You don’t want your final resting place to be a dead mail office, but unfortunately that’s where 452 people have found themselves, eternally undeliverable letters with United States Postal Service.
The USPS Inspector General’s Office released a report on Cremated Remains this week detailing failures in the post office to get former people to their intended final destination. Based on Evil behavior:
USPS is the only legal way to transport cremated remains. At least in theory, USPS has strict procedures for handling such sensitive and irreplaceable packages. The remainder must be shipped via Priority Mail and has a giant orange sticker attached to the side of the box (the former was teal green). They are also said to be treated differently from other Priority Mail plans.
However, the OIG report found that some or all of these procedures were not performed 28 to 50 percent of the time, which may help explain how 452 cremated remains were recovered. into a USPS warehouse for lost packages. According to the report, “as of February 27, 2023, the MRC [Mail Recovery Center] there are 452 packages of undeliverable and/or undetermined cremated remains,” the oldest of which existed there as of February 24, 2015.
While there nothing to fear from human remains, it’s a pity to spend your final resting place twirling the federal system. Such packages must be clearly marked as requiring extra care in handling, but USPS study found This is not always true. Even when packages are clearly marked, they are not always handled appropriately by staff at postal facilities. Lost packages end up at the Mail Recovery Center, a Lost and Found category for undeliverable packets. Usually packages that are backlog in the MRC for more than 60 days are then either thrown away or auctioned on GovDeals website if they are worth more than $25.
This is lucky is not the case with human remains. But since no one knows what to do with the undeliverable rests, they just stack up.
The report makes recommendations and pointed out good practices from several post offices, but there seems to be no immediate solution or workaround for the 452 sets of remains that have been lost in the bureaucracy.
