Gift ideas for your mail carrier

Your mail carrier probably hates you. It’s nothing personal. You’re just a bit of a putz. Your walkways are unshoveled, your dogs are total assholes, and the magazines you subscribe to aren’t very interesting to read on their lunch breaks. Sports Illustrated? Really? You know they have a website where you can read those articles two weeks earlier, right?

Some mail carriers walk up to 15 miles each day to deliver all those unwanted advertisements to your home. Getting them a Christmas gift is a great way to keep your packages safe and provide a little warmth to a person who will have two or three hernia operations by the time they’re 60 years old. In this way, mail carriers are a lot like your grandpa, except your grandpa only smells funny when he drinks.

If you bribe your mail carrier with one of the great gifts listed below, and they still leave those little package notification slips in your mailbox without knocking on your door, then next year you can bake them cookies with poop in them.


- For the best gift ideas, check the list of “prohibited gifts” on the postal service’s website. Cash, checks, stocks and bonds, liquor, gift cards and anything of monetary value that they can trade for money. Sure, they could get fired for accepting these gifts, but wouldn’t you be doing them a favor?

- If you’re looking to play by the rules, gift them a nude photo of yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re good looking. In fact, it’s better if you’re not. The less attractive you are, the funnier the story will be when they tell their friends and family. Just make sure to crop out your face, because that photo is heading to the internet at record speeds.

- If your mail carrier has bizarre hair or unusually creative sideburns, give them a nude photo of you on the toilet. If they don’t like it, then maybe they shouldn’t have creative sideburns.

- Anything except alcohol. Have you seen how your packages look when they arrive? All charred and beaten, like the postal workers set it on fire and ran a train on it in the back of the mail truck. Think of how much worse your packages will look if the mail carrier is drinking. Or rather, drinking more.

- Weed. Let’s be honest. You don’t normally associate with people who are poor or wear unfashionable shorts in the summertime, so you have no idea if your mail carrier is an alcoholic. You could ask them, but that would require you to let cold air into the house. Save the alcohol for yourself and give them marijuana. No one’s ever been addicted to weed, and even if it were possible, the only side effects would be the continued popularity of Adventure Time, a cartoon that is mildly amusing at best.

- Booze. Whatever, who cares. If your next batch of letters includes their sobriety chip, then you can feel bad. However, the chances of that are only one-in-three or so.

- Something drawn on a banana with a marker. For instance, a dinosaur, our lord and savior Jesus Christ, or Wonder Woman on the toilet. I give my mail carrier this gift every year, and every year she chucks it onto the roof of my building. I usually retrieve it and eat it, so it’s really just me giving myself a banana each year. I can’t quite explain why, but they taste better when thrown on the roof by someone whose pension is slowly being stolen by union representatives.

- Warmth. Sadly, breathing heavily into your mailbox each morning doesn’t work, but you can also create warmth by leaving fresh dog turds inside it.

- Whenever I’m unsure of what to gift someone, I get them a 10” tall Boba Fett statue. I have yet to receive any complaints, no matter the person’s age or gender.

- A bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. Make sure to write “WARNING: DIARRHEA IMMINENT” on the wrapper, just in case they’re lactose intolerant.

- A snowman that looks like them. This cute gesture is guaranteed to brighten their day. If your mail carrier is an older lady, make sure the snow woman’s breasts (breasticles?) sag a lot. If your mail carrier is an older man, make sure the snowman’s testicles stretch all the way to the floor.

- Cash. You don’t know them. You have no idea what they like. Give them money instead of adding more generic crap to our landfills. Cash gifts aren’t crass, they’re eco-friendly! Look, mail carriers don’t need more chocolates, houseplants or creepy photo cards of you and your dog making out. Give them money. Hell, give everyone money instead of gifts. It’s 2015 and people have bills to pay. I know The Beatles said “All you need is love”, but they were really, really rich when they wrote that, so to hell with them. Also, your dog did not bite The Beatles twice last year.