Proving Them Wrong Down To The Letter(s)

We rent out houses. It sometimes happens that mail gets delivered wrongly or people get mail from the previous tenant. This can be annoying but is not our fault. We can send the previous tenant a letter with the request to change his address, but that is pretty much all we can do. If we have the time for it, people can bring in wrongly delivered mail and we’ll write “return to sender” on it. Since we are usually busy, this rarely happens and is reserved for those “escalation cases”.

A woman comes in with a crate filled with mail. It is really a lot, and I see why my coworkers offered for her to bring it to us to help her. She seems irate.

Woman: “I can’t believe you let this happen!”

Me: “I’m sorry this happened, miss. Were there any letters from us, as well?”

Woman: “No, none from you. Just from all these other companies.”

Me: “We always tell tenants they should change their address when they move, but sometimes people forget it, don’t take the mail forwarding service of the post services, or they were too late for that one letter. But let me check the letters for you.”

Woman: “Check them? Why?”

Me: “Just to make sure these are all for the previous tenants.”

Woman: “Of course! Why would you check that?! Why are you holding me up like this?”

At that moment, I spot a tax letter for the woman in front of me. I say nothing but just place it in front of her while I continue sorting.

Woman: “Oh, eh… well, I missed that one.”

I put another letter for her in front of her.

Woman: “Oh… well…”

And another one. In total, I find fourteen letters addressed to her including three from our national IRS — those envelopes are always a certain kind of blue, so you can recognise them instantly. The woman is silent.

Me: “I’ll bring the rest to my coworker, so she can send them back. Feel free to do so yourself if you receive another one. Can I help you with anything else?”

Woman: “Eh… no…” *Mutters. “Thank you.”

Me: “Most welcome!”