you know you have a problem when....
 

I know we've done this before, but I had a real life moment today I thought worth sharing...I live in a small town and receive all of my mail at a PO box. The PO has exactly 3 employees, including the always reliable Mailman Steve. Today, picking up my mail there was a Columbia House package I had to have retrieved, and as Steve handed it over he asked: "so, are you building an an extra room for the movies yet?"

:lol:

You go Steve....so, any actual experiences to offer in this vein beyond Jeff Foxworthy-esque one liners?

I have the same experiences here. Living in Scotland, I can't buy region 1 DVDs in the stores. I order from Amazon.com every few weeks, so i get quite a few boxes of DVDs. maybe 5-10 movies per month. nothing outrageous, but the mail man notices! he always comments on it when i come by to pick up a shipment.

You actually talk to your mailman?

The other day I walked to my mailbox and there wasn't a DVD inside and I was shocked, that was when I realized I have a problem! ;)

I have to pick the dvds up at the post office, so i don't have a choice. When he sees me in line, he usually goes in the back to get my shipment without asking, so maybe i could get away with no speaking... ill try next time.

I went to a furniture store to look for a high-capacity Dvd rack or bookcase. They all topped out at 300. The saleswoman was shocked that she couldn't make a sale:

"How many movies did you say you have?"
:)

You know you have a problem when your mailman stops your car in traffic so that he can give you your packages with out having to lug them to your door.

You know you have a problem when your UPS driver revises the delivery date and time on your packages without your asking because she knows when she can expect you to be home.

Both true stories.

I was at another board recently and noticed a thread titled "Check out this freak's dvd collection!" So I clicked, looked at the pics and realized I probably have at least 75 more than this guy did. And my collection is still pitiful compared to most of you guys.

Yeah, that's always a huge letdown. Going a whole day without that endorphin rush of opening the box and seeing a package is brutal.

We have one of those group mailboxes that everyone on the block uses. My 7 YO son like to get the mail, so I give him the key and he walks across the street to get it. He came in the other day and said in a worried voice "I've got some bad news." I thought he had dropped the mail in a puddle or something, but he finished with "You didn't get ANY DVDs today!" I just laughed.

Link?

:D

Yeah no kidding, I want to know what 'freak' means to those borad members. :)

Re: you know you have a problem when....
 

......your doorman asks if everything is ok, because you haven't received any packages yet this week.

Brizz:

This is scary. Not in that you buy too many DVDs. But that your postal carrier knows that much about your life. I realize that most postal carriers, especially in small areas, are going to know a great deal about you from your mail.

But for him to ask you about something that he is privy to only because he handles your mail, and not because you brought it up and told him about it, is somewhat creepy. I'm not a privacy nut but I wouldn't like some random person questioning me about something that is really not their business, no matter how trivial.

But this, to me, would feel kinda "One Hour Photo." And this would definitely annoy me as a quasi-stop-and-chat combined with an unwelcome inquisition. I have no strange mail and I'm not into porn, and I'm not a member of some flaky organization, but I still would never have my mail go somewhere where I'd have to speak to someone when picking it up.

:eek:

Upon re-reading your post, you can't do much about it when your mail is too big and needs to be <b>retrieved</b>. Just make sure that if you are ordering a Steely Dan to have it sent elsewhere... :lol:

well welcome to small town America....I like it, and Steve is a great guy....i also see him and say hi to him at the grocery store. He's noticed the netflix envelopes i received and asked me about him, so have the other two girls that work there...i've told them how great it is and they should try it. I have a PO box because I live on a private drive without mail delivery, and rather than a mailbox at the end of the road that anyone could take from, i prefer the security of a $15 a year PO Box that's in a post office 200 yards from the end of our road. in 3 years i've never had a single item lost. I guess this is a newsflash, but I say hi to people when I get my mail every day...some strangers even!! -eek-

I guess I kind of like the interaction and personable lifestyle we simple folk have around here...and I find it kind of sad that you think it's creepy :)

I'm very well known to my mail carrier as well as the workers at the counter at my local post office.

Through time, one of them figured out on his own that I have some kind of buy/sell DVD system going. Last week, he started to tell me how he prefers VHS since it fills the screen, and I said "No, no, no" so loudly that the other counter clerks looked over.

Sounds like my uncle, the weirdo of the family that thinks its cool to do things like they used to do.

Just about everything in his life is how they did it in the 20's.

Perhaps someday there will be guys who want to do it like they did in the 80s, and it will include VHS.

Re: you know you have a problem when....
 

rotfl

It's an interesting thread. I'm always excited to read something that is new to me about the United States. And I just love English language.

This is one of the saddest things I have read in a while and I hope it is a joke. Since when did casual conversation with your postman become a potential stalker activity? Being polite need not be exclusive to small town america, I live in Los Angeles and I say hello to my mailman, the grocery store clerks, the bus drivers, people on the street and anyone else I come across. Kindness is a highly infectious thing that tends to spread. This paranoia about being friendly with strangers is exactly what allowed terrorists to live next door to us for so long. If you want to be patriotic and fight the war on terror, don't go bomb a foriegn country, just try saying hello to your mailman, it may do more good than you can possibly imagine. (sorry to derail the thread, I just got really sad when I read this post and felt a need to say something.)

Talk to your mailman! ... you'll stay off the "to kill" list.

I may have found a new sig...

Its no joke. My mail is personal. I don't care to discuss it casually with people I come into contact with. A conversation about the weather or something going on in the neighborhood would be a much more appropriate topic for a mailman to initiate than <i><b>what he saw in my mail that day</i></b>.

I say hello to all those people too. I am actually a very friendly person with strangers to an extent. But discussing my mail is much different than a cashier at the grocery discussing her preference in types of lettuce after seeing I bought Iceberg, or discussing something trite like the weather.

Davaitye Poznakomitzya!! (man that's hard without cyrillic characters!)

Welcome to the forum!

Yeah, I know the postal workers and both UPS and FedEx delivery guys by name.

The FedEx stuff has what's in the box printed on the packing slip - so he always knows what he's delivering, and sometimes may comment if I get the same item from the same store a few days apart ("Got a DOA one the first time, huh?").

I always joke it's because the monkeys at FedEx bounce my packages around. And then we have a good laugh.

Ah, good times...

If you are turning your mailman into a terrorist, it may be time to cut down on your DVDs. ;->

Paul

Hey, it's becoming even more interesting.

I have felt the same way on numerous occasions, lol :)

Then what are worried or paranoid about?

Now if your mailman says something about a letter from a STD clinic or something, that would be going a bit far, but to just comment on the DVDs, especially if he knows you and sees you get packages from DVD stores all the time, to me, that is perfectly acceptable.

My mailman has been slogging my route for at least 15 years, and I have talked to him about various things I recieve. Once when I was younger, I got a Superman hologram trading card - 1:275 packages or something, and I had to mail off for it - so I opened the package and showed it to him.

After I posted my comment, I had a feeling this would turn into some sort of mild attack, and while I almost regretted posting my comment, I don't.

This isn't about my being worried or paranoid. I'm neither.

Its about someone deciding to make something their business that is none of their business.

I suppose by the rationale you imply, if I am getting a letter from the bank it would be ok for the mail carrier to say "Hey, I always hate getting insufficient funds notices, too." Or "Hey, I noticed you do a lot of business with XYZ corp." Or "Hey, I saw all those large mortgage banking envelopes, whatcha buying?"

And my reference to One Hour Photo was more of a joke than reality. Perhaps it was an extreme reference.

It is a shame that we have lost our innocence. My mailcarrier Manny is great. He loves my dogs, my granddaughter and has become a good firend to me and almost the whole route.
Yes, he knows of my illness re: dvds and I converted him from vhs to WIDESCREEN dvds.
It is a shme we have to be so wary of making new friends.

For some reason, I put my mailman in the same category as hitchhikers. That may not be a fair comparison considering the majority of hitchhikers will kill you if you pick them up.

While it may not be logical or healthy to live in a paranoid bubble, there's nothing wrong with being cautious.

Bottomline, it's unlikely, but possible that my mailman is a sociopath and I choose not to bring attention to myself by talking to him or initiating eye contact.

Yay! My comments will no longer be the focus!!! rotfl

No, seriously, where I live I put them in the same category and I'm on a "training route", meaning if you get a package the newb doesn't even knock on your door to see if you are home, they leave you a slip and I have to drive to the post office to get my mail and it makes me madder than Hell when I'm home and this happens. Also because I'm on the training route, we don't ever seem to get the same person twice, and many days we just don't get mail, period.

Also, the in-training carriers come across as absolute morons or criminal. I too prefer to avoid them.

In other places I've lived, they were permanent on the route and things were fine, but still wouldn't have appreciated random questions about the contents of my mail.

No they won't....more public paranoia fueled by the news screaming from the rooftops everytime it happens...seriously, when is the last time you heard about someone getting killed by a hitchhiker?

Jesus - you people TALK to your mailman? What the hell do you do all day long - sit on the mailbox and wait for him to show up?

The mail shows up at about noon - well after I'm at work, well before I get home. Even when I'm home, and I hear him at the front door - if I got up dropped whatever I was doing and FLEW out there to get the mail, he'd still be long gone.

My mail arrives at the office and each time there is a brown box with overseas postage, my mailman calls me like I am his buddy.And he is doing this job as a part time for package delivery with the postal service cause he is 65 years old.

I have been at my present address(an Apt.) for seven years and have never seen the mailman

That's funny... ironic... considering your name.

;)

My mail comes in the afternoon once I get home from work. He parks his truck in my yard to walk to the houses around me. I don't know his name, he has never made a comment about any mail I have received, but I do concider myself on freindly terms with him. I am usually outside smoking when he is walking around. It is normally just a wave or "hey how is it going today"? He usually waits to give the mail to my son instead of putting it in the box. I would reconganize him if I saw him somewhere else.