phil jacobsen

Mailbox Cries Wolf

“My boyfriend and I are having an argument that I hope you can settle,” a lady said to me after I delivered their mail. It was just after noon, so I considered saying, “Okay, you’re a drunk, you’re ugly and you should lose some weight—your boyfriend is correct” but instead I waited to hear her version of the story.

“That little red flag on our mailbox,” she continued, “I think we’re supposed to raise it if we want mail delivered to our house, but my boyfriend thinks the flag should only be raised if we’re on vacation. Who’s correct?”

Was this some sort of trick question? As best I could tell the only entity correct in this situation was eHarmony for hooking up two of the most retarded people on the planet.

“The red flag on your mailbox,” I explained, “has nothing to do with the Post Office. It’s a relic from the Cold War. Only raise the flag if an atomic bomb explodes, this lets Homeland Security know you’re still alive—you know—like a cockroach.”

I could tell the brain cells that weren’t rapidly being killed by her cocktail contemplated this for a few seconds, then she said, “Mailboxes should really come with instruction manuals.”

In this woman’s drunken defense, she is correct. While the use of a mailbox may seem as obvious as saying, “Should I unzip my zipper before I take a piss or should I piss my pants?” there are a lot of people who don’t know how to use the red flag on their mailbox.

To be perfectly clear, the red flag should only be raised if you have outgoing mail. Pretty simple, huh? There’s your instruction manual.

However, there are common misuses of the red flag.

Misuse #1: They raise the flag everyday.

People who raise their flag every day do this because they assume the mailman will lower their flag after delivering the mail letting the lazy bastards inside know the mail has been delivered. This is the “Mailbox Who Cries Wolf” scenario. When I deliver mail to these kind of boxes, I never lower the flag. And, on the days when these people don’t have any mail, I don’t check for outgoing mail. Usually I’ll get yelled at the next day for not picking up their mail, but what do I care, it’s not my electricity that’s going to get turned off.

Misuse #2: People who never raise their flag.

“If I raise my flag,” the no flag raiser says, “then the high school kids will know I have outgoing mail and steal it.”

It’s not minutes that count at the Post Office; it’s seconds. If you don’t have any mail coming to your house on any given day, this saves me 30 seconds. For every house I skip, it means my lunch break is longer. When I skip a house that doesn’t have their flag raised—even though they have outgoing mail—I usually get yelled at the next day for not picking up the mail. But, I don’t care. It’s not my electricity that is going to get shut off.

Misuse #3: People who raise their flag after an atomic bomb explodes.

Doesn’t it figure that if an atomic bomb does explode, only vermin this dumb will survive—just like a cockroach.