – but it would probably get lost in the mail.