No Mail For Weeks: Is Postal Service 'Falling Apart' In Chicago?

CHICAGO — Standing in the Roseland Post Office lobby Monday, nearly two weeks since my friendly neighborhood mail carrier last dropped an envelope in my mail slot, an angry lady offered everyone within earshot her spot-on take on the state of the U.S. Postal Service in Chicago.

"They don't deliver your f------ mail. Then you come here to get the f------ mail, and they won't give you no f------ mail. It don't make no m------------ sense," she said before storming out the door.

[COMMENTARY]

The woman's profane frustration echoed as I talked to Gwendolyn Williams, who had to leave work early just to check on whether she could pick up important documents she was expecting in the mail weeks ago — her son's medical insurance card and paperwork her daughter needs to certify for unemployment benefits, among them.

The stack of envelopes in Williams' arm Monday included the unemployment documents sent from 65th and Pulaski with a June 29 postmark. "Hopefully, my daughter didn't miss any deadline because the mail didn't get delivered," Williams said. "I have to come over here three or four times a month just to see where my mail is. They need to do better."

Franklin Walker, who owns Better Hands Landscaping, said he waited in line 45 minutes trying to get undelivered mail — payments from clients and new business cards, among other things — only to be turned away.

"They said, I've got to come back between 12 and 2, and I work during those hours," Walker said. "It ain't right. My bills, my business application. I've got people mailing money orders. And I'm behind on a lot of processing paperwork because my mail is either not being delivered on time, or at all. And then you come here and get treated, well, not how anybody should be treated. The lady at the counter told me she had other work to do rather than give us mail. It definitely ain't right."

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As things turn out frustrated folks living in the 60628 ZIP code aren't alone. On any given block in neighborhoods from Mt. Greenwood to Englewood to Ravenswood and beyond people have been heard bemoaning denied access to their bills, unemployment checks, insurance cards, medicine and even birthday gifts recently stuck in post office purgatory.

Complaints about mail delivery have been on the uptick in recent years. But in the last few weeks, Chicago elected officials say they've been receiving an increasing number of calls from frustrated residents.

North Side ward boss Nick Sposato put me on speakerphone while he polled his staff about postal delivery troubles. "Hey everybody, how often does somebody call to complain that they haven't been getting mail?" Sposato shouted in the office. "Every day," 38th Ward staffers replied.

Last year, Ald. Matt O'Shea (19th) had 150 people show up to a town hall meeting regarding mail delivery trouble. "I'd have trouble getting that many people to a town hall if there was shooting," he said. And since then, the problem has only gotten worse.

"As an alderman, I have no authority over the postal service … and my office is getting calls 10 times a week, just to give you an idea of how widespread the problem is," O'Shea said.

"Senior citizens are telling us how they get their medication in the mail and when it doesn't come they've got health problems. And people say they're fighting with companies over unpaid bills that they never got in the damn mail. Then they go to the post office to file a complaint, and they tell me they get treated poorly."

Congressman Dan Lipinski sent a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on July 8 calling for a "thorough investigation" of operations at the Mt. Greenwood post office, and to take "corrective actions" to improve customer service there.

Mail delivery delays have gotten so bad that parts of Ald. Ray Lopez's Southwest Side ward that local churches in West Englewood organized a makeshift prescription pickup and delivery service to help senior citizens maintain steady access to medication that they no longer can count on the postal service to deliver on time every month.

"Mail delivery has been unpredictable at best and atrocious at worst. Ours is a overtime district, when mail carriers finish their normal routes then they come here," Lopez said. "It came to our attention that it's a staffing issue ... and there's been a refusal to hire more carriers. It's not a new problem. It's the worst kept secret in Chicago. And unfortunately it's been brought to the attention of our federal lawmakers time and again, and for whatever reason nobody has been willing to really step up and hold the U.S. Postal Service accountable."

For Chicagoans, poor mail delivery is a familiar plague.

In the early 1990s, Chicago was a national embarrassment for the U.S. Postal Service. Investigators uncovered massive fraud and delivery problems, including: About 200 pounds of mail that was set on fire in Englewood. A mail truck was discovered on the North Side packed with 40,000 undelivered pieces of mail. And a Northwest Side mail carrier got caught hoarding more than a ton of undelivered mail in his apartment.

In 2007, Chicago had the worst in-town delivery service in the country. Former Chicago postmaster Gloria Tyson said there were problems picking, sorting and delivering mail that often arrive at the wrong address, as late as 11 p.m., or not at all. Public outrage, congressional pressure and a story I wrote at the Sun-Times, eventually led to equipment upgrades and 500 new mail carriers getting hired. By 2010, Chicago's in-town mail delivery had improved to near the national average.

A decade later, mail delivery in Chicago stinks again. But this time, there doesn't seem to be much hope that screaming alderman, congressman and news headlines will make much of a difference.

U.S. Postal Service officials even refused to recognize there's a problem.

"Operations are running as normal," a spokesman told CBS 2.

When I called this week, post office officials wouldn't answer specific questions, and declined interview requests.

Spokesman David Partenheimer instead sent a statement that "one customer complaint is too many," and the organization would "gladly work to address any specific issue reported from the community."

As for Lipinski's letter: "The Postal Service will investigate the concerns raised by Rep. Lipinski and will respond directly to him."

"The Postal Service is a responsible employer that matches our workforce to an evolving workload and adjusts staffing continuously to serve our customers with consistent, reliable service," Partenheimer wrote.

"That includes changing starting times in the last few weeks for some locations in Chicago."

National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 11 President Mack Julion told me those newly mandated start times — pushing back mail delivery from as early as 6:30 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. — coupled with more than a year of mail carrier staffing shortages are at the heart of Chicago's mail delivery troubles.

"The root of the problem that we're seeing now is about staffing issues that never got resolved last year, coupled with the pandemic, have created a really bad situation. And late start times, they are not conducive to providing good service and it's been a source of contention between the union and postal service management," Julion said. "Three weeks later, mail delivery in the city is falling apart."

Congressman Danny Davis, whose district office has received a rush of mail delivery complaints, said pushing for an obvious solution — boosting federal funding to hire more mail carriers and brokering labor peace between the union and postal service management — won't be easy.

Last month, President Trump appointed North Carolina businessman Louis DeJoy, a top Republican fundraiser with no postal service experience, as postmaster general, a move that Democrats worry could destroy the postal service as we know it.

"This administration would like to privatize as much of the postal service as they can manage to do so. We've heard the president say he isn't in favor of providing help to the postal service," Davis said. "And I don't think there's any reason to believe that the postal service can function well without help from the federal government."

Davis and Lipinkski say they still plan to put up a fight. As for the postal service, a spokesman said in an email that they "don’t have anything additional to add at this time."

The best advice he could give for folks who haven't seen a mail carrier on their block in weeks: Call your local post office to file a complaint.

I gave it a try. The phone rang eight times, then the line went busy.

Somebody tell that angry lady at the Roseland Post Office, they don't answer the phone, either.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots.
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