Going Postal

The day after my December mortgage was due, I realized I had no idea where my paycheck was. I had gotten it about a week prior and I was pretty sure I hadn't deposited it yet. So I went to my boss and told him that I think I accidentally mixed it in with the mail and dropped in the blue mail box on my way home. It was in a window envelope which showed my name and where it was supposed to go, but had no return address. Or postage. Truthfully, I had no idea if that's what really happened. It was probably just lost in my car somewhere. Since I couldn't tell him that, I made up a logical-ish explanation and he was very understandable. The next day I fed my starving checking account with a new check and life went on. But today.....

I learned that I actually factually did mix my check in with the mail.

Today we got a letter at the office from the United States Postal Service with a note and a picture of my long lost paycheck. It said something like, "Sometimes we get mail that we don't know what to do with. In these cases the law says we can open it up and to find out what to do with it. To protect your privacy, we have properly disposed of it by shredding. Here is a picture of your check." (If anyone wants the actual factual wording, I'll be happy to copy it verbatim tomorrow when I get back to the office, but I swear, it's almost exactly as stupid as I've written above.) And there it was. A picture of the paycheck I had abused so badly.
I was pretty pissed when I saw this.
First of all, it was pretty fucking obvious that inside this badly mailed WINDOW envelope was a check. I don't work at the post office, but I'm pretty sure I could identify an envelope containing a check by looking at it. Especially one with a little window on it. A check would signify importance to me if I were the one at the post office who's big important job is solving the mysteries of mail. This would signify importance to any moron, I would think.
Secondly, wouldn't it have made more sense to just send it "postage due" to the person who's address information they did have? I'll bet it cost more money and took more time to take a (rather damn good) photo of it, and waste the paper mailing me this redundant, assinine letter. And why, OH, why, wouldn't they have at the very very least, just returned the actual check?

So. I guess I actually learned something new about the USPS today too.