The Jumping Mailmen of Lake Geneva

Every year, athletic youths in Wisconsin’s Woworth County try out for a unique summer job – mail jumping. They need to prove that they can jump off of a moving boat onto a private dock, deliver the mail and then jump back on the boat before it has passed by.

The residents of Lake Geneva have been getting mail delivered by boat since before roads were built in the area, so the practice has become somewhat of a local tradition, one that attracts loads of tourists to the area. In fact, during the summer months, the mail boat can take approximately 160 tourists along on mail delivery runs and operates at full capacity almost every day. Watching and recording the jumping mailmen deliver the mail to the around 60 homes on Lake Geneva is something that many will gladly pay to be able to do.

Read More »

Japanese Postman “Couldn’t Be Bothered” to Deliver 24,000 Pieces of Mail

A 61-year-old postal worker from the Japanese city of Yokohama was recently arrested for hoarding around 24,000 pieces of mail that he had failed to deliver since back in 2003.

Officials at Japan Post, the government-owned mail service, noticed there was something peculiar about the unnamed postal worker’s activity last year, and he was let go. However, the cache of hidden mail was discovered later, because it was located in his home, “which is beyond the confines of an internal inspection”. The 61-year-old admitted to failing to deliver the tens of thousands of letters and parcels, claiming that doing his job “was too much bother”. But he didn’t want his younger colleagues to think he was less capable than them, so he just hid the mail at home.

Read More »