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My guess would be six. I know of a small neighborhood that has a different carrier every day.
Possibly more, if there are additional people covering sick days and vacations!
I think a note on the mailbox itself would be a good idea.. then anyone delivering mail to it would see it.
This solution ^ gets my vote. Just leave the note up for a while and see whether that helps.
I think the idea of changing your landscaping to accommodate thoughtless people is over the top. You should not have to change a thing.
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Obviously you didn't take into consideration the path of the mailman when you did your landscaping. Talking to them is useless since new people do the route regularly. Add some stepping stones through your rocks and plants where they walk and get over it.
Exactly! I have a garden in the strip between my driveway and the neighbor's. When I put it in, I included stepping stones because it was obvious that that was the mailpersons' preferrred route. You don't fight Mother Nature or the flow of foot traffic (human or critter) IMO.
Now that I'm going to be redoing that strip garden, I'm going to replace the stepping stones with a path two 16" square cement blocks wide ... and I'm going to put another path further up my driveway closer to the back gate where my neighbors and I are always crossing back and forth.
For a while. It's better to find a solution that doesn't require complaining. Stepping stones would be that solution. Life's too short to get all worked up over something like this.
This. ^^^^^^^^^
Complaining will do nothing. It could even backfire on you in many ways. As someone else pointed out, the USPS policy is for letter carriers to take the shortest possible route to your mailbox. That includes across grass, landscaping, what ever. It's your responsibility to put up a fence and/or put a mail box at the curb.
Even leaving a note probably wouldn't do any good. You have different mailmen. They change all the time. They will eventually forget about your note. The mailman may even have issues, get pissed off, and do even more damage to your property. Just find some other solution.
On the bright side it could be a lot worse. You could have a mailman like this.
My guess would be six. I know of a small neighborhood that has a different carrier every day.
Possibly more, if there are additional people covering sick days and vacations!
I wish we had different ones. We have had the same one for at least 15 years. He is the most miserable man. He looks like he hates the world. He never speaks to anyone, even if spoken to. One time he showed a sign of life when he gave my husband a thumbs up after using the new mailbox my husband had installed. Very strange. You can't help but worry if he's the one who will go postal next. I certainly wouldn't want to be the person who pushed him over the edge by complaining about stones.
I wish we had different ones. We have had the same one for at least 15 years. He is the most miserable man. He looks like he hates the world. He never speaks to anyone, even if spoken to. One time he showed a sign of life when he gave my husband a thumbs up after using the new mailbox my husband had installed. Very strange. You can't help but worry if he's the one who will go postal next. I certainly wouldn't want to be the person who pushed him over the edge by complaining about stones.
As a 29 year veteran of the USPS (now retired) I can tell you Letter Carrier is one of the worst jobs in the USPS. The pressure they are under to get out of the office, get it delivered and get back on time is pretty high. And personnel cutbacks, route consolidations, weather, etc. make it worse.
Many carriers are sort of personality misfits. The job appeals to them in that for most of the day, they do not have to deal with supervisors, co-workers, etc. They're just out there by themselves.
We've had great ones. Walking routes, driving routes. All nice until our recent woman. She's not bad. She just can't get our mailbox lid shut. It got more and more frequent, stuff got wet. Things blew out of the box. We just decided not to tip her this holiday. Now every day our mailbox lid is closed tight.
A few years back I redid the narrow strip between my driveway and my neighbor. I planted bulbs/flowers in there such that it would always have something in bloom throughout the summer.
The sidewalk was in front...about 30' from the center of the new flower bed, and I put in a path about 25' toward to rear between the two properties so pedestrians could pass without going through the flower bed.
The mail man...mostly we had the same person....would walk through the flower bed....every day. So I left him a note. No effect..."the note must have been lost", I thought. I left another note...larger. No effect. Finally, I stopped the mailman one day and asked him, "I am never going to be able to stop you from walking though the middle of my flower bed, am I?" He pondered the question for a long moment, and then gave me a firm "No"!
Nice guy, he was, but not the sharpest tool in the shed, and not about to change his behavior--and he certainly had no understanding that the landscaping was there to spruce up the place, provide a little color, and was not a place to be trampled through.
I solved the problem by placing a few stones where he could take the three steps he needed to get across the flower bed without stepping on plants or dirt. Problem solved.
Large cactus plants will look nice in your rock garden.
Or holly!
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