POSTAL COMPLAINTS JUST WON'T GO AWAY

Almost every day Marvin Miller goes to his mailbox and pulls out mail that belongs to the people that live in the other half of his duplex.

"It is an inconvenience having to return their mail every day," said Miller. "But at least it helps us keep in touch with our neighbors."

When employees at Auffenberg Chrysler Supercenter get mail, they always sort out an extra pile for other car dealerships.

"We have a basket on our counter for mail that doesn't belong to us," said Emily Benton of Auffenberg. "And the other dealerships always know to come in and pick it up."

It seems that lately everyone has a story to tell about how post offices across the country have failed at their duties. But the post offices say fewer than 1 percent of the pieces that go through the system are misdirected or misplaced.

In some cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., patrons are demanding reform in post offices that misplace mail.

Cape Girardeau's postal system isn't as bad as some of the larger cities; nevertheless, a number of people are upset with the way the post office here handles the mail.

"It always seems that the missing pieces of mail are the Social Security checks or the Visa payments," said Mike Keefe, Cape Girardeau postmaster. "When those things are missing people become really upset, and that's what you hear about, not the hundred of pieces that get to them without a problem."

Keefe said if someone has a problem locating a piece of mail the post office can search to find it. The post office usually runs two to five tracers a day for lost mail, and in most cases the mail eventually gets to its destination.

The Cape Girardeau post office also runs almost daily checks to make sure that pieces of mail get where they need to be in a reasonable amount of time. All mail in Southeast Missouri should take only one day to get to its destination. Through periodic checks, the post office has determined that happens with 95 percent of the mail.

"Missorting mail is a problem, but when you are sorting 2,000 pieces of mail a day some get misplaced," Keefe said. "We are human and we make mistakes."

For instance, many places that begin with "Southeast Missouri" -- the university, the hospital and the newspaper -- receive one another's mail almost daily. And St. Francis Medical Center and Southeast Missouri Hospital often get each other's mail.

"There will be times when we get an entire bag of Southeast's mail," said Jay Wolz of St. Francis Medical Center. "And there are times when they come over with bags of our mail. We understand that it's easy to make the mistake."

Keefe said that in the eight years he has been postmaster no one has ever thrown a piece of mail away or held mail for any reason.

"We are a mid-sized city post office with a lot of committed people working for us," Keefe said.

The post office recently replaced the untrained, part-time, temporary help with full-time, permanent, career employees. They have also added another employee to the post office service window.