Every pillar box has a tag inside that the driver scans at collection, so the office knows which boxes were emptied and when, and a box that is not scanned is a box that gets a phone call. The evening round's van scans a tag at ten past seven for a box that was taken out in 2003 when the road was widened, and the sack from that stop has letters in it.
I am the collections supervisor, and the scan report is how I know the town's boxes were emptied.
How collections are proved.
Each box has a tag fixed inside the door with the box's number. The driver empties the box into a sack, scans the tag, and the scan goes to the office with the time and the van's position. The report in the morning lists every box on the round with its scan, and a missing scan is a missed box and a call to the driver.
The tag list is the box list, and a box that is removed has its tag taken out and its number retired.
The evening round scans a tag at ten past seven every night for a box that has not existed since 2003.
It stood at a corner that is now a filter lane. The tag was removed with the box. I have the removal record with the tag number crossed through. The van's position at the scan is the corner, in the filter lane, where the driver says he does not stop, because you cannot.
The sack from the round has that stop's mail in it.
Not mixed with the rest. Collections are bagged per box on that round because it is a scan round, and there is a sack for the retired box, with its number written on the label in the driver's hand, and he does not remember writing it, and there are letters in it.
What has been checked.
The scanner, replaced. The van, swapped. The driver, changed, twice, and the new drivers scan the tag at ten past seven and bring back the sack and do not remember the stop.
The tag. It is not on the corner. I have stood on the corner at ten past seven with a scanner in my hand and there is a filter lane and a lamp post and no box, and my scanner, held out into the air where the box stood, reads the tag.
The mail. Real letters, stamped, addressed, posted in the town, by people I have in three cases spoken to, who say they posted them in the box on that corner, that evening, and who, when I say there is no box on that corner, tell me that there is, and that they have used it all their lives.
The letters go where they are addressed. That is the part that makes it not a problem. They are franked and sorted and delivered, and the people who posted them in a box that is not there get their post delivered from it, and the system does not know that anything is wrong, because nothing is.
What is done about it.
The tag number is in the scan report every night and the report's software, which flags unknown tags, has an exception for it, which I added, because the alternative was a call to the driver every morning about a box he cannot find.
The removal record still says removed. I have not changed it.
What I do.
I read the report.
The one thing I have changed is that I do not walk past that corner at ten past seven.
I did, for a month, from the far pavement, to see the van. It comes down the road, and it does not stop, because it cannot, and as it passes the corner the driver's arm goes out of the window the way it does at a box, and comes back in, and the van goes on, and I have watched that eleven times.
On the twelfth I stood on the corner itself, on the pavement, where the box stood, at ten past seven, and the van came, and did not stop, and the driver's arm came out, and something was put into my hands. A sack, canvas, heavy, with a label with a number on it in the driver's hand, and the van was gone up the road before I had looked down at it, and the letters in it were warm.