US Post Office

Sorry USPS office workers– had to bump this down due to the extreme arrogance of one of your delivery men. I called in about my mail continuing to be thrown on my front step– about 1 foot below my mailbox. Why would you do this? In the rain? Every day?
They said that they were afraid that my dog — - wait for it — - was going to jump through the window to attack the mailman. I work from home and sit in my living room every day while the mail is delivered. The funny part is, if they really thought my dog was going to «jump through» a 2 ft window, maybe they would deliver the mail to another spot? It’s the same exact location, just not in the box! After calling, I felt hazed almost, I felt punished. My mail sometimes wouldn’t come for 5 days straight. The manager suggested that we receive our mail in our neighbor’s mailbox for convenience to the delivery carrier. Our boxes are not even on the same side of the house, so I found this less than accommodating as a customer that had just called in with a complaint.
When the mailmen switch routes, I have no issues. There is only one, roughly 55 year old, Caucasian male. I’ve seen him congregating with my neighbors and chit chatting with the neighborhood, and then he just passes my house like it’s not even there. I’ve had bills come in late, credit cards, and even packages, all confirmed to have been sent and just stuck in the Watertown USPS. Today I watched this specific mailman throw the mail on the front step again, and when I came out to grab it he gave me a huge condescending THANK YOU! Knowing I won’t get any help by speaking with their less-​than-​helpful manager, I figured a Unilocal review would help spread consumer awareness in the Watertown area.
I had really, really good things to say about this USPS, but this one bad egg has let me down time and time again. Hopefully mail delivery services privatize sooner rather than later…

Almost always a long line. Go to Belmont’s post office where the wait is usually only a few minutes. They need more people working there.

Christmas cheer filled the post office, even as they had customers in the lobby after closing hours! When we got up to the counter, we were helped quickly and efficiently. We were glad that our last day in the area and our last minute trip to the post office were easy and not stressful/​annoying ! Thanks to the employees at the Watertown USPS.

I have found this to be a very convenient, efficient post office — an ideal central location across the street from the Watertown Free Library, a clear and prominent display of mailing and shipping supplies, fast and helpful service, an unusually roomy, comfortable space for a post office (unlike the many cramped, cluttered ones I’ve been in), and great hours — Mon-​Fri 8:30am-5:00pm, SATURDAY from 7:30am-1:30pm!!!
It has three service windows, but usually one or two clerks, hence occasional long lines. This, however, isn’t the post office’s fault, for the U.S. Postal Service has been so strapped for cash, due to the proliferation of e-​mail (and the Nixon administration’s semi-​privatization of the U.S. Post Office way back in 1971, eliminating most taxpayer subsidies), that understandably it has had to lay off a lot of postal workers. But once I get to the windows, the service is outstanding. (And I do like some of the «oldies» they play over the PA system there.)
I do wish the Watertown Post Office could have an Automated Postal Center like the one in Harvard Square’s post office, for those in a hurry who don’t want to stand in line. One of the WPO’s clerks told me it once had an APC, but it had been removed because it hadn’t been generating enough revenue. Again, a money issue, perfectly understandable.
All things considered, this is one of greater Boston’s best post offices!

When all was said and done I emerged from this Watertown Post Office Andy Dufresne style — mistreated, much older, covered in excrement and with an anus several gauges larger than I walked in with…
It is a dark place, the purported line is in actuality a loose confederation of feral tribes — so many generations interbred these sadly wayward subhumans have forgotten their progenitors purpose for being there in the first place, they had a holiday tree up a month and a half past December, they were angered when I plugged it in to amuse a poor little child suffering in line with me, the floor was sticky in places while being ice slick in others, there is a ballroom size dead space in the middle of the floor where racks of Elvis stamps or bumble bee cards should be but nothing is, forms are crammed with no apparent regard for order into whatever grimy plasticine crevasse was near at hand, the lone background noise in the building (save for the sucking sound that the will to live makes when it escapes the human body) is an almost tuned painters’ radio that sits between two stations of shock-​jockery/​alterna-​rocking, the staff are not bad people but have simply become soulless zombies because of this environ, the supplies are scarce… this place is a psychic gulag…
On a perfect point of note this US Post Office shares its block with a divorce lawyer… because no matter how fervently or devotedly you love the people you enter with you’ll want a legal separation as soon as you exit — husbands and wives will separate, parents will disown their children, siblings will request name changes…
Do not fail as I have failed… if you must mail something from Watertown go a few clicks in one cardinal direction or another and hit up a different USPS location… it will save your sanity, it save your soul…
How do I know all this… much like a desiccated man in a rowboat I can intimately recall every millimeter of the knothole before my eye with eerie clarity… I became fixed with my awful surrounding, and could not close my inner eye to them… and they now have a crouching place in a stygian corner of my hindbrain…
So I’ll end this «Don’t Go To This Post Office or Everything You Know That is Good in This World Will End» posting with some mangled Lovecraft:
‘the trouble with the memory… I see things I never saw before… other worlds and other galaxies — all dark… the hour draws near… i hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery blue-​white eagle lumbering against it… it shall not find me… god, that talon! the window! the window!’