Richard Haefner retired from a career as a United States Postal Service (USPS) clerk this past spring, but he is still slammed with complaints about mail delays everywhere he goes in Rochester.

"I can't get away from it," said Haefner, now president of the Minnesota chapter for the American Postal Workers Union. "I go to the grocery store and run into someone I know: 'What the hell is going on with the mail?' I'm sitting in the dentist chair getting my teeth cleaned: 'Why the hell can't I get my mail?' "

With Christmas in just a few days, it remains to be seen how the performance of the local USPS network this week, its busiest of the year, will be judged.

Delayed mail delivery has become an annoyance for many people across the country.

In Minnesota, the issue became so bad that facilities in Bemidji, Apple Valley, Eagan and New Brighton all were audited by the inspector general in the last year after politicians called for improvements. Those audits found hundreds of job vacancies, tens of thousands of pieces of delayed mail and a range of operations issues, such as declining property conditions, improperly scanned packages and lost mail keys, which could lead to mail theft.

If Minnesotans were hoping last year's scrutiny would result in better service, there is little evidence of it.

The quarterly performance reports for the USPS Minnesota-North Dakota District show mail is being delivered on time less often than a year ago and is behind national averages. Meanwhile, packages are reliably arriving on time, which some critics see as evidence that postal workers are being instructed to prioritize delivery of packages for Amazon and other online retailers over other mail.

There aren't many signs of improvements on the way, either. Earlier this month, the Postal Service announced it would lower its performance goals nationwide for on-time mail delivery next year.

Postal service leaders have been mum on directly addressing recent shortcomings.

During a congressional hearing last week, a lawmaker criticized Postmaster General Louis DeJoy "for the fall of the postal service." In response, DeJoy said, "You're talking to yourself," as he covered his ears with his hands.

The Minnesota-North Dakota District declined multiple Minnesota Star Tribune requests to interview District Manager Angela Bye or another senior official for this story. The district prohibits local postmasters from talking to the media.

"This is still the single biggest topic that people randomly walk up to talk to me about," U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, whose district covers Eagan and Apple Valley, told the Star Tribune.

In an interview last month, Craig said she was "a little nervous as we're heading into the holiday season."

Mail delivery performance falls

Roger Hager stopped by the Bemidji post office last week with stacks of shiny red-and-green wrapped boxes. Their destination is 6,000 miles away in the Marshall Islands where his daughter, her husband and their 3-year-old daughter live on the U.S. Army base there. Hager was three weeks ahead of the holiday but didn't expect them to arrive by then.

"I doubt if they're going to get there by Christmas, even though I'm mailing them priority," said Hager, a trust officer for the Department of the Interior and retired army colonel. "It's just the way life is. Sometimes the vegetables don't arrive on the island, so you gotta wait another week."

In 2023, many residents across northern Minnesota and into the south metro complained their mail often didn't arrive for days at a time. Hager said he felt USPS' performance is "not as nearly as bad as last year" but still noticed mail arriving in the evenings when it used to arrive in the late morning.

Craig, who has been vocal about mail problems in her district, said it seemed like USPS had "stabilized" in Minnesota relative to other parts of the country. But quarterly service reports show on-time mail delivery in the Minnesota-North Dakota district still slowed in 2024.

In the latest report, which covers July through September 2024, 84% of first-class, two-day mail, and 75% of three-to-five-day mail was delivered on time. That's down from scores of 88% and 79%, respectively, in the same period of 2023. All those scores are below national averages, which also fell during the same time period.

Carrier shortages

Bemidji Mayor Jorge Prince said he knows from talking to four carriers in town that they are overworked and understaffed.

"I still get the impression that they believe that they're still short-staffed relative to the workload," he said. "They're cautious in what they say, but I think they're feeling stretched."

Mail carriers staged a symbolic strike in Bemidji last year that gained national attention, prompting calls from lawmakers to address the delivery disruptions. Prince said many carriers aren't as outspoken this year.

Two audit reports this year, which examined post offices throughout the Minnesota-North Dakota District, found significant staffing issues.

About a year ago, the district overall had 551 vacancies. And of all the new hires made in 2023, about a third of them were no longer employed in the district by early 2024.

Haefner, from the state postal union, said staffing has not improved much. The workload for employees is intimidating and the service can't keep up with the wages offered by other employers, he said.

"It's gotten really hard to hire people," Haefner said. "When they do get on and they see what they're up against, [they say] 'I ain't doing this.'"

USPS spokesman Desai Abdul-Razzaaq declined to provide an updated number of vacancies in the district. He said in a statement that "post offices in Minnesota are adequately staffed for delivery this holiday season, while still hiring extra seasonal help, and we will continue to hire throughout the year to fill ongoing openings."

Timely package delivery

While mail delivery has lagged in the last year, package delivery is still on time.

In the most recent quarterly report, all 50 districts within USPS hit the target of 90% on-time delivery. One of the recent audit reports found that carriers in Apple Valley and Eagan were instructed to prioritize packages by management. There is such a high volume of Amazon packages that carriers can't ignore them, Haefner said, meaning there's often little time left for other mail.

A three-day inspection in December 2023 found the Bemidji post office had a backlog of 79,000 pieces of mail, with poor management and mountains of Amazon packages to blame.

The added responsibility of Amazon shipments led to resignations, creating more than a dozen carrier vacancies in Bemidji, according to a carrier who spoke on the basis of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

Craig said she understands it's more profitable for USPS to work with Amazon — but that carries a cost.

"When that happens, you will often see very important business correspondence arriving late, checks that are coming from the mail, prescription drugs that aren't arriving on time," she said.

Prince said he wants legislators to continue to advocate for timely mail.

"The postal carriers I speak to are very good-natured, hard-working people," he said. "They say, 'Our customers rely on us ... I'm going to do everything I can to get people their mail.' Despite whatever challenges they're facing, the folks I know keep a pretty positive attitude."