One of Montreal's BEST Postal Workers, Fired by Canada Post

His name is Sylvain Carbonneau. He's my postman. Or, as I found out reading this La Presse article, was my postman. The most personable, hands-on, cheerful postal worker I've ever had in charge of handling my mail was fired last month.

Why? According to his dismissal letter, he was let go over leaving a package in front of a lady's door, having signed it for her. And because a total of two local MP newsletters were missing in two mailboxes of his route. Five years of rave-worthy service? Not enough to mitigate two missing political newsletters. And one package, a package whose recipient even came forward to confirm that, yes, she agreed that he sign and leave packages in front of her door to avoid waking her baby by ringing the doorbell. Though, truth be told, he did sign off more than one package. La Presse's Rima Elkouri reports that Carbonneau committed the "offense" of signing and leaving a package in front of a recipient's door if he had explicit permission to do so and usually to help people out, like that mother and her baby or to save an elderly lady suffering from arthritis the inconvenience of walking to the post office.

I didn't even realize there was a petition circulating in the neighborhood urging the crown corporation to give Carbonneau his job back. Consider this post my signature.

This gentleman is the kind of person who doesn't just deliver the mail, he makes people's days. He made mine when I was getting overrun with mail under former residents' names. He rung my doorbell once, with a smile followed by copious laughing as he asked me if I lived with 20 other people. We looked through the names to see which ones were obviously recurring, and saving me the inconvenience of constantly writing "moved" on each envelope and wedging them conspicuously between my mailbox and the brick wall, the repeat offenders were immediately put on his brand new do-not-put-in-Evelyn's-mailbox list. No postal worker had ever bothered to do that for me before. And unsolicited. I can't believe I won't see him again, walking by with that tell-tale hop in his step, saluting everyone who'd look his way. And for the record, in over four years of him delivering my mail, he always got it right. I never lost a letter. Or bill. Certainly none of importance or that I'm aware of, and he never signed any of my packages for me without my permission. The issue never came up, in fact, and standard protocol was followed to the letter (no pun).

This is wrong, Canada Post. My neighborhood adores this man who, if anything, is one of the best ambassadors your brand could ask for.

Please give me this one Christmas gift. Please give Sylvain Carbonneau his job back.

4:50 p.m. UPDATE: an online petition was created today in response to Rima Elkouri's La Presse article on Sylvain Carbonneau's baffling dismissal. You can sign it here.

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