Every now and then, I need to have my meds mailed to me, and generally they arrive just fine. This last month, I’ve thought that I either managed to throw a scrip out by accident, or was actually seriously slipping in the mental department, but no, it was the post office. My meds were mailed on 2/3/16, and I got them today, 3/15/16. Well, at least I’m not losing my mind. I think.
I wonder if it is possible to get a month in advance? That level of postal randomness comes with potentially dangerous consequences.
Was there any sign the package had been opened?
Diversion by either some drug-sniffing government agency or by someone hoping to steal some oxycontin are the only reasons I can think of for such an unconscionable delay.
Cartimandua, no, that’s not possible with schedule 2 drugs here in the States. The possible consequences struck me as well, because a lot of elderly people here get all their meds via mail, especially when they live rural. I do think pharmacies have license to re-issue drugs if they don’t arrive, but I’m not sure. The ‘war on drugs’ crap here has screwed everything up royally. It’s awful to think that someone may die because of this sort of negligence.
Moarscienceplz:
There was no tampering, and I’m afraid this is probably more due to standard negligence than some malicious agency. Back when we lived in Salt Lake City, Rick ended up doing a lot of maintenance at the postal sorting facility at the SLC airport. He was there about a month, and every day came home with horror stories about mail and packages ending up in the cage under the conveyor systems, and even though the employees could open the cages and check for ‘lost’ items, they wouldn’t do it. They cited the conveyor running for not doing it, but when the cage key was used, it cut power to the conveyor, so there was no danger, and all it took to restart it was a switch, but no, they just wouldn’t do it. So, all this ‘lost’ mail would just stay under the conveyors until maintenance was needed.
Caine
Fascinating. I never would have imagined mail was knowingly lost and just neglected like that.
Our rural postal service here is pretty terrible, sadly. I’m often delivering packages for all my neighbors, because it’s just easier to dump it on my mud room than pay attention to names and addresses, apparently. For a long time I would get the mail of someone who lived in another county, but happened to have the same last name and first initial of me. It was baffling.
TMM:
I kept telling Rick “oh gods, no, I don’t want to know this stuff!” but the stories kept coming. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.
Oh, rural post. Ours was much like yours for a long time, but we got a new postmistress a few years back, and it’s much better now. She cares about her job, and she loves the foreign stamps which show up quite often in our stuff.
The worldwide mail system is just a random path generator. I bought four decent bicycle tires from the UK for me in Oz at something like half the price they are at home. They were dispatched in two separate parcels on the same day. Two weeks for one half of the order, 3 1/2 weeks for the other half. Well travelled treads indeed.
If parcels had voices what tales would they tell? Dark stories of endless warrens and bumpy trips in giant bags, jabbed by sharp corners of poorly wrapped items, and the final cry of joy as the end recipient hugs the box and thanks the ever polite delivery guy for his little part in the long journey.
Lofty:
If they get there. There was a recent story in the paper here about some mail that was found in a crack in the wall at a post office, all from the 1940s. It reminded me immediately of Pratchett’s Going Postal, where Moist delivers some of the lost letters, and there was the old man and woman who never married because a letter wasn’t delivered, and now, both widowed they were going to marry. A lot of stuff probably doesn’t matter all that much, but there is stuff in the postal system that’s vital.
It wasn’t one or two times at the previous place I lived in that I got mail that was supposed to go to a different street, to building and a a flat. Of course some level or errors is inevitable.
Just to make things more random and gratuitous, some rural postal services may deliver mail with very incomplete addresses, for example my aunt’s family once got a postcard with address like this:
“Obscure nickname for the family”
“Zip code” “Town name”
The postal service here in Finland has fired huge numbers of people lately, both because there are fewer letters and magazines nowadays and because mail delivery will be opened for competition. So, at times mail will be late here, because the postal service fired too many people. Errors in mail delivery may have risen also.
Me @ 9
It should read:
It wasn’t one or two times at the previous place I lived in that I got mail that was supposed to go to a different street, but to a building and a flat with the same number I had.
Ice Swimmer:
There’s been something of a movement here to shut down rural post offices, and consolidate them into a near by town. That almost happened in Almont, but I’m glad it didn’t, because we’re on the side of town that doesn’t get a mailbox, we have to pick up at the post office. If it was shut down, mail would be moved to New Salem, and that’s a bit of trip to go get mail.
Caine
Well, that’s the thing isn’t it? Dead Parcels Tell No Tales.
The other day I got a parcel from our next door state. The sender must have bought a huge roll of bubble wrap for his shop, because the stuff I bought came as a lumpy white blob the size of a labrador. Even then, I could feel two sharp edges just waiting to break free and slash the heart out of a small terrierfied parcel of pills. The bubble wrap monster was heard sniggering under its breath until I put it out of its misery. Slash, slash I went, and out popped smaller bubble wrapped parcels that the monster had eaten in its quest to be the master of its passage through the postal labyrinth.
Well I made some of that up but now I’ve got some techy stuff to play with!
Caine #4,
I only worked to install the conveyor system at that one post office facility. All conveyor systems have “leaks”, yet transport 99 + % of the cargo to the end user. Still, it was amazing to be called out after the install, to find letters, small packages, and especially postcards piled up at the transition points where the first conveyor dumped onto the second one. We only had a contract to support the facility for a few months after the install, what happened after that, I don’t know.
Freight gets misdirected all the time. Some parts we ordered recently, had the wrong label attached, and UPS sent it to Maine. We were able to track it, though, they found it, and sent it to us, only about 10 days late.
Dakotagreasemonkey @ 13:
Well, it least they didn’t go to Africa, like my calendar.
As I understand it the package handling machinery the USPS uses, it is assumed other package handling systems are similar, are optimized for boxes and flat envelopes. If this package was a flat envelope with a substantial bulge in the middle it would be harder for the conveyor systems to handle.
Some of this has to do with the occasional unfortunate tendency for contents to shift inside the package. If the drugs were flattish boxes and the manila envelope was pressed cross-wise it can allow the internal flat packages to flip 90 degrees and make the larger container more resemble a football. Systems that are designed for flat packages of some limited thickness. If the package blooms in thickness it either gets shunted aside, or it self-selects and jumps off the conveyor.
If a human is present it is easy enough for them to toss the package back on the belt. If they are highly conscientious they might grab the package and manipulate a bit to get the internal contents to lay flat again. Hopefully they don’t just pound it flat.
Of course, as much as we would like to think our packages are handled entirely by hand by friendly and helpful people who lovingly see that each precious payload gets lovingly guided to its destination in good order the fact is that package handlers are dealing with thousands of packages. TLC is in short supply.
A fun look at the package business:
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1242-5-reasons-packages-get-destroyed-learned-working-at-ups.html