Post Office Update

As many of you know we have a "pretend" post office in Big Water so when I found out we were moving to Mantua I was excited that we might have a real post office to work with.

After talking with Quent about our commuting back and forth we decided that the best course of action would to be to get a post office box as the Hatchery and the residence share an address, yes this means we get mail delivered to the house!!! (Mantua has it's own zip code but the mail is delivered from Brigham City.)

While looking on usps.com for some unrelated information I found that I could reserve a post office box online and then take the form into the post office, pick up the keys and I'd be on my way. So in an effort to save time I decided I'd do that.

Last Friday while Joy and I were in Brigham City running errands and preparing for the move I stopped by the post office to pick up my keys for our new post office. What seemed like a simple task and a good idea didn't work to our advantage.

The friendly clerk was so excited to see the form, it was a new form and he wasn't even aware that you could reserve a po box online what a great idea he said. After spending some time and challenging me on the information it said I could use for verification we had to get a supervisor involved as he didn't know how to enter it in the computer well after about 25 minutes (at lunch time no less) he told me that they would have to void out the transaction and that they would figure it out later and get it taken care of. I checked my keys for the po box and we were finally on our way.

Today I decided I'd double check the status of my Brigham City po box to see if it had been resolved or if I needed to call the brigham city post office. Well after looking at my account online I found that I had a different po box assigned to me and that the status of that box is closed. I called the post office and they were well aware of the situation without even telling them who I was they assured me that the box that I was assigned last Friday was my box and that they had voided out my online transaction. I guess it wasn't as easy as usps.com made it out to be. I am hoping that this is the only post office drama we have in Mantua.

On the bright side I was able to get a hold of the Mantua zoning commissioner today to find out about getting a separate address for the house so we can separate our mail from the hatchery mail. After a brief history of the area and a nice chat with the man he told me that the hatchery did not actually have an assigned address and the only addresses assigned to the area were the two houses that were on the hatchery land. After explaining that he couldn't change the address of the house he suggested that we assign the hatchery a new address. Obviously after 30 years the hatchery isn't going to change it's address so Quent and I will take over the new hatchery address as our home address.