For 10 years, a Postal Service employee in Texas has been stockpiling massive amounts of bulk mail in her office and home. And even though she’s now under investigation by postal inspectors, the USPS worker says she wants to keep her job.
“People can have mental issues,” the 72-year-old tells MyFoxHouston. “It doesn’t make them crazy; it doesn’t make them insane. It makes them stupid.”
The 36-year USPS veteran says that for about a decade she’s gotten her hands on enough catalogs, mailers and other things you would probably just recycle anyway, to fill up a box truck — each year.
The woman fessed up to the hording after her boss noticed mail piling up in her office and asked her if she had been stashing mail elsewhere. She pointed them to her home and to storage spaces she rented to hold her haul.
“This is a hording problem,” she explains. “I see things in some little piece of paper that maybe I want to read it or save it, and that’s what happens.”
She has been suspended without pay but tells Fox she would “like a second chance… I would like to go back to work. I am ashamed of myself, but I know there is more to me than that.”
72-Year-Old Postal Employee Makes Shocking Confession to FOX 26: MyFoxHOUSTON.com
72-Year-Old Postal Employee Makes Shocking Confession to FOX 26 [MyFoxHouston.com]
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No shit she wants to keep her job. Do you know how hard it is for mail carriers fired for stealing mail and facing federal charges for mail tampering to find a job these days? Sheesh…
No I don’t know how hard it is to firf a mail worker. Please give so facts not bullshit.
Hey, why not let bygones be bygones?
Sounds like she was doing her customer’s a favor.
And the city.
Recycling all that manufactured dumpster fodder isn’t free you know.
“People can have mental issues” and “It doesn’t make them crazy” don’t go together too well. And I would consider hoarding a mental illness in the crazy category.
Hey, can’t I drink the blood of humans and hold satanic rituals in my front room without being thought of as a devil worshiper? I mean, c’mon! Ever hear of not judging a book by its cover?
Except… hoarding IS a mental illness.
Big difference between religious beliefs and mental illness, by the way.
but hoarders often have lots of money, too.
…must…avoid…troll-bait…
Really? Is that what the cult leader told you, or did you come up with that on your own?
No. It’s common medical sense. And documented.
It’s the result from OCD, agoraphobia, general anxiety, social anxiety and even paranoid schizophrenia.
Please take the anti-religion soapbox to a conversation where it is relevant.
A mental issue can be adhd, autism or anything else mental and an issue. Doesn’t mean you’re crazy. I would be offended if I thought it was on purpose, which I hope it wasn’t.
Not to mention calling people with mental issues “stupid”. This lady is just digging herself deeper.
Clearly she has a problem that needs to be addressed, but I don’t think it would be healthy for her to keep her job while she does it.
Yeah, they call it kleptoMANIA for a reason.
Hellloooo, Newman….
Hello Jerry
Can I plaz with UR entities?
Sounds like she was providing a valuable service for her customers. I’d love to have the bulk mail recycled for me before I ever see it.
This is what I thought. Actually I thought, ‘we should give her an award’, but then, she isn’t really recycling it, she’s hoarding it.
Let’s hope the USPS doesn’t deliver it now. Can you imaging coming home to 10 years worth of ‘bulk mail’ ???!!!!!
Meh. I’ve got a 55-gallon recycling bin. I drop junk mail into it before it ever enters the house.
In the Netherlands, the mail carriers will not deliver “bulk” mail to you if this sticker is posted over your letter slot: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tfGC7tOlrdk/RwnE2qUZAXI/AAAAAAAABUI/IUYT2M9jqUk/s400/Dutch-junk-mail-stickers.png
I find this idea to be super awesome.
Ingen Reklam Tack
No ads please, works in Sweden as well
I would agree, but she was keeping stuff she was interested in. We’ve seen cases where people were not delivering because they were having medical issues, and were reducing the overall amount they were delivering, but she was being specific. THAT’S wrong.
I bet the folks on her mail route were happy to not receive any “bulk” mail for over a decade… I would love it if my mailman had this issue.
Yea but now they will get 10years worth in 1 day.
As far as I know they have the deliver the mail since it was paid for. I’m sure the person on her route will be happy to get that to sort now.
It would be interesting to see the happy “recipients” Hand it back as “return to sender”
She also seems to be stealing those white “USPS” bins that they want to charge people for if they don’t return them on time. Let’s not forget about that!
Yeah, it sure would be terrible if you got charged for keeping something that was only loaned to you temporarily as a convenience, which you knew was only loaned to you temporarily as a convenience.
She doens’t want to keep her job, she wants to keep her pension. I say, fire her ass. If she acknowledges that she has a problem, then SHE SHOULD HAVE SOUGHT TREATMENT. Either way, it’s her fault.
I just find it odd that in 10 years not a single person reported this problem to the authorities. I’m no doctor, but I would even say this goes beyond hoarding since it is such a specific item. I guess hoarding is a form of OCD, so maybe that is proper. Either way…. She seriously got away with this for ten years before anybody noticed??? That is sad.
It’s still hoarding. Some people hoard rocks, others newspapers, others pop/soda bottles. Still others everything that comes into their house.
They probably did complain and were treated like they were the crazy ones for “missing” their bulk mail.
I wonder if maybe she wasn’t taking ALL of the bulk mailings, but instead just the ones that she thought she wanted to read something in. Would you really notice if only half of your bulk mailings were making it to you?
Even if fired she can still get her pension. In fact the PO is probably trying to get her to retire so they don’t have to spend the money to charge her and try to fire her.
Was she “hording” mail or “hoarding” mail? Anyway, at age 72 it is time to let go and let a younger person have the job in this economy.
Hoarding. Hording isn’t a word.
“Hording isn’t a word”
Thousands of blood elves, taurens, and orcs all over Azeroth are screaming in rage right now, but they don’t know why….
Look, lady, give it up. You’re 72, and you’re bat-shit crazy. Retire already and let someone with a family to support keep a job.
And now you can finally read that junk mail you’ve been saving. And the best thing, the very best thing of all, is there’s time now… there’s all the time you need and all the time you want. Time, time, time. There’s time …
Ok…we get the Twilight Zone allusion but even if she retires I doubt she’d be replaced. Post Offie is looking to get rid of employees as it is. This is better than laying off someone else. I think it’s called attrition.
She wouldn’t be replaced, but one less person would be laid off.
i wish my mail carrier were so considerate, i would love it if someone saved me the effort of opening my mailbox to find nothing but garbage 27 days a month
“People can have mental issues,” the 72-year-old tells MyFoxHouston. “It doesn’t make them crazy; it doesn’t make them insane. It makes them stupid.”
Evidently.
+1
Hey, it’s bulk mail, not first class. But I doubt it was a hoarding problem. More likely, she didn’t want go to the trouble of delivering it.
“The 36-year USPS veteran says that for about a decade she’s gotten her hands on enough catalogs, mailers and other things you would probably just recycle anyway, to fill up a box truck ‚Äî each year.
The woman fessed up to the hording after her boss noticed mail piling up in her office and asked her if she had been stashing mail elsewhere. She pointed them to her home and to storage spaces she rented to hold her haul. “
Sounds like hoarding to me. She rented storage space so she could keep more of it…
True, she said that, but there have been dozens of carriers caught with stacks and stacks of mail in their houses and garages who just didn’t want to sort & deliver it. If they just throw it out, someone will find it and trace it back to their route.
I wonder if something like this is the reason I still haven’t gotten the seed catalogs I ordered?
I just got my Baker Creek after they sent it in a large catalog. Two others they sent in December have disappeared.
They can rehire her and give her the route that includes my house. I’d LOVE not to receive bulk mail!
How funny would that have been if the certified letter informing her of her suspension had gotten lost in the mail?
Damn, there are some heartless people here.
Heartless? The woman is a thief twice over.
First she steals the mail (yes most bulk mail is junk people don’t want but a. it isn’t all junk, and B. it is not her choice.) Then she accepts pay from her employer for a job she is not doing.
I don’t care how old she is or what her alleged mental illness is. Unless she is severely mentally retarded she know the difference between right and wrong and made a choice to continue doing wrong rather than get help or stop.
I can see that you are very knowledgeable about mental illnesses, how they manifest and this specific situation. Thanks for your input.
And how do we know she hasn’t been stealing other mail? We don’t. And yes, she knew between right and wrong. Having a mental illness does not mean you suddenly no longer have to take responsibility for your actions. I have some sympathy for her, but she should not be allowed to keep her job. If nothing else, it would be unhealthy for her. She needs help. And people receiving mail deserve to know that their mail isn’t being stolen.
And with the way you pass judgment on everyone else here, you obviously must personally know every detail of this woman’s situation and her entire motivation. Right?
No, she doesn’t need to go back to work, she needs to go to a help facility – she is a hoarder, and that needs some treatment.
And it’s HOARD, not hord. Gah!
I thought it was horde.
She hoarded a horde of mail.
I thought it was whored.
Suspended without pay!? Hell, this woman was providing a valuable service to the community!
Anytime anyone does something to interfere with the delivery of junk mail I say they’re a hero! Pin a medal on her!
If it was really only bulk mail, she’s doing us all a favor and should get a medal.
If there was any real mail (letters, packages, orders) then fire her ass.
This is a win/win. She got to hoard, which is her issue, and the public didn’t have to deal with useless mail, which only got recycled (hopefully).
“People can have mental issues,” the 72-year-old tells MyFoxHouston. “It doesn’t make them crazy; it doesn’t make them insane. It makes them stupid.”
Actually, mental issues make people crazy and insane sometimes. I have no idea what he meant by that, but it was a categorically false statement.
He was suffering from his own mental problems when making that statement- “having a senior moment.”
Don’t forget that those postings cost companies – many of them small local stores and venues. Many small companies pay for these flyers with an expected success rate of about 3%. That’s enough pay for the mailings and make a small profit. What the woman did is basically steal from these companies who didn’t get their mailings delivered…
Poor lady. I think she needs a shrink. No not for stealing mail but for paying good money to rent space just so she can store junk mail.
I think she stumbled on a way to save the USPS! Charge a small fee to have your junk mail removed before you ever get it. Charges something silly like $10 a year to have your junk mail routed directly to a recycle bin for you without ever seeing it.
And why should I pay extra to have mail that is already subsidized by me, that I don’t ask for in the 1st place, to be delivered somewhere else? You work for the govt don’t you?
It’s not subsidized by you. USPS hasn’t received tax money since the 1980s.
Ten years of “stolen” bulk mail! I personally think she was doing everyone a favor.
It makes them stupid? I don’t fucking think so. Someone with these obvious mental problems shouldn’t be lecturing us on mental problems.
she should probably should be given a raise too for going above and beyond.
Since she technically does indeed have a mental illness which (I think) would be considered a disbility, can they actually fire her? I think that’s a thorny bush they’re about to walk into.
Exactly. That’s probably why they’re still “investigating.”
She belongs in jail period.
I sympathize, but no way does she deserve another ‘chance’, this is the real world.
The mentally ill do not belong in a traditional jail. They belong in a secured mental hospital to treat their illness.
It the USPS years to figure out she was stealing mail. Oh, and they didn’t really figure it out, she confessed. At least she is a hoarder – not just a thief like most mail people in Chicago. I used to never get items that looked like they had money in them in the mail, my netflix came previewed and three days late, and my magazines often never showed up.
It appears that perhaps she does have some sort of illness but I think that its more likely that she can use it as an excuse to keep her out of jail than to keep her job. If she’s claims that she has a hoarding illness which caused her to steal mail then she’s pretty much admitting that she’s unable to perform the duties of the job. If she were allowed to keep her job the odds are she’d just do it again.
the amount of mail carriers have to deliver versus the route size and pay amount is the issue. they are too cheap to hire more workers to make routes smaller per employee.
Batshitcrazthoarderladysayswhat?
Re: “‘This is a hording problem,’ she explains.”
Uh, no. It’s not a “hording” problem. Rather, it’s a “hoarding” problem. A good example of a “hording” problem was when the western Roman Empire was swallowed up by hordes of Germanic invaders. A “hoarding” problem is when you accumulate too much stuff that you have no pragmatic use for.
Geez lady, you’re 72 and you suck at a job you’ve been doing for 36 years. I think its time to retire.
I want her for my mail person. I hate all the please save the whatever junk mail.