Let's be real -- mail has been unusually slower lately. Like, walking up a hill covered in molasses backwards with super glue on the bottom of your feet slow.

Case in point -- it took a good three weeks for my cousin's Christmas card to get to my house, even though pretty much everyone already had theirs after a few days.

BUT, here's the thing that we all need to remember -- it's not the fault of any mail worker. Think of what they're going through right now -- this was probably the BUSIEST year of online shopping ever. And whether you did it through Amazon or shopped locally online, that still means that's a ton of packages to get together, ship, send out, etc.

According to Channel 8 WMTW, the holiday shipping backlog is possibly delayed up to over a week right now in Maine. It's really unfortunately the perfect storm of historic mail volume (as mentioned in the last paragraph) and partially due to COVID layoffs, which means there are more packages coming in and less staffers to sort through it all.

One of my friends is a mailman in New Hampshire and he constantly sends pictures of how much of a load of packages he has during the holiday seasons and how much it increases in a regular year, let alone a year like this.

In fact, the President of American Postal Workers Union Local 458 in Scarborough, Maine, told Channel 8 WMTW that in the 34 years he's been working with the postal service, he's never seen anything like this. He also added that there's going to be a massive push in the next week for his post office and others around the country to get everything out of facilities that needed to already be out of the facilities.

The GOOD thing, though, is that this delay in general won't last forever. By March 13, the plan is to add over 5,500 Postal Service jobs across the country, so relief is on the way. Let's just be patient and good to our local mailman/mailwoman that have been good to us for years.

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