Cold, soaking wet deliveries have landed a North Texas postal worker in hot water.
A Fort Worth woman says she had to grab her cell phone so her neighbors would know why their packages ended up damaged or drenched.
“I was kind of in a shock at first,” said Caitlin McGlaun.
She couldn’t believe her eyes.
“I saw a box bouncing and I was like, 'No, I’m not seeing that,'” she said.
But she was.
It began with a noise outside her apartment in Fort Worth’s hospital district on Wednesday afternoon.
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“I looked outside, peeked through the blinds and I saw him. He was throwing packages over each shoulder left and right,” she said.
There in the cold, persistent rain, she saw a U.S. postal worker flinging more than a dozen packages out of his mail truck and onto the wet ground below.
Several of the boxes, many Amazon orders, appeared to have high water marks.
“I stood there for probably :30 and then something came over me and I opened the door and I hollered at him,” she said. “I asked him if he needed help and he turned and laughed at me and just kept doing it. So, I shut the door and grabbed my phone and started filming him.”
NBC 5 sent the :15 video to the postal service office in Fort Worth.
A spokesman sent NBC 5 a statement that reads in part:
“We are disappointed to see the actions of our employee, and apologize to the customers affected by this incident.”
“People paid a lot of money and worked really hard for these [items],” said McGlaun. “One of the big boxes was a popcorn machine that was for a charity that’s coming up and I know that there was an Xbox, a sound bar. It was expensive stuff and it was just left outside in a puddle.”
The Postal Service says it “continuously trains its carriers on proper procedures for loading and unloading of vehicles and proper handling of mail and parcels. The mishandling of packages is unacceptable and does not reflect the careful efforts of the thousands of professional, dedicated carriers in our workforce.”
“Makes you wonder like, what have these packages been through,” she said.
McGlaun said she does not want the postal worker to be fired.
“I think he should be suspended, of course, but as far as firing him I think that’s taking it a little far,” she said.
The Postal Service says it’s investigating the incident and will take action to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
When asked if the worker is still employed, the agency’s spokesman said they cannot talk about personnel matters.
Customers with concerns about their mail service should contact their local Post Office or the USPS Customer Care Center at 1-800-ASK-USPS.
