This site uses cookies.
Some of these cookies are essential to the operation of the site,
while others help to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used.
For more information, please see the ProZ.com privacy policy.
English language (monolingual) [PRO] General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters / home delivery of a newspaper
English term or phrase:how post is delivered in the US
"Since our apartment was on the third floor, I had been unable to make satisfactory arrangements to have the Sunday Post home-delivered. We had tried various methods, but I never found the paper half the time".
It's Street Lawyer by John Grisham, Chapter 10.
I'm just wondering to what happend to Mike's newspaper so that he didn't get it half the time. Was it stolen from his mailbox on the groundfloor? But was it not locked then?
How does the post delivery system in the U.S. work?
Explanation: Newspapers are delivered - usually by young people in their first job - by being dropped outside the address. If raining, it will be covered in plastic. It is based on good faith and the trust system; and because they are delivered 5 - 6 AM, the assumption is that thieving types aren't up and won't disturb the paper.
In the UK (South London). On Saturday and Sunday mornings, when there was no school, I made some pocket money by delivering newspapers to people's homes fairly early in the morning for a local newsagent. The UK Sunday newspapers were not as voluminous then as they became later, but they were still pretty heavy, and I was worried at first about not being able to fit them through people's letterboxes and having to leave them on the doorstep. I was worried that they might be stolen and I'd be accused of not having delivered them. I was very young.
One thing bad about the USSR is that one could not publish a book as critical of the regime. True, we did not have people living under bridges or sleeping in parks John Grisham writes about, but the bureaucrats were just as bad or maybe worse. Now we have both -- the jerks in government and the homeless. There might be some kind of correlation.
So, freeing paperboys and girls from the drudgery of delivering newspapers door-to-door so that they could concentrate on their schoolwork was a benefit of the revolution that I had, sadly, overlooked! In England newspapers were sold on the streets by adults until about the end of the 1960s. I remember them shouting "News and Standard" (for the London evening papers) in a typically, half-strangled-sounding voice that all the street criers seemed to use. (I never managed to work out what the rag-and-bone man was shouting.)
Yes, we had same before and sometime after the revolution of 1917 -- there are movies where boys are selling papers on the street, calling out "Sensation, sensation...". Since the USSR we had no more paperboys, but a subscription system where subscribers had their newspapers and magazines delivered and dropped into their mailboxes. In housing projects with several apartments on each level mailboxes are located in the common entrance hall and although this system was in itself not badl, sometimes subscribers didn't get their items -- they were either stolen by some neighbours or not delivered. Since the '90s very few people subscribe to anything in this country, but the system is the same. Except that some expensive editions are now delivered by a courier.
You wrote below: "You can get any newspaper in Ukraine without any kid service." But the novel is set in the US, not the Ukraine and, at the time the story takes place, the internet hadn't yet replaced printed newspapers with online ones, so kids still relied on getting paper rounds.
As previously said. Here it probably refers to a paperboy, although it could be a manin the truck who, in this case, simply drops all the papers for subscribers of that paper in the vestibule of the apartment building.
The question is not about what the Sunday Post is,
12:53 Nov 27, 2017
but rather why someone cant' get it when one wants it. I understand that The Sunday post is the name of a newspaper. You can get any newspaper in Ukraine without any kid service.
of a newspaper called the Sunday Post https://www.sundaypost.com/ OR if it's US, Sunday Post means the Sunday edition of the Post (NY or other). Like the Sunday Times etc.
This isn't 'post' as in 'mail' (letters and things) but the 'Sunday Post', i.e. the title of a newspaper. This would be delivered not by the mailman, but by a kid whose paid pocket-money to deliver newspapers. So sometimes the kid wouldn't bother to climb the stairs to deliver it to the door (it wouldn't normally go into the mailbox).
Automatic update in 00:
Answers
5 hrs confidence: peer agreement (net): +1
how post is delivered in the us
Dropped out front
Explanation: Newspapers are delivered - usually by young people in their first job - by being dropped outside the address. If raining, it will be covered in plastic. It is based on good faith and the trust system; and because they are delivered 5 - 6 AM, the assumption is that thieving types aren't up and won't disturb the paper.
TranslationLabB United States Local time: 22:50 Works in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 4
peer agreement (net): +1