Postal Traumatic Stress

I'm having a feud with my postal carrier right now. Well, feud isn't really the right word, because this is a completely one-sided battle. I'm getting worked, and I basically just have to sit back and take it.

On no particularly regular schedule, she has oftentimes for the past few weeks not arrived to deliver the day's mail until after 7:00 PM at night. I make it a point to check my mailbox upon arriving home from work, some time between 6:30 and 7:00. So recently, I've checked what turns out to be an empty mailbox, because the mail has not yet been delivered.

But here's the twist. The next day, she'll get there at some reasonable time before 6:00 pm, meaning she's been there to deliver the mail twice since I've been able to come by and check it once.

If you've already become bored with this story, you're thinking, "so what?" The what is, I've had several packages delivered lately. I have one of those "communal mailbox" situations, meaning there are only a limited number of larger boxes for big packages, and you get a key in your regular box to get at them when you have a package.

If you get a package, and you don't pick it up from the "big box" the day it's delivered, they take it out, and take it back to the post office to be held there.

So what has happened lately, more than once, is that my mail carrier will deliver a package to me some time after 7:00 PM one day, after I've checked my mail, then come by the next day before 6:00 PM, before I've checked my mail, and take my package away, back to the post office.

What am I supposed to do? Start bundling up in the January Colorado cold to check my mailbox at 11:00 at night? Leave a spring-snakes-in-a-fake-peanuts-can in my mailbox?

This is really frakking obnoxious.