Ever since I moved to my place two years ago the mailman has been a big source of irritation. He just can’t do the simple job of putting the mail in the correct letter boxes. I live in an apartment block, and me and the guy next door are well used to get each others mail, and it’s not uncommon that I get mail addressed to people in other buildings. Each apartment are equipped with slot letter boxes of the kind that you get your mail directly on the hall floor inside your front door.

Everyone make mistakes, and since me and my neighbour have similar names mistakes are easy to make, yet easy to avoid when you are aware of them. And I have indeed made the mailman aware of this several times, but things didn’t get any better. Not even for a short while. I’ve then talked to the local post office about this, I don’t know if they really cared but the mailman obviously didn’t. I think I’ve called them no less than three times. I’ve changed the small printed plate with my name on the door to a big sheet of paper with my name handwritten with a red felt pen, still nothing improved. These are of course things friends neighbours sort out by themselves, I put the mail mis-delivered to me in the correct letter box and my neighbours hopefully does the same. Still, a small but constant source of irritation.

I decided I had enough some weeks ago when I came home to a big pile of mail inside my door, turned out that my neighbour had been on holiday for two weeks and my mail being stockpiled on his floor. Not fun to be late with a payment because you haven’t even got the bill. So that was when I decided to get my petty revenge on the mailman.

I looked in the white pages and randomly choose 50 addresses to people in my neighbourhood, address which I knew are within my mailman’s district. I then went on Ebay to make a big order of neodymium magnets.

If you don’t know what neodymium magnets are, they’re basically magnets that are super strong. You need to use quite some force just to pull two small magnets apart from each other. Much more powerful than the magnets you usually have on the door to your refrigerator.

Thing is that I didn’t make one single order, instead I made 50 tiny orders and entered a different shipping address on each order, each to one of my 50 random neighbours. Since the magnets were so small they came in tiny parcels, meaning you don’t have to go to the post office to collect them. Didn’t cost a lot of money either, they’re really cheap on Ebay if you order them from China. Delivery takes a few weeks though, and the delivery day isn’t specified. Therefore I wasn’t able to plan my work week to be at home the day magnets finally arrived to all of my unaware neighbours.

But when I came home from work last thursday and took the stairs up to my flat I noticed that several doors had what seemed like small brown parcels glued to their letter boxes.

I can picture the mailman having a hell of a day at work, dragging around a mailbag containing a big ball of letters fixed to each other. I wish I could have seen him having to pull each and every parcel apart from the others, only to make futile attempts to get them inside the letter boxes (as they all have flaps made of metal). He probably had some problems with the parcels sticking to his bike as well. And the buttons of his uniform.

Sidenote: Of course I made one of the orders to myself (I figured that would make me less of a suspect), but of course the parcel stuck to my letter box was actually addressed to my neighbour. Felt a little weird to put it in his letter box.

I don’t think the neighbours minded either, those little magnets can always come in handy.*