If you have a regular 9-5 job, one way to be sure that you receive your personal deliveries safely is to have them sent to the office. Unless you’re reader A. and her husband. They work for two different small companies, and have discovered that any items mailed to them at work end up in someone else’s hands. Both A. and Mr. A have been told that all mail addressed to the office is company property, and belongs to either whoever finds it first, or management. This seems wrong to them.

Please help me solve an argument. My husband and I have certain things delivered in our names to our office addresses. For me, it’s been some BP gift cards I redeemed, a Wall Street Journal and Barrons subscription and for him, it’s been some coupons for free products he got from Facebook.

Here’s the problem. More often than not, we do not receive these items despite them being sent in our name in care of our company’s address.

The BP gift cards and the coupons arrive in the mail. We look out for them and let the person responsible for opening the mail know to look out for them for us. We do not receive them. It seems that these items were either given to, or noticed by management and taken by them. We have both questioned the people that took my BP cards and his free product coupons (both interestingly members of management). We were basically given the same line that we are using the company’s address and regardless of the name on the mail, anything addressed to the company’s address is fair game and they got first dibs as management.

Same problem with my WSJ & Barrons. It’s not here when I get here. I wait and wait for the delivery guy and never see it. I call them and they state time and time again that it’s been delivered (I don’t have it delivered to my house because I leave before the delivery time). I later noticed a manager reading it during lunch and questioned him. He said that it’s on the doormat when he arrives (first one here to open the office) and since it’s delivered to the company, it’s company property and that’s why he’s been taking it.

So does using your company’s address to receive mail/deliveries mean that you void any claim to it and that it becomes property of the company and basically fair game for whatever manager wants it? Does my name on it simply mean nothing?

(And no, these are not huge corporations. One is 10 people and another is 18 people).

A larger company might have an actual written policy about having mail sent to the office. What do you think, Hive Mind? How have places where you’ve worked handled this? I remember in one office where I worked, clerical staff opened all of the mail and stamped it “received” regardless of who it was addressed to: but we all still got all of our mail. As far as I know.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.