Postal Service takes 22 years to deliver Invitation

So have you ever sent a letter to someone and they have never gotten it? I know I have sent mail that has never ended up in the receiver’s mailbox, and it is very frustrating to me. After reading this article I was quite amazed. A woman in La Grande Oregon received an invitation to her nephew’s high school graduation in New Jersey. This doesn’t seem like anything that would be out of the ordinary besides the fact that it’s postmarked June 2, 1987. Her nephew graduated 22 years ago and is now an assistant principle for a school in Atlanta. Theresa Schlossarek received the invitation opened, but without any clues of where it might have been for 22 years. This issue was brought up with Peter Hass who is a spokesman for the U.S. postal service Said that the delay was “very unusual and very unfortunate” suggesting that the envelope could have been stuck in machinery or could have been misrouted.
I think that it’s crazy that a letter would take 22 years to get to someone, but postal workers are only human and mistakes can be made. It also makes me wonder how many people get the wrong mail, and don’t send it back or could even take 22 years to send back to who it was initially sent too. It also makes me wonder if these mistakes are less likely to happen with technology today and the popular use of e-mail over paper letters. Although mistakes are made we really don’t hear about them much, like this story!
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-odd/20090222/ODD.Late.Mail/

Let me start by saying, considering the volume, I think the post office does an amazing job.

That said, I remember reading a case in Panama City, FL, of a postal worker who would regularly put mail that he "didn't finish delivering" into his garage. When he was discovered, there was, I belive, a completely full garage. There was cash, checks, bills, invitations, photos and god knows what else in there. The post office was very apologetic, but that was quite the story at the time.

I don't think that there will be any fewer mistakes with the electronic age though. Now we are relying on computers and programs to be able to find and fix human errors. Unfortunately, they were programed by the humans they are supposed to track, so there will still be errors.

An example, my father is 73 years old and makes out his bills on time everytime. So, he was surprised to find a $5.00 late charge on his phone bill. On close examination, I found that he had misread the amount and made out his check for 8 cents too little. It resulted in a $5.00 late charge. How ridiculous! I called and they removed the charge and were very nice, but, it was a computer program that popped the charge on in the first place....so, what do you do?

This is a pretty interesting story. I think that God sometimes has things like this happen for a reason. Maybe this person was not meant to attend that graduation party. Maybe she would have been killed in a plane crash if she had attended. I’m just wondering if there is more to this story. At any rate, it sounds like a good beginning to a novel or a movie. You could get very creative and do a lot with that in a story. I think that someone should investigate it more to see what was going on at that time to learn the rest of the story.

Wow, twenty two years to get a graduation invitation. I have heard of this happening before though. There was a case on the local news of something like this happening in Bay City. A lady received a letter that was adressed to her husband who died. It is a good thing that this piece of mail was not something like a check, or a letter saying that something bad has happened to a family member. I know that everyone is human, but don’t you think that they should have found this letter in less then twenty years. I guess maybe machines are not the great adventure that we think that they maybe. If an actually person went through the mail to sort it, then it would not have got caught in a machine, and she would have been able to get it sooner. I don’t think that it was misrouted, because if this was the case, what too twenty years to get to this elderly woman. I hope that she had a good sense of humor, because if it was me, it don’t think that I would just shrug it off. I hope she did’t miss the graduation party or that her nephew wasn’t mad that she missed it. I guess this is another strike against the postal service, and another benefit for the e-mail system. I personally only use the mail for bills, and not for communication. I did send some christmas cards out, but maybe those will have to go online, so that they do not get lost in the mail.

This story is pretty crazy, but doesn't seem to be to out of the ordinary. I just went through this exact same thing. It didn't take them 22 years to get my package to where it was meant to go, but it took them over a month. The funny thing is that package was going no more then a few hours away from here. It doesn't make it seem like the post office is very dependable though. You would think that since they know that they are handling very important things that they would make sure that they are getting things to where they need to be in a timely manner, but apparently not.

I know someone that delivers the mail and she works very hard! A lot more goes into delivering mail than people would think it does. The fact that this letter actually got to her after twenty two years is crazy to me. If I got someone else’s mail, and then opened it I would feel embarrassed and guilty about opening it! Maybe, if this letter did get on the wrong mail route, the person had good intentions of mailing it back and didn’t find it until twenty two years later, by that time they just wanted to know what it was and since it was a nice invitation decided to mail it just incase the person that was supposed to get invited thought they weren’t rally invited.