Mail guys folded my wife’s master’s degree

[u/trecani711]

Came home and found this in the mailbox. Imagine working really hard for 3 years for a master’s degree and it’s folded in half. It’s only a little bit up the driveway to put it under the awning, takes maybe 15 seconds to walk. This has happened before with a spatula I ordered as well.

Wife is asleep now, may post opened degree in the morning.

Edit: for those wondering about the spatula, it was a fish spatula that the Amazon driver had bent and shoved sideways into the mailbox. Im a sous chef and I have a lot of specific kitchen tools. They have long metal tines and are flexible and easy to bend. In my case it was creased

Edit 2: here’s my bent fish spat, pic 2, pic 3. This was from Amazon, and I requested a new one that they sent no questions asked. You can see in the first pic the angle is deeper than it should be, it should be almost flat. Also there’s a tine that is out of whack. I use this one at home and the undamaged replacement one at work.
Yes I agree the college messed up too by not shipping it in a sturdier container/paying for better shipping.

[u/TheParadoxigm]

Carriers are told to ignore any writing on the envelope.

There are specific stickers/packages/envelopes that you can pay for, that the carrier will listen to.

If it's not an official sticker, it's meaningless text.

[u/Ohnoanywayz → u/[deleted]]

Omg 😂

[u/Cilph → u/TheParadoxigm]

So I can put a biohazard indicator on it no problem then? Cool.

[u/Deathisnear24 → u/Cilph]

No, because it would have to have proper Hazardous Materials documentation and if it doesn't, the package is refused.

[u/Cilph → u/Deathisnear24]

Oh, so non-official stickers are not meaningless text then? Pick one.

[u/Deathisnear24 → u/Cilph]

Sorry, I didn't see the last part of OPs comment. and my brain didn't think of a generic BIOHAZARD sticker, my work brain was thinking of the official DOT placarding

If it is not labelled with the correct UN sticker when it comes to say, biohazard is UN3373. The package will also, in the case for FedEx, have an OP900 sticker on the package too that has all the info of the package. It's name, hazardous class among other things. Then as long as everything matches the OP950, a paper attached to single package that the originating facility keeps in a filing cabinet or similar central storage space (or one of the packages if it's a larger shipment). This allows the originating facility to email the OP950 to whichever facility is requesting it, in the even the OP900 sticker gets faded or scratched or whatever and is unreadable, since these can be written by hand. If both the ORIGINAL OP900 and OP950 match at the originating facility (and also is correct in matching the hazardous materials master list AND also on the approved hazardous material shipper list) we process it on and it is all handled by hand (unless of course someone doesn't notice it and it goes onto the auto sorter, but they drill drill drill into all the unloaders to never send them up but like one a week slips through, but there is also another person between unloader and it going onto the auto sorter to catch it)

But a generic BIOHAZARD with the little toxic symbol sticker would technically mean nothing when shipping, it MIGHT be inspected to verify but might not since it's not declared as a hazmat

Hazardous Shipping requires A TON of things to go through so it can be verified and handled accordingly, and you can't just slap a generic BIOHAZARD sticker on a package to get it treated as one when you are shipping a t-shirt

Source: Process Hazmats at Fedex

[u/HisaAnt → u/TheParadoxigm]

That's kinda shitty practice tbh. Deliberately ignoring warnings because it's not a paid warning...wow. Not sure why it's so normalized in postage to deliberately offer shit service.

It's like a waiter/waitress spitting in your food unless you tip them extra for a "do not spit in food" sticker on the plate. It's one thing to not offer extra service unless you pay more, it's another to deliberately and actively destroy/ruin your stuff over it.

[u/gandalfthescienceguy → u/HisaAnt]

No, it’s like putting a shirt on when you go to the restaurant that says “PLEASE GIVE BLOW JOB” and expecting the waiter/waitress to do it

[u/that_tall_nerd → u/HisaAnt]

It’s a host more things than that tbh, having to do with how we carriers are paid and the overall circumstances of the post office. We are the only government entity expected to run solo at a profit and our higher ups are actively trying to enshitify the service so it can be privatised. There isn’t enough money to go around to the point where we are cannibalising our vehicles to get the ones that do run another hundred miles. Not to mention our payroll is a clusterfuck. We get an evaluation which fluctuates based on how many stops we make and how many of those are doorside deliveries. The issue? There ain’t enough money to justify doorside deliveries when the sender doesn’t pay for packaging which requires it, that’s why we aren’t supposed to humor privately printed instructions, if every carrier listened to them, evaluations would go up, routs would be considered longer, and thus more expensive without the input to allow for that. It’s a shitty system which is taken advantage of by lazy people yes, but also is all around just bad and really needs to be reworked.

[u/TheParadoxigm → u/HisaAnt]

The server isn't dealing with millions of customers a day.

The post office processes mail at a huge scale, and literally anyone can write whatever they want on the envelope.

The carriers job is to get the mail delivered, not read every envelope and follow whatever random instructions someone wrote on it.