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Pushing The Postal Envelope
Alexander Burke writes: "The Annals of Improbable Research has a sidesplitting account of their research into exactly what the USPS will tolerate. They mailed various items -- ranging from the absurd to the grotesque, usually without packaging -- to various real domestic addresses. Said items include a hammer, a rose, a ski (!), a tooth, a brick, a helium balloon, a bottle of water, and many more. It's pure craziness, and definitely worth a read!"
These times seemed slow, of course they were all strange things...not letters or packages.
I can send a package from Portland OR, to little towns in central South Dakota that are way off in the middle of no-where in 2-4 days depending on what part of the year it is (snow and things slow down the mail). That's about 2100 km away.
There are different Priorities that cost different amounts of money. Over Christmas, most of the packages I sent to South Dakota or Florida on a Friday were delivered on the following Monday or Tuesday.
If I send a package from Portland to Denver Colorado (which has a huge airport), I can send the package by 7pm and it will be delivered by 9am the next day.
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If you reverse the addresses, you can send a letter without a stamp. This has been confirmed, including in different zip codes and states. May take a while though.
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This was about 10 years, ago, but a buddy of mine and I wanted to see what we could get away with. I wrote a letter to my girlfriend on the inside of a pint-sized carton of milk (empty), then taped it back up to look like the original carton, and put the address on the outside. It got there about a month later, flattened open and stuffed inside a mailing envelope. You should have seen the looks from people in line behind me. I had forgotten all about it and was at her house the day it showed up.
We also discussed what would happen if we mailed a pineapple, with "hand cancel" written on the outside. Those spines are sharp!
As every good Canadian kid knows, its:
Santa Claus
North Pole
Canada
HOH OHO
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I am a mailcarrier, and I have experienced the weird addresses. the worst I delivered was, a post card from Italy to Mamaw and Papaw, Slone road. From Jimmy. One man on the road had the first name of James, so I figured he named his boy after him. I noticed that the Camero hadn't been moved for several weeks so the boy who drove it wasn't at home. I saw the mother, tooted my horn* and she came out to the box. I asked her if this is from her son, and she said yes. *((I don't get out of my jeep if there is a bunch of farm dogs barking and acting protective.))
I have delivered some weird stuff, including bees. Since the Unibomber, we have been more careful about odd boxes.
Any leak from a box is considered a hazardous material, and will be treated as such.
Thanks for the good words.
photosMy Photostream
No, the lawsuit is over the fact that the USPS can pick and choose what to deliver. And that if they deliver your product in demolished form, they still expect to get paid for it.
And as to the "use a courier". No. A brick isn't a delicate product which requires a courier. The only way it'd break is if some moron takes a hammer to it...
It doesn't matter if someone mails a brick for scientific analysis, or for the joke value. As long as they pay the postage on it, the USPS is contractually obligated to deliver it.
I think you're the one in denial. Lawsuit exist specifically for the purpose of forcing someone to do what they contracted to do and then refused to follow through. This isn't receiving hot coffee and suing over the temperature, this is using the courts to force a big corporation to honor its word like you'd expect anyone else to do. The lawsuit only needs to be for the court costs and damages. In this case, $5 should cover it. But the idea is that you don't let a corporation get away with screwing around with you just because they can.
And if the cops think it has drugs in it, they can act like they'd have to in any other context. Obtain a search warrant, take the minimum steps necessary to determine if it does. They should definately notify the owner, show them the warranty, and repay any damages conducted in their overzealous search.
Anything else is simply an abuse of power.
Do you have any better way to make them own up to their bullshit?
Instead of thinking someone deserves a medal, I'd be thinking someone deserves a lawsuit. They opened the package and demolished the brick, and then had the balls to deliver the pieces.
What if that was a brick from a historic building, or was being sent somewhere for lab analysis?
Doesn't anyone see a problem with the government opening your mail, destroying it, and then not even refunding the postage?
It's not like they thought it was a bomb or anything (they'd have blown it up - and the person who went to pick it up would have been met by the cops). They simply thought it MIGHT contain drugs.
In the last couple of issues, they received a Mac Keyboard that was stripped of all its keys, save ones that had the shipping address. They have been sent clear plastic boxes with visible circuit boards that had the address spelled out in LED's, and other cool things that frankly, I am too lazy to bother remembering, save that I was surprised that they had actually arrived at the Wired offices.
Anyway, getting back on track here, Wired was promoting this kind of tomfoolery well in advance of the Annals etc. etc. So there.
Where did I put my drink?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
When I worked at Blockbuster Video, I saw several drivers licenses with the address for Mailboxes etc. The apartment # was the box #. I knew it was indeed mailboxes etc, since it was right next door to us. Guess it helps keep away those stalkers who access your DMV records, leaving them to ponder how you live in a 6x6 inch box.
Suppossedly kids in england send mail to Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street, which belongs to a business. The employeess enjoy reading their mail intended for him.
Years ago I heard from a postal worker about having to deliver mail to "The third house on the left past the gas station on route 101", and it actually got through!
I also, years ago, mailed off my state income tax. It required my "Mail Station" as opposed to my usual mail address (it turns out that that was really a poorly worded form, and what they really wanted was the regular address). Well, my "Mail Station" was called "Farley Station", so I entered that. Six months later someone from the post office finally figured out what the return address was supposed to be and I got my refund. I never complained about the mail since.
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
When I get one of the MMF spams, I print it out, stick it in an envelope, and send it to:
Postal Inspector
Criminal Investigations
I've gotten mail back from several Postal Inspectors that tells me that they do indeed follow up.
(BTW, it's mail fraud if they even *ask* you to send them money through the mail in a Ponzi scheme.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Actually I find it hard too. But because of another reason. I've had some troubles with the Dutch post. My mail was consistently arriving either late, or not arriving at all. Went to complain at the Post Office, and got brushed off. Turns out that a recipient isn't a customer of the post, and so has no right to complain about delivery. seems strange that he can be held responsible than.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Generally something almost two months old would be considered old news, no matter if it was linked to in a Slashdot comment or not. Despite this, the article still has merit both for laughts and legitimate information. Therefore, it seems to be a bit of Stuff that matters.. Also, considering my general nerdiness and my interest in the article, this posting was, at least for me, a bit of News for nerds. Therefore, it seems to fit.
Well, then I'll tell you: most of them were delivered. A few were not. A USPS guy drank the water bottle. The brick arrived in little pieces. The feather duster was pretty quick. Most things arrived within a week. A few took longer. Someone got mad about the touth.
Sometimes I think things were better during the Industrial Revolution. If people were disrespectful like this little snot they'd get fired and end up with no government spoon to feed them. Be dead in a week, or they'd learn some respect for their jobs and for other people's property.
Conservatism is essentially about "leave me the fuck alone," not "force other fuckers to stop doing stuff I don't like."
Actually, you are wrong from two different perspectives.
1) The views that you speak of are generally considered "classically liberal", which the US was founded upon. Liberal means "favoring change" which was important to the oppressed colonies.
2) Conservatism literally means "Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change." Now, the US comes from a classical liberal perspective, and has since moved away from it (a matter of degree, compared with other countries). So the "traditional view", or conservative view often refers to the anti-government sentiment that you also refer to. Of course, it also refers to other classical political traits such as pro-military, racism (don't flame me), and agriculture.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Oay, but I missed the original comment. And the article was incredibly funny.
I'm glad they posted it. Do you really expect them to read every comment and not post anything already included there?
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
I'm going to be laughing over that one for day! :)
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
The cool thing is that you use these as your sole adderss in some cases. I sent a letter out with no return address and just the numbers "92115-8055" (my PO Box's ZIP+4) on the front once and it made it just fine...
Same thing goes for family names:
will often make it as well...
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"...and Maddest of all, to see Life as it Is, and not as it Should Be."
Excellent point. What about sentimental value? What if that was a brick from the rural farmhouse someone was born in which no longer exists? Methinks the DEA went waaaaay over the line there.
Plus, in order to make a brick, it has to be baked in a kiln at >1,000C. This would surely change any drugs hidden in a pocket inside the brick, on a molecular level. If not, then surely you'd end up with one big solidified chunk of drug on the inside?
I mean, isn't it enough to chip off a small amount of the exterior of the brick and analyze it (GC/MS, maybe?) to make sure it's really a normal brick?
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Yes, there are a hundred definitions of conservative out there. The "people are dangerous and should have constraints placed on them" crowd doesn't have any more to do with the current 10 o'clock news version of the "conservative-liberal" spectrum than my definition did earlier, though.
There are a lot of "radical conservatives" under your "conservatives want to put constraints on people" metric -- Diane Fienstien is my favorite villian of the day, of course, and George W. Bush ranks up there on that measure, too. Some of the more folks who were far more liberal than either of the two above on that metric included Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., John Ashcroft (to some degree), the Cato Institute, and quite a few of the "Blue Dog" Democrats (who, paradoxically, are often called "conservative" democrats, despite being much more liberal by your definition).
The point I'm making is that there is not definitive text on conservativism. To say that there is only one kind of conservative is like saying there is only one kind of feminist, or one kind of hacker (for a slashdot definition). The words conservative and liberal have become worse than useless for labeling people and movements -- they mean so many different things to so many different people, and have accrued so much baggage that the words puts people into very useless, very high sided boxes, that do nothing to compartmentalize any actual beliefs.
Without context, conservative and liberal are almost always the wrong words to use in any conversation that demands thought.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
And I guess you are GOD or just so cool as to be the one to determine what is religious and what is superstitious and judge people based on your belief, or just impose your belief, whatever it may be, on someone else.
Where exactly do I try imposing my belief on someone else? I believe everyone has a right to say and to think what they want; you have a right to believe in whatever you want. I have a right to believe that you're being superstitious. I'm posting an opinion on a public board, not coming into your house and converting you by gunpoint.
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It happens that I had recently read an article on wordplay in the Smithsonian magazine in which the author asserted that some puckish soul had once sent a letter addressed, with playful ambiguity, to
HILL
JOHN
MASS
and it had gotten there after the postal authorities had worked out that it was to be read as "John Underhill, Andover, Mass." (Get it?)
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Hmmm, Not really a valid address -- not only is there no ZIP, there's no street, no number, etc etc... :)
Actually, the whole Bill Bryson excerpt there is a good read, and relavant to the current USPS topic :) ... Good luck getting a letter to me: Lord Carrot, /. Poster, Adelaide, Australia :)
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
i would just like to say that the usps has been very friendly on many more than one occasion. did you know (up untill recently, in my area anyway) that you could mail a letter merely by taping 32 cents to the envelope? you can also send 2x4's through the mail (drilling holes in them makes them lighter, cheaper postage). on the whole, i applaud the people behind the article, espically since they ended prasing the usps for being good sports. well done.
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
Enough said.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
When I was in Prague 2 years ago, I shipped a box with 14 bottles of Absinth back to the USA. Absinth is an alcoholic drink containing Wormwood extract that is banned in every country in the world except for the Czech Republic and Andorra. It's a hallucinogenic drink.
We wrote that the contents of the box were 8 bottles of wine, because we were afraid that you are only allowed to import a certain amount of alcohol before you have to pay taxes on it (that, and it is illegal in the USA).
Anyways, the box arrived at the proper address in the USA after only 2 weeks (shipped ground/boat). One bottle was broken and one was completely empty, but the rest were unharmed. We packed everything in a very a complicated way and upon opening it, everything was the exactly as we left it. There was no tampering and I don't believe that the US or Czech post even opened the box. The empty bottle must have had a leaky lid and its contents evaporated (Absinth is 70% alcohol).
Keeping
This is all fascinating because it's true. In fact when I worked as a mail clerk I wrote a letter on the back of a stamp (tiny writing) and dropped it in the mail. It got there. Also someone sent a whole pumpkin to a guy in the office she was having an affair with. It just had a label and a stamp (machine postage stamp for in the neighborhood of $5 for parcel post.) That guy was the coolest guy in the office for a month. Then the pumpkin began to smell.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
The USPS is an organization staffed with real people, with a limited budget, and with a legal mandate to try to deliver mail. If people do these kinds of things, their costs go up and other mail delivery suffers. And a number of poor people have to deal with your smelly cheese or risk injuring themselves on your poorly packaged item.
People here would complain loudly if a 10M file clogged up their mail queue. It seems much worse to impose these kinds of physical hazards on real postal workers.
Actually I'm basing my opinion on several experiances which I have had, not 1. Also it is on other peoples experiances that I have been told about. And I AM a genius just to let you know.
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
A rather cheap and juvenile piece, I thought.
... "reliable" did you call it?!
The USPS stole/lost all the gifts I posted home to rellies in Oz on my first visit there, I was broke at the time, so I'm not laughing. I've never sent snail-mail from the US again.
Cough, splutter
It made it through.
The friend took one look at it, wrote "return to sender" on it and stuck on another stamp. The sending friend was convulsed with laughter for several minutes upon receiving this.
We'd just done a dissection lab in high school biology... I don't remember who she sent them to, but it was at least two people. Didn't hear how that one turned out...
Ah, the fun we had when we were kids
Would an American care to enlighten us non-us residents as to how these times compare to the usual delivery times of the USPS? Six to seven days is quite a long time and I just wondered whether that was usual for packaging in the US.
There are a variety of services one can choose, first class or priority mail (air) is usually 2-3 days, and is the normal method for letters and priority packages. Parcel post (which I imagine these were sent as) is essentially a ground shipment method and normally takes several days cross-country but is less expensive. Bulk or book rates are slower yet.
Apparently you can't ship human remains via the USPS. Who knew? Guess you'll have to FedEx 'em. Can you see that scene? Walk in to the local FedEx office and say "Yo I got dis dead guy hear. Can youse send him to Don Carpazzio in New York for me?"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/01/19/15112 33&cid=72
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Well, my contribution towards the torture of delivery people was aimed at UPS, but it was humorous just the same.
Last summer, I tracked down a fellow from Montana who has some blacksmithing tools I wanted, and sent him a check for a few hundred dollars. A few days later, I woke up to the sound of a UPS truck pulling in my driveway bright and early:
*slam*
*swoosh* (rear door opening)
"goddamn... fuggin..piece o...hrrrrr"
*stompstompstompstomp*
*hwathump* (on my doorstep)
"...can't fuggin believe... fuggin two of 'em... arrrr..."
*stompstompstompstomp*
*hwathump* (again on my doorstep)
By the time I got my jeans on, the truck was pulling away. And there they were: one 140 lb. anvil, and one 150 lb. anvil (nice ones, too), side by side on my doorstep, no packaging of any kind -- just a mailing label taped to the side of each -- right up against the screen door so that I couldn't get out.
Served me right, I suppose.
Jon
I think not...(*poof*)
The thing that jumped out at me was the brick that got pulverized by the DEA. I want to know if those motherfucking jackbooted thugs had a warrant to destroy private property to look for drugs, and if so, what the probably cause was that some idiot judge accepted.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yeah, they'll mail bricks, but...
Usually they'll mail them only if they don't know they're bricks. I hear there's a specific regulation about it.
It's not to keep you from mailing bricks attached to business-reply cards...
Seems a LONG time back (like before the US highway system was complete - and I mean US, not Interstate) there was a town in the upper half of lower Michigan, which wanted to build a town hall. Out of bricks.
There were no paved roads nearby, and no brick makers either.
So they bought some bricks down in Detroit and looked into what it would cost to ship them commercially. Then they checked how much it would cost to mail them first-class. First class rates are standard, with the easy-to-deliver metro mail subsidizing the hard-to-deliver cross-country and back-country stuff.
Turned out it was MUCH cheaper to wrap each brick and send it first class than to ship them.
So they did.
And the post office delivered every last one of 'em. At considerable impact to their budget.
And then the regulations were changed - before somebody decided to build a hotel or something. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Using odd languages. Some of my relatives decided to play this game a long time ago. One of the best to get through was a envelope that was entirely addressed in Tolkein's runes- address, return address and letter inside. The USPS managed to decode and deliver the letter in less than a week.
It's possible, though, that the USPS in AK has a higher tolerance because of the lack of other options for moving stuff around in Alaska. A buddy of mine said that his grandfather once wanted a Christmas tree where he lived in Kodiak (an island off the southern coast of AK) so he came to Anchorage, bought one, dragged it into the post office, and mailed it. No extra packaging, no problem.
MyopicProwls
MyopicProwls
My homepage
Give 'em a bit of respect, or at least think about what they have to put up with on those days when you want to shoot someone because of the quality of service you receive.
I never quite understood the complaints people had about the USPS; you put something in the mail, in a few days it's delivered. What more do you want? I guess people assume that because it's the government, it can't be efficient, despite receiving proof that it's a pretty well-run system every day in their mailbox. Of course, a scary amount of people in this country believe angels involve themselves in their daily lives, and witches exist, so I guess logic is in short supply...
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I work at UPS, and ALL of the items listed would have made it through as shipped with no problems, except for the fact that they might be a bit roughhoused. It might seem strange to drop a hammer into a mailbox, but at UPS, this is par for the course. There are a LOT of individual items shipped as is, no wrapping, with just a label slapped on the side. Especially around Xmas, people will literally ship Xmas trees with a label taped around the trunk. It usually ends up in several pieces by the time it gets to its destination, but it WILL get there.
Other strange things that have come through the system include an unwrapped matress, a freshly severed bear's head, LOTS of tires with no wrapping, a car bumper that looked like it had been ripped off the car, complete with the license plate, boxes of live crickets which usually break open so you have crickets loose all over the place, individual car parts with no wrapping. Rank food is quite common on return items.
Fortunately, at UPS about 3% of the volume involves packages like this, so there are regular methods to transport them internally (they don't travel on the conveyor belts) I would imagine that the post office simply doesn't have the facilities to deal with a large number of unusual objects.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I would advise you, though, not to put the postal employees through too much grief. Their job is tough enough as it is. When you want to send some critical and strangely sized package, just do us all a favor and use FedEx or UPS or one of the many other private carriers. And pack appropriately! The poor guy who had to figure out what to do with the moldy and stinky cheese deserves a medal. The person who was forced to break the brick into little pieces to check for drug content probably had better things to do. And the person who had to lug the snow ski to a mailbox probably does not get enough medical coverage by the USPS to make up for the dent in his back.
These are people, people! Give 'em a bit of respect, or at least think about what they have to put up with on those days when you want to shoot someone because of the quality of service you receive.
"Please be advised that human remains may not be transported through the mail."
So THAT's what happened to aunt June...
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