Nathan Anderson’s struggles with the U.S. Postal Service might make for a comedy routine, if they were funny.

Anderson, a carpenter who lives on Euclid Street in St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff area, blames USPS for losing his driver’s license, several paychecks, bank checkbooks, insurance cards, IRS documents and certifications from his daughter’s school.

“Almost everyday it’s something — you’ll get the neighbors’ mail, or the neighbors will bring over some of our mail,” Anderson said. “When they have to mail my paycheck, I cringe.”

For reasons that are not entirely clear, the mail is not going through — at least not consistently — on Euclid Street and in at least a few other corners of St. Paul’s East Side.

The foibles are discussion topics on Internet neighborhood pages, where residents complain of receiving the wrong mail or getting mail delivered days and even weeks later than expected.

Some residents say the problems stretch back two years. Others say five or six years.

Kristy Anderson, a Minneapolis-based spokeswoman for the Postal Service, said the Minnehaha Avenue facility employs 65 carriers, including 10 assistants who fill in for regular carriers when they’re out.

Letters are sorted by sequencing machines at processing facilities into route order and then address order. Occasionally, a carrier may not spot mis-sorted mail. She said November through Jan. 1 tend to be busy times for mail delivery, which requires seasonal labor. Otherwise, she said she was unaware of any problems.

“After consulting with the Postmaster over this station, there are no known delivery issues in that area,” said Anderson, in an email. “St. Paul averages 1.29 carriers per route overall in the city. That station alone has 10 extra city carrier assistants to help cover routes.”

Residents with concerns about a particular piece of mail can call 1-800-ASK-USPS or visit usps.com/help to file an inquiry, she said.

A spokesman for St. Paul-based Branch 28 of the National Association of Letter Carriers, which is AFL-CIO affiliated, said he was also unaware of any problems.

LIVE CRICKETS IN MAIL

However, Nathan Anderson’s next door neighbor, Dawn Racky, said she’s fared little better than he has.

Racky said she once received live crickets addressed to a neighbor across the street.

“I just walked it across the street, like ‘here’s your crickets,'” she said. “When I addressed it with the post office, they said we don’t have an assigned carrier. We get whomever is finished with their route that day.”

Her brother’s driver’s license also was lost, Racky said.

“I’ve spoken with their manager about it,” she said. “It’s, ‘Well, what do you want us to do about it?’ and ‘We’ll look into it.'”

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A healthcare worker who lives off Ruth Street in the Conway neighborhood, about four miles north of Euclid Street, said she opened her mailbox about eight months ago to discover four garbage bills — all of them addressed to different people, none of them her.

After consistently receiving her neighbors’ mail, she and others say they now use the postal service’s “Informed Delivery” service, which emails residents images of their mail before it is delivered, and or they’ll insist that important documents be sent to locations other than their home.

UNDERSTAFFED?

Ed Davis, who lives toward the south end of Lake Phalen, posted concerns about mail delivery to the neighborhood page NextDoor.com and received responses from roughly 20 different residents. He has his own stories to share.

“We had a bill that took a whole month to arrive,” Davis said. “It was sent at the end of January and arrived toward the end of February.”

After speaking directly with carriers last fall, Davis believes that a staff reorganization at the postal facility at 1425 Minnehaha Ave. E. left carriers overwhelmed by route changes, precipitating at least a small wave of sudden staffing departures.

“The turnover was exorbitant probably because of the expectations of the task, the fact that these routes had increased the number of houses to deliver to,” Davis said.

CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS UNAFFECTED

Postal issues don’t seem widespread on St. Paul’s East Side.

St. Paul City Council Member Jane Prince, who represents Dayton’s Bluff, said she’s encountered no mail issues at her home. Former City Council Member Dan Bostrom said he, too, had no problems with his mail service near Lake Phalen.

“Rain, shine, snow, we never miss mail,” said Council Member Kassim Busuri, who lives off Arcade Street and considers his mail carrier a reliable, familiar face. “She’s always delivered to us. I’ve never had an issue.”

Kevin Tetu, who lives off Sixth Street in Dayton’s Bluff, recalls confronting his mail carrier a year ago after residents in the area complained about not receiving coupon circulars from Hy-Vee and Cub Foods until they had expired.

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For a while, things got better. But that carrier no longer services Tetu’s route, and the problems persist.

“This is still going on now,” he said. “We’re still not getting our coupons.”