U.S. Mail Is So Bad In Chicago Post Office 'Closed For Lunch'

CHICAGO — Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night can derail the U.S. Postal Service in Mt. Greenwood, 60655, unless it's time for lunch.

Erin Foster discovered the apparent exception to the postal service's unofficial motto scribbled on a handwritten note taped the front door of her neighborhood post office on a Tuesday visit with two kids in two to pick up packages that have gone undelivered for weeks.

"I'm beyond frustrated," Foster said. "Here, lately, this has been happening a lot. They open late, close early or close for lunch. It's been pretty intense. I've pretty much stopped going to that post office."

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Ald. Matt O'Shea (19th) was befuddled by the out-to-lunch sign. "Just when you think that things can't get any worse at the Post Office, there's this," he said. "If somebody called me to say the Post Office was closed for lunch, I'd think they were just so pissed-off about the bad service they made it up. Nope. There's the sign taped to the door. Unbelievable."

Since July, mailboxes across Chicago have gone empty for days and weeks in a row. O'Shea's South Side ward has been among the postal zones that have suffered the most. He has teamed with U.S. Rep. Dan Lipiniski and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin to demand a federal investigation into the delivery issues. So far, those complaints have been met with a shrug.

Earlier this month, Durbin called out newly appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a top Republican fundraiser with no postal service experience appointed by President Trump, for foolishly eliminating overtime for postal employees and issue orders that mail be delayed when distribution centers run late at the root of mail delivery troubles.

Democratic leaders in Congress have accused Trump of intentionally wrecking the postal service in the lead up to the November election. In Chicago, though, local leaders have separate and equally troublesome complaints about the severe decline in mail service — senior citizens and folks on government assistance due to the pandemic who don't get their medication, Social Security and unemployment checks delivered on time, to name a few.

"Durbin has different reasons to look at the Postal Service problems. But I'll take whatever reason I can get for an investigation to what is very clearly a huge problem," O'Shea said.

MORE ON PATCH: UPDATE: Sen. Dick Durbin Demands Immediate Postal Service Funding

More than half of the 3,000 people responded to a survey Ald. O'Shea sent out to Southwest Side residents expressed frustration with mail delivery service. Many reported not getting mail for days or weeks. Postal Service officials dismissed O'Shea's polling by claiming their own survey of postal customers in the Mount Greenwood ZIP code found 97 percent satisfaction.

"There's no way there's 90-percent satisfaction. Sometimes there's people in line at 3:30 of 4 o'clock [in the afternoon] at the Post Office and the say they're closing early, leaving people in line," Foster said. "It happened to my neighbor."

Foster, who lives in the 60655 ZIP Code, said her mail sometimes gets delivered at 9 p.m. by a postal carrier wearing a headlamp, or not at all.

And that's caused plenty of problems. Foster said she had to prove to Mt. Greenwood Elementary officials that her family didn't move out of the neighborhood because a letter was returned to the school stamped "Return to Sender."

"I had to convince them that we live in the same house and it was the Post Office's fault," Foster said.

The lunchtime shutdown at the Mt. Greenwood Post Office adds to the long list of complaints that Foster says she hopes is the "last straw" that leads to significant Postal Service improvements in her part of town.

Ald. O'Shea told Patch he forwarded photos of the "closed for lunch" sign to Lipinski and Durbin, urging them to keep "pushing the envelope" toward a fix.

MORE ON PATCH: Postal Service Shrugs Off Chicago Mail Delivery Complaints

Chicago district Postal Service spokesman Timothy Norman didn't have an explanation for the Tuesday lunchtime closure at the 60655 Post Office.

"Our offices do not close for lunch [we] and are investigating why this office had that sign up," Norman said in an email. He did not respond to a request for an interview.

Foster said she's already decided that she won't be voting by mail in the November election.

"I absolutely refuse to do a mail-in ballot because of all this," she said. "I fully believe My vote will not count because it is never going to get there in the mail."