Unfiltered Story #326603

When I was 18, my dad was transferred to his government job’s headquarters in Washington, DC. Since I was established in college in my hometown, I stayed in Colorado.

My parents moved to the Virginia suburbs of DC about a week before my 19th birthday. A relatively new service offered by the post office was mail-forwarding when you moved. My parents signed up for this.

My dad thoughtfully sent me a card for my 19th birthday as soon as he got to Virginia. He received it back 3 days later. It turns out my parents checked the “family” box on the forwarding request, so all mail with our surname was being sent to Virginia. (They should’ve submitted two separate “individual” forwarding requests.)

I ended up having to file a request for my mail to be forwarded from Virginia back to Colorado. So for about a year, my mail had at least two forwarding labels as it bounced back and forth across the US. Sometimes there’d be 4 or 6 labels, before a human would figure out what the final destination for my mail should be.