“Mailman Steve,” as he’s known to the children on his route, got 3 years probation yesterday for failing to deliver years worth of junk mail that was found stacked in his garage and buried in his backyard. He’ll also have to pay a $3,000 fine and serve 500 hours of community service.
Some consider “Mailman Steve” an anti-junk mail superhero — but it seems that Mr. Padgett was just overwhelmed.
It wasn’t a conscious stand against waste or a junk mail protest that spurred Padgett to hold onto the mailers, according to Andrew McCoppin, his attorney. Rather, it was the inability to meet the demands of a job in a growing part of the county while contending with heart problems and complications from his diabetes, McCoppin wrote in a memo in advance of the hearing.
Not sorting and delivering the third-class mailings became a way to save time and make sure other mail got delivered on time.
Padgett could have received jail time for his actions, which were discovered when utility workers spotted the undelivered mail at his home. The U.S. Postal Service did not receive a single complaint about the missing junk mail, some of which dates back to 1999.
“I don’t think he was being malicious,” Shelley Cole, a resident of Apex’s Jamison Park subdivision, told the News & Observer. “We got all the mail that we needed to get.”
‘Mailman Steve’ gets probation [News & Observer]
Judgment day arrives for ‘Mailman Steve’ [News & Observer]
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My hero…can he fix the spam issue now?
let’s DO pitch in and help pay this guys fine. and make a big stink doing it, that gets on natl tv, and gets the attention it deserves. save the environment? bullshit. they’re cutting down some SERIOUS ass trees to make all the junk mail that comes out each day. almost as bad as getting a sales call during dinner, or finding your email filled with spam. well, nothing is as bad as spam, and all who send spam should have their eyes gouged out and their testicles/ovaries cut out so they cannot reproduce more spam sending suckass c$#@suckers, then drawn, quartered, hung until dead then burned at the stake. ashes sprinkled on a dead mules rotting ass.
yup, I do hate me dat spam. hate it real good.
So I should feel sorry for the companies who pay for bulk mail advertising? I’ve never asked for it, never respond to it, never use it. Someone has dropped useless crap in my mailbox and I have to deal with it, by burning, shredding, or placing it in the trash. It is an expense to me in that I have to pay with my valuable time and effort to get it off my property and out of my life. And feel strongly enough to spend time writing this.
It’s as if a company paid to have someone deliver real live shi* to my mailbox. Are they to be pitied when the guy says “I’m not putting this shi* in these mailboxes.” ?
He did the right thing, illegal or not.
Hayl naw! Give the man a medal! Give him a legal defense fund! A pay raise, trust fund, something!
He buried junk mail? Isn’t it more *hassling* than just delivering it? That’s dedication, man.