In December of 2017, my wife and I began serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Washington, D.C. North Mission. We served as Record Preservation Specialists in the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis, Maryland. In preparation for our year in Annapolis, using an address that we had been given for our apartment, we submitted "change of address" forms with the United States Post Office. This seemingly simple event was to wreak havoc with many aspects of our lives over the next year and for nearly a year after we returned to our permanent residence in Provo, Utah.
After driving across the United States from Utah to Maryland, we followed the directions given us, checked into the residence office of the apartment building, and began unloading our car to move into an apartment that was up two flights of stairs. We were unable to get the key we had been given to work and finally called the apartment maintenance for assistance. With the maintenance person's help, we quickly learned that the apartment was still occupied. After a few telephone calls, we learned that our apartment was in another building in the same complex with the same apartment number but a different building number. We then carried all of our baggage back down the stairs and began the process all over again with the other apartment.
We began our service at the Maryland State Archives, and immediately went to the main post office in Annapolis, explained the mixup with our apartment and filed the documents changing our address yet again, this time to the right apartment. Mail was coming almost immediately to the wrong apartment but since we lived in an adjoining building, we could frequently check for mail. We have several important business connections and we were concerned that the mail would get lost.
As the weeks passed, we were still getting most of our mail to the wrong apartment. In fact, mail sent to our permanent residence in Utah was being marked and forwarded to the wrong Annapolis address. People who requested a notice of change of address were being notified of the wrong Annapolis address. Some mail started to come to the right apartment, but there was always some mail going to the wrong address.
Over the next few months, we made regular trips to the post office to try and get the forwarding order removed from our residence. We talked to supervisors, we filled out additional forms online and on paper and nothing seemed to work to get the wrong address dropped from the Post Office system.
This continued for the entire year we were in Annapolis. At the end of the year, we filled out more change of address forms and left to go back to Provo, Utah. When we got to Provo, we had a huge pile of mail and to our consternation found that some of our Provo mail was still being forwarded to the old wrong apartment, not the second apartment, but the one we never lived in. We then started our trips down to the Provo Post Office to start filling out the forms and talking to the managers. As the weeks and months passed again we found that no matter what we did, the mail kept being forwarded to Annapolis.
Finally, after going back through the process yet again, we thought we had the matter resolved after nearly a year and half of telling everyone we could talk to at the Post Office that we never lived in the old apartment and did not want our mail sent there. Fortunately, we had some of the missionaries who served with us at the Archives who could tell us about any mail that showed up and either send us digital copies or forward other important letters.
As a result, we have subscribed to the Post Office Online Notification system where they send us digital copies of each day's mail. Recently, we got notification of a check that was to be delivered on the day of the notice. When the check did not appear in our mailbox, we began the process of trying to find out if it had been stolen or misdelivered. After a week of calling and going to the Post Office, no one seemed to know what happened to the missing check. After more than a week, we finally got an email from the check's sender who notified us that the check had been returned marked that the address was wrong. But the address on the envelope was not wrong, it was our residence address exactly correct. Since our friends have now also left Annapolis, I am quite certain that some mail is still going to the wrong apartment. I am also concerned that the Post Office can no longer find my home in Provo.
I am sure there is some lesson to be learned from this experience but I do not know what it is. I would simply start using UPS or FedEx but then I had a whole shipment lost by FedEx and they refused to deliver it to the right address because the wrong address was on the package.
I think our society has passed the critical mass of complexity. We are now living on borrowed time. Organizations such as the Post Office that still handle so much of their business on paper are doomed to become critically ineffective and outmoded. Even those companies that have "computered up" are challenged to keep up with the volume of communication that is increasing every day. How many important items of business are being lost because the Post Office (or FedEx or whomever, cannot possibly work without making errors? Meanwhile, we are trying to move even more of our correspondence to electronic means where we can question the recipient about the receipt and resend the information immediately.
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